Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation

by Paul Ricœur, Denis Savage (Translator)

If Paul Ricoeur is correct in seeing the various currents of contemporary philosophy all converging on the problem of a "grand philosophy of language," then the first sixty pages of this absorbing study of Freud may become the rallying point from which future work can begin.
This first part of Freud and Philosophy, "Problematic," presents a profound and clear theory of signification, symbol, and interpretation. The second part, "A Reading of Freud," is required reading for anyone seriously interested in psychoanalysis. The third section interpretation of Ricoeur's own theory of symbol—particularly religious symbol—which places this study at the center of contemporary debate over the sense of myth.
In this book are revealed Ricoeur the philosopher of language; Ricoeur the critic of Freud; and Ricoeur the theologian of religious symbol. The author is outstanding in all three roles, and the book that emerges is of rare profundity, enormous scope, and complete timeliness.
Paul Ricoeur is professor of philosophy at the University of Paris.
 
“Paul Ricouer…has done a study that is all too rare these days, in which one intellect comes to grips with another, in which a scholar devotes himself to a thoughtful, searching, and comprehensive study of a genius…The final result is a unique survey of the panorama of Freudian thought by an observer who, although starting from outside, succeeds in penetrating to its core.” –American Journal of Psychiatry
“Primarily an inquiry into the foundations of language and hermeneutics…[Ricoeur uses] the Freudian ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ as a corrective and counter-balance for phenomenology and create a ‘new phenomenology’…This important work…should have an impact upon serious thinking in philosophy, theology, psychology, and other areas which have been affected by Freud studies.”—International Philosophical Quarterly
“A stimulating tour de force that allows us to envisage both the psychoanalytic body of knowledge and the psychoanalytic movement in a broad perspective within the framework of its links to culture, history and the evolution of Western intellectual thought.” – Psychoanalytic Quarterly 
Paul Ricoeur is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and the University of Paris.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Theory, France, Religion

592 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished philosophers of the twentieth century. In the course of his long career he wrote on a broad range of issues. His books include a multi-volume project on the philosophy of the will: Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (1950, Eng. tr. 1966), Fallible Man (1960, Eng. tr. 1967), and The Symbolism of Evil (1960, Eng. tr. 1970); a major study of Freud: Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1965, Eng. tr. 1970); The Rule of Metaphor (1975, Eng. tr. 1977); Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (1976); the three-volume Time and Narrative (1983-85, Eng. tr. 1984–88); Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (1986); the published version of his Gifford lectures: Oneself as Another (1990, Eng. tr. 1992); Memory, History, Forgetting (2000, Eng. tr. 2004); and The Course of Recognition (2004, Eng. tr. 2005). In addition to his books, Ricoeur published more than 500 essays, many of which appear in collections in English: History and Truth (1955, Eng. tr. 1965); Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology (1967); The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (1969, Eng. tr. 1974); Political and Social Essays (1974); Essays on Biblical Interpretation (1980); Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (1981); From Text to Action (1986, Eng. tr. 1991); Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (1995); The Just (1995, Eng. tr. 2000); On Translation (2004, Eng. tr. 2004); and Reflections on the Just (2001, Eng. tr. 2007).

The major theme that unites his writings is that of a philosophical anthropology. This anthropology, which Ricoeur came to call an anthropology of the “capable human being,” aims to give an account of the fundamental capabilities and vulnerabilities that human beings display in the activities that make up their lives. Though the accent is always on the possibility of understanding the self as an agent responsible for its actions, Ricoeur consistently rejects any claim that the self is immediately transparent to itself or fully master of itself. Self-knowledge only comes through our relation to the world and our life with and among others in that world.

In the course of developing his anthropology, Ricoeur made a major methodological shift. His writings prior to 1960 were in the tradition of existential phenomenology. But during the 1960s Ricoeur concluded that properly to study human reality he had to combine phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. For this hermeneutic phenomenology, whatever is intelligible is accessible to us in and through language and all deployments of language call for interpretation. Accordingly, “there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts; in the final analysis self-understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms” (Oneself as Another, 15, translation corrected). This hermeneutic or linguistic turn did not require him to disavow the basic results of his earlier investigations. It did, however, lead him not only to revisit them but also to see more clearly their implications.

Reviews

[David M · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/24/20. Just finished reading again for the first time in years. I continue to be in awe of this book. I especially recommend it for those inclined to view psychoanalysis and/or religion with heavy skepticism. Ricoeur is able to retrieve astonishing kernels of wisdom from what might seem at first like two opposed but equally fraudulent endeavors.

This is the first I've returned to Ricoeur since my deep dive into Marx circa 2017. Do the two thinkers have anything to say to each other? Ricoeur groups Marx together with Nietzsche and Freud as practicing a "hermeneutics of suspicion." There may be something to that, but in my opinion it's far too reductive. To a much greater degree than Nietzsche or Freud, Marx arrives at a positive understanding of the social world that has to be grappled with on its own terms. He is much less amenable to philosophical appropriation than Freud. Ricoeur only ever touches on Marx glancingly, and then only as a kind of culture critic of "false consciousness." Frankly there's not much sign Ricoeur ever read Capital. Perhaps this is unfortunate. At the same time I don't think Ricouer's hermeneutics is actually incompatible with historical materialism.. Hs "archaeology of the subject" may even be seen as a materialist concept that exists in the same world where labor is the source of all value.

***
In 2015 I had the good fortune to read a number of great books, but there were only two I then felt compelled to purchase and re-read from start to finish a few months later, pen in hand: Symbolism of Evil and Freud and Philosophy ; these are, I think, Ricoeur's greatest books. They can almost be read as a single work (two panels of a glorious diptych, if you will); each constitutes a philosophical interpretation of mythology. In Symbolism, it's the ancient, Judeo-Christian myth of evil, sin, and the fall. In F&P, the modern mythology of Freudianism and psychoanalysis.

Ricoeur is then able to develop his own hermeneutic philosophy of the symbol and the all-important, somewhat mysterious "second naivete."

... There's much to say, and I'm afraid I am simply not up to the task of summing up the import of Ricoeur's philosophy in a Goodreads post. I intend to continue to grapple with Ricoeur for the foreseeable future. Also, I'm hoping his discussions in Freud & Philosophy will provide me with an opening to Leibniz and Hegel this coming year.

*

"Since desires hide themselves in dreams, interpretation must substitute the light of meaning for the darkness of desire." - pp. 159

"We are in the presence of phenomena structured like a language; but the problem is to assign a proper meaning to the word 'like.'" - pp. 400 (take that, structuralists!)

"For my part, I regard Freudianism as a revelation of the archaic, a manifestation of the ever prior." - pp. 440

"What makes desire the limit concept at the frontier between the organic and the psychical is the fact that desire is both the nonspoken and the wish-to-speak, the unnameable and the potency to speak." - pp 457 (Ricoeur participated fully in the xxth century linguistification of philosophy, yet he never forgot the importance of language having an outside or other)

"Insofar as revealing and disguising coincide in it, we might say that sublimation is the symbolic function itself." - pp. 497

"Thus the idols must die - so that symbols may live." - pp. 531

*

{here's the little review I posted after my first reading, which I shall now leave unchanged:}

Philosophy is the study of insoluble problems. For this reason Freud did not consider himself a philosopher. He thought he was founding a science that could provide definitive answers.

Of course the epistemology of psychoanalysis was a complete disaster. Trust me, I talked to someone for an hour and figured out the nature of human existence...

There's a pretty broad consensus that psychoanalysis failed as a science. Indeed this was true fifty-some years ago when Ricoeur wrote this book. Nonetheless, even though philosophy does not make progress, it can at times renew itself through contact with other fields. In psychoanalysis Ricoeur found a model for a hermeneutics of the subject. That is to say, a philosophy that's not based on the transparency of consciousness; a philosophy that can honor the fundamental darkness and ambiguity of symbols.

[Cain S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ricoeur’s reading of Freud is a rare and sympathetic attempt to grapple philosophically with the antiphilosophy of psychoanalysis. In successive movements between Freud’s explicitly developed triads of id, ego and superego; unconscious, preconscious and conscious; cathexis, anticathexis and hypercathexis; Eros, Thanatos and Logos Ricoeur locates an occult dualism of human desire which defines the project of psychoanalysis as a working through of desire, against a social field of desires of the other. The project of psychoanalysis is purely diagnostic: to arrive at the truth beyond the pleasure principle is the working through of life in the analytic session. These various triads Ricoeur demonstrates, with peerless clarity and rigour, to be the interplay of an energetics, an economics and a series of topographies of psychisms that constantly stand in for reality in the mind of the analysand, and which are held together as a calculable interpretation only by the work of analysis which fuses each triad with its corresponding function in the service of the pleasure-ego. Only under the shifting gaze of the analyst who is aided by the process of transference can the work of interpretation begin because the analysand has only a very distorted access to his resistances. The truth, for Freud, is a thankless thing which comes with the collapse of all illusion. But illusion itself is a necessary prelude to any conception of a truth.

The Analytic Reading

The Energetics implicit in Freud’s word, often ignored by commentators, is much indebted to the naturalist ethos of his own time and draws heavily on a speculative quantity of neurons as contingent agents of repression and sublimation. This energetics is important to Freud inasmuch as he sought to differentiate his work from rival schools that held consciousness to be a parallelism of the neural system or a mere epiphenomenon by modifying the findings of biology to furnish an archaeology of instincts. Freud was interested in showing how quantitative tendencies of neurons effected qualitative changes in consciousness: “[d]esires and wishes enter [t]his mechanistic theory (pp. 383- 84) through the intermediary of the traces left behind by pleasure and unpleasure” (Ricoeur, P. 77) in the form of neuronal charges. But this quantity-to-quality conversion begs the question of how these quantities don’t get annulled by the minds relentless impetus towards pleasure and/ or unpleasure in an affective entropy. Freud’s answer radicalises this problem by positing the work of quantitative neuronal movements to be the regulation of affective states to preserve an inertia, a nirvana principle. Rather than running their course in surplus pleasure or unpleasure towards a total expenditure of affect/ neuronal charges they tended to a preservation of their initial state of libidinal investment. An affective homeostasis. But this answer eliminates the anatomical basis for the instinct’s quantitative transformation into indeterminate tendencies mainly because these neurons and their charges cannot be counted. They are of an uncertain number, and in the words of a commentator on Freud, possessed of a phlogistic character in psychoanalytic theory; in response to a constancy principle that is fundamentally at odds with the reality principle a homeostasis of affects demands a way to calculate neuronal charges if psychoanalysis is to be treated as the science Freud insisted it was. Reality is, Freud says, that which persists despite the Conscious system’s “peculiar cathexis”: it is classified in opposition to the Unconscious that is timeless and non-negative, and is “…classified with negation and contradiction, the tonic binding of energy, and reference to time” as an end of illusion and the maturity of man (Ricoeur, P. 268).

The periodicity and self-consistency of ideas in relation to a nirvana principle come to define the quantitative neuronal constitution of the triad unconsciousness, preconsciousness and consciousness; in this capacity they work as a spatial dimension where pleasure seeking psychisms reacting with the conscious world of objects and a working through of life in this world, can be understood by referring the representations of ego-instincts as they appear in comparison with a semiology of desire constructed from an archaeology of ego-instincts—arrived at by the detours of analytic session, the free association method and experience. The topography of psychoanalysis, then, is a spatial translation of the indeterminate and timeless qualities of the unconscious under a metaphorical mien; it allows for the analytic understanding of motor impulses pushed backwards into intentions, i.e. traces of unconscious neuronal impulsions in search of pleasure, as the cause for hallucination when the object of its desire is absent, or as conscious action when the object is present; “…motility and perception…” are its directional poles (Ricoeur, P. 107). Now from the side of earlier ego-instincts an action can be read as a regression to hallucinatory union with a lost object, but from the side of the object to which an ego-instinct connects an integration of impulses marked by a renunciation to necessity becomes discernable, and this can now be read as sublimation—whatever repression and sublimation are defined as in qualitative terms. On the side of reality, in the Freudian topography, are Logos and Ananke the gods of the disillusioned and on the side of the neurosis are the archaisms of Eros and Thanatos marked by their tendency for a pleasure-seeking-unto-death; although it is Eros that impels men to action it is only under the gaze of Thanatos that these actions come to bear their allegiance to Ananke, overcoming the ruses of infantile desire.

The triangulation between the lust for joyous survival, the stratagems of this lust for survival and the more, or less, realistic behaviour that emerges in response to this renewed understanding of reality become the definitional criteria which situate the disparate field of human desire under the purview of psychoanalysis. After enumerating the facts of discourse that constitute the sphere of personal desire under these three criteria we must analyse them by reading them against the bare facts of the analysand’s behaviour, the relation of this behaviour to a certain understanding of the world he occupies and the degree to which the analysand gives credence to his behaviour in light of the gap between bare facts and personal affects. This level of psychoanalytic discourse couched in the terminology of id, ego and superego comes to take on an economic aspect in that what the unconscious desires comes to be sought out by the conscious, i.e. in Freud’s words, “where the id was the ego shall be”. The gap between these occult movements of personal desires—impelled by the regulatory energetics of pleasure, and unpleasure—and the actual outcome of these desires pursued or repressed to their end becomes most coherent when it is read as an economic relation between the impersonal, personal and suprapersonal aspects of the psychism. The impersonal is the id because it desires without the knowledge of consciousness; the suprapersonal superego is a ruse of the id which convinces the conscious part of the mind by its rationalisations and order words, or the representatives of conscious thought in the ego, about a danger that must be averted by capitulating to its, or the id’s, dimly perceived demands; egoity or consciousness and rational behaviour is then in a triply precarious position right from its inception, buffeted by the impersonal and the suprapersonal, and insulted by the residual reality which resists the ego-instinct’s errands of pleasure.

The Dialectical Reading

It is evident that psychoanalysis only serves to guide the analytical reconstruction of the analysand’s psychisms or, an archaeology of human desire if you will, and a synthetic, or prescriptive, teleology is beyond the scope of psychoanalytic theory. This is simply because each successive reality can be read as an object-choice, or adequation of the ego formation to allow for pleasure, and is to be treated as a compromised choice of perceptual information and the way it relates to the demands of the id constellated in the interpreting authority of the superego with its ruses for maximising satisfaction. Here, Ricoeur offers a corrective to the solipsism of the psychoanalytic theory outside the session in proposing to pare down psychoanalysis with a phenomenology of reflective consciousness; this he achieves by a superimposed operation of the Hegelian dialectic over the Freudian epochȇ in reverse. “Where phenomenology begins with an act of ‘suspension’, with an epochȇ at the free disposition of the subject, psychoanalysis begins with the suspension of the control of consciousness, whereby the subject is made a slave equal to his bondage, to use Spinoza’s terms” (Ricoeur, P. 391). Thus the act of a conscious recapitulation of perception is not apt to survive the acid test of psychoanalysis; instincts that are discerned in affects of the conscious mind are reified as necessity and reason in the Hegelian grasping of man, he becomes the subject of his needs, which are only interpretable as representations [Freud's reprasentanz] of instincts: “…a realism of the knowable…a mythology…” (Ricoeur, P. 435). Thus, Ricoeur opposes the search for interpretation in the mythology of the instincts with the projection of a teleological destiny that Freud implicates while thematising the primal history of man and society.

In the first stage of the dialectic consciousness itself stands in place of a symptom that imposes representations of the instincts as a mythos, or hermeneutic approach, backward over the facts of perception. “Whereas Hegel links an explicit teleology of mind or spirit to an implicit archaeology of life and desire, Freud links a thematised archaeology of the unconscious to an unthematised teleology of the process of becoming conscious” (Ricoeur, P. 461). The reduplication of consciousness, the abortive or premature Cogito, in the movement of consciousness becoming conscious of itself in itself and in another is to be opposed to the exegetical movement of consciousness into representations of its own investment in the pleasure principle—this movement eludes the Freudian notion of narcissism involved in identification, or object-choice, since it is in itself a figure of necessity [Ananke] that deflates the abortive Cogito’s innate narcissism; brute necessity [Ananke] is inscribed in the external world of objects before its translation into psychisms which are merely ego-instincts that stand in for the world. This dialectic between archaeology and teleology is an “…opposition to the Freudian economics” of libidinal investment read into the metapsychology from without, as a procession of spirit that educates desire in transformation beyond regression towards the inertial vortex of an original “object-loss”, or primary repression, whose presence in absentia sets psychoanalytic re-interpretation in motion (Ricoeur 481). Since psychoanalysis does not make this synthetic move towards elucidating its normative field of desire beyond the pleasure principle, hinted at obliquely in the notion of sublimation which it fails to elucidate, it risks falling into the troubling inability to differentiate between progression and regression; movements of desire that psychoanalysis has so strongly opposed in the economic and topographic scheme of the analytic session as a measure of truth beyond illusions; the argument for the id’s prefiguration of the ego or the ego’s curtailment of the pleasure-ego’s, or abortive Cogito’s, formation respectively. Thus, the corrective of the dialectic of the phenomenology of spirit on the [psycho]analytic regression of the epochȇ in reverse comes to open up a field that is beyond the ruses of the pleasure principle and is simultaneously the condition of both regression and progression.

Ricoeur’s contribution to the elucidation of Freudianism as an epistemological enterprise opposed to the observational sciences and in opposition with the phenomenological school of philosophy opens the ground for a reflective philosophy which can proceed by the dialectics between an archaeology and a teleology of the psychisms of desire.

Work Cited

Ricoeur, Paul. Trans. Savage, Denis. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, 2008. Print.




Originally posted at :

www.skepoet.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/...

[Goatboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without a doubt, I would have gotten much more out of this book if I had a firmer grasp of phenomenology and had read more of its main works. In that sense, whatever Ricoeur wants to use his interpretation of Freud to accomplish in his own body of work and furtherance of thought I probably missed much of. Oh well...

On the other hand, as a detailed and exhaustive summary and interpretation of much of Freud's thought I can't imagine a better source. Surely Ricoeur interprets Freud in a way biased toward what he wants to use him for. As an example, I'm not sure how useful this would be for a person looking to understand how to use Freud in clinical practice. Although again, even here, Ricoeur's explanation of the concepts of "practice" and "transference" do have implications in this regard.

Let's just say that if you are looking for a work that might give you an approach to Freud, a way to understand his complicated and oftentimes misunderstood concepts, there are worse places to look. Ricoeur makes me want to re-read Freud's books I've read and then read his works I haven't gotten to yet. Clarifying and confounding, but never boring.

Is it stupid to say you are proud of yourself for finishing a book? Maybe.
But I am proud that I stuck with this one to the end.
It wasn't an easy ride, but it was a fulfilling one.

[v · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ricoeur strikes a beautiful middle in Freudian revisionism. He doesn't fall into the bland broad strokes of his seniors/peers (thinking of Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History), or the bellicose gibberish of his juniors (thinking of Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia): he reads Freud carefully and asks tough questions. The final two sections are perhaps the most important for Ricoeur's personal understanding of Freud, and it's here that he places Freud within a hermeneutics of religion; these passages are interesting and lovely, but they are probably not the strongest, or most generally useful, parts of the book. They (and Ricoeur's suspicion throughout the text of the "masters of suspicion") also make it all too easy for Marxists (who still have the monopoly on non-psychoanalytic studies of Freud) to dismiss Ricoeur (thinking of The Political Unconscious).

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comment:

A wonderful book that I first read thirty years ago. The comparison of Hegel and Freud (the ruses of reason vs. the ruses of desire) is simply the single most brilliant discussion comparing these two thinkers that I have seen. The discussion of Freud is, quite naturally, intelligent; but buy the book for the comparison of Hegel and Freud. The ruses of Reason face to face with the ruses of Desire might be the best short description of human life we have...

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ricoeur has conquered me, and I'm glad to admit defeat at his hands. It's extremely rare to read something of incredible philosophical precision which isn't dry and tedious like Kant or Hegel. It's even rarer to read a single neutral-sounding author. Ricoeur is obviously much more interested in understanding how things work rather than making some petty argument for this or that side. It's exceptionally refreshing to see.

You might be wondering: Mark, why didn't you finish this book then? Why four stars? Ricoeur, despite his exceptional skills, is not adept at concision. This isn't to say it felt repetitive, but the depth he went into on Freud's history of thought is just a bit too much for me. With all that said, I think that the introduction is easily the best part (that I read) and should be in any college level classes about theory or interpretation (scriptural or secular). His main thesis is a striking and constructive one: because interpretation initially began as a way of deciphering holy texts, it's appropriate to call our contemporary interpretive frameworks "hermeneutics"; furthermore, there are two main hermeneutical camps today: the hermeneutics of suspicion (typified by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), and the hermeneutics of faith (typified by Paul, Augustine, and others).

The main clarification I'd append to this observation is that the hermeneutics of suspicion is far from faithless; rather, to borrow from Freud's own terminology, its faith is deferred, hidden, made inexplicit. If you know anything at all about psychoanalysis, the irony of this observation is palpable: psychoanalysis's goal is to mistrust appearances and to uncover the "true" (unconscious) drives and desires in our lives (and our texts), but in its attempts at "uncovering," it in turn covers itself up. To be sure, there is no interprative framework without faith, just as there is no worldview without assumptions. The two are the same thing; the difference is that the traditional approach to interpretation had faith in the author and the tradition, whereas critical interpretation has faith in the suspicion itself. Or, to talk more specifically about Freud, he inexplicably had faith in dreams, specifically in it holding some latent meaning which could be made intelligible. In other words, despite his supposed skepticism, he held out faith in meaning, but only a meaning of his own making, being a mythmaker himself, not a myth-destroyer.

The two approaches aren't mutually exclusive, despite their opposite extremes; instead they create a fascinating tension:

The difficulty--it initiated my research in the first place--is this: there is no general hermeneutics, no universal canon for exegesis, but only disparate and opposed theories concerning the rules of interpretation. The hermeneutic field...is internally at variance with itself.
...
Hermeneutics seems to me to be animated by this double motivation: willingness to suspect, willingness to listen; vow of rigor, vow of obedience.


The primary functions of both extremes are outlined as "interpretation understood as restoration of meaning" and "interpretation understood as reduction of illusion." Both, however assume something lost, and thus are attempts to remedy a perceived fault; the question is, which fault do you perceive most acutely? The hermeneutics of faith is the more "common sense", "obvious", and "conservative" approach, broadly speaking. At its worst it can come off as credulous and overzealous, but at its best it preserves beauty and other ancient things. The hermeneutics of suspicion views things in an inverted way, "since what is initially best known, the conscious, is suspended and becomes the least known." It's tempting to see this paradoxical flipping of the known and unknown and to run too far with it, but it's also tempting to dismiss it outright. Neither seem to be a mature response, because the problem is serious, and deserves a patient appraisal:

We must now come to grips with the more formidable objection, that the recourse to symbolism hands thought over to equivocal language and fallacious arguments that are condemned by a sound logic.


To me, such an objection smacks of a false sense of certainty, something naively scientific in its assumptions. For, as Ricoeur writes earlier in the book, "The symbolic is the universal mediation of the mind between ourselves and the real; the symbolic, above all, indicates the nonimmediacy of our apprehension of reality." By this, I understand him as admitting that there exists a gap between reality and perception, between reality and language; this, however, was never an issue for traditional (premodern) worldviews; it only became problematized by those same scientific-minded people who want absolute certainty and airtight logic. But language, and especially its most beautiful variety, poetry, adamantly resists such specification. This isn't a weakness of language; rather, that's its strength:

"The power of the poet is to show forth symbols at the moment when 'poetry places language in a state of emergence,' to quote Bachelard again, whereas ritual and myth fix symbols in their hieratic stability, and dreams close them in upon the labyrinth of desires where the dreamer loses the thread of his forbidden and mutilated discourse."


The thing is, I don't think Ricoeur believes that Freudian explanation of dreams; I certainly don't. In a way similar to naturalistic historians giving non-supernatural accounts of the origins of religions, Ricoeur's painstaking history of Freud's psychoanalytic theories removes much of the misty mystery. Freud apparently started off assuming a mechanistic explanation of all psychic processes as being due to flows of energy. As a bad translation from physics into anatomy, the metaphor doesn't hold very well. Most of this "flow" and "energy" language disappears by his later work, but vestigial organs remain, such as the libido and other quirky remainders. The problem with Freud wasn't that he was brutally naturalistic in his approach: but it's that his brutality hyper-fixated upon sexuality, especially supposed infant sexuality, as the cause of every human behavior. Despite his pretenses against myths and in support of a materialistic scientism, he became the very thing he hated: an unscientific mythmaker. Of course, none of his theories about early childhood development are testable, and of course, only a deranged pervert could invent those, but when your goal is subversion at all costs, that's what you get.

As you can tell from that last paragraph, I'm glad Ricoeur wrote this book and not me, otherwise it would have been unreadable complaints such as those I just launched. Ricoeur is much more subtle in his denunciations, only "stooping" to my level with the last bookmark I made: "Freud appeals here to psychoanalytic practice, as if the most naive and crudely naturalistic explanation were more faithful to what actually takes place in interpretation." Freud of course should be commended for centering language and the speaking subject, which has flourished in the age of near-universal literacy and widespread democracy: talk therapy is a powerful tool for good. But unfortunately, most of his legacy in academia has been under the guise of theorists whose critical aspect causes them to at times betray even more profound perversion than Freud.

I may have to skim the end of the book to see what his conclusions are, but for right now, I thank Ricoeur for his thoroughness and diplomacy, two things I evidently lack.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was assigned for one of the many psychology courses I took at Union Theological Seminary. I was in the Psychology and Religion Department there, having enrolled in order to study analytical psychology in particular and depth psychologies in general, Union being the place for such things at that time.
Ironically, what happened was that I became pretty thoroughly disenchanted with Jung by the time of completing his collected works and increasingly interested in the philosophical and scientific underpinnings of depth psychology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This, naturally, led to much more study of philosophy, particularly of the classics.
What I never liked very much included psychoanalysis, on the one hand, and phenomenology, on the other. The first was necessary for my studies, the second not--not, at least, at the time we read this Ricoeur book and parts of his Symbolism of Evil. My dislike of Freud was primarily based on differences of opinion. My dislike of Ricoeur, based on this book and assigned parts of his Symbolism of Evil, was primarily based on his, in my eyes, obscurantist approach. Whatever his faults, Freud wrote well and clearly.
Of course the whole course of my study was arguable ass-backwards. The few things I had done right were to study Latin and learn western history in high school. Beyond that, it was crazy to jump in Phenomenology before I'd learned the history of western philosophy.
Eventually i did this up through Kant, his German epigones and Hegel, petering off with some thorough study of Marx and Engels. I never did get to Husserl, however, and without him I suspect my understanding of phenomenology was shallow and ignorantly unappreciative.

[Kevin Megill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book but I may be the only one :-). There is almost no one I would recommend it too. Very complicated reading. Attempts to find a way to read Freud accepting his hermeneutic of suspicion, and then reconcile that with a hermeneutic of faith that sees evidence of God as the backdrop of all that suspicion.

[Joe Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly helpful philosophical "biography" of Freud and analysis of his theoretical development. And at the same time, a remarkable work of philosophy in its own right, in some ways the foundation for the rest of Ricoeur's thought.

[isaac smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The school of suspicion is a metastasis for me.

The emphasis on a school over a hermeneutics is a proper material view, an emphasis on Freud over psychoanalysis, language over dreams, semantics over energetics. Although Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud differ in their ideas and may seem incompatible, despite caricatures or misunderstandings of them, they all aim to offer a method for interpreting false consciousness, to expand consciousness. Ricoeur perceives them all as opposed to the study of the sacred experience and the interpretation of meaning as a recollection and reminiscence of existence. I am sorry to Hegel fans caught up on Boehme and Schopenhauer fans caught up on Eckhart.

I am glad that Ricoeur outlines how unscientific Freud is, since Freud saw himself as a scientist. But, of course, Lacan accused Ricoeur of plagiarism, and Lacan saw analysis as a superset containing science. But, Freud is no longer read in psychology departments, much less by biologists. No, the academy relegates him to the syllabi of literature students. The main benefit of section two, then, is the transition into Ricoeur's moving beyond Freud. He uses the metastasis of Hegel as a salve for the metastasis of suspicion. Husserl is too beyond me to yet go viral or wreack havoc like a hydrogen radical. It is like Sartre or Heidegger shuffling propositions. It was lost on me, but I will shamelessly plug the Wikipedia claim the Ricoeur distinguishes "Husserl's epoché [or bracketing], which involves a 'reduction to consciousness', and the procedures of psychoanalysis, which involve a 'reduction of consciousness'"

Anyway, Ricoeur pulls on Nagel to finish his attack on the scientific Freud. No one can measure or reute psychoanslysis because it is too vague. People who operationalize Freud instead of treating him as a historian are misguided. Note: operationalization outlines the scope of a concept by specifying what does and does not fall under that concept, basically defining and measuring a phenomenon for empirical observation that is not otherwise directly measurable. Ricoeur also pulls on Toulmin, saying that an explanation of human behavior in terms of motives which is different in kind from an explanation of human behavior in terms of causes, and that psychoanalysis deals with motives rather than causes, so as such, someone like Skinner cannot compare to Freud. As I understand, this is like trying to compare a letter and a number without some mediator.

Psychoanalysis guides the understanding of an individual's psyche, focusing on the archaeology of human desires. It doesn't prescribe a specific purpose. Ricoeur suggests refining psychoanalysis by incorporating reflective consciousness, using a Hegelian dialectic over Freudian ideas in reverse. He critiques the Freudian approach, highlighting the conflict between interpreting instincts as mythology and projecting a teleological destiny. The dialectic between archaeology and teleology opposes Freudian economics, offering a way beyond the pleasure principle's limitations. Ricoeur basically offers the interplay between the history and purpose of desires in understanding Freud.

Specifically, since psychoanalysis doesn't explore desires beyond the pleasure principle, especially in the concept of sublimation, it risks not distinguishing between progress and regression. This challenges its ability to understand truth in the economic and topographic aspects of the analytic session. It also muddles the discussion about whether the id shapes the ego or limits the pleasure-seeking ego's development. The corrective approach, using the dialectic of the phenomenology of spirit on the psychoanalytic regression, opens a new perspective that goes beyond the limitations of the pleasure principle, encompassing both regression and progression. Perhaps, talking between an analyst and an analysand about dreams and symptoms opens up interpretation beyond dreams and symptoms rather than treating these phenomena as such.

Stepping back, (as Cain S. collects so nicely) Ricoeur looks at Freud's triads of id, ego, and superego, as well as unconscious, preconscious, and conscious, but then cathexis, anticathexis and hypercathexis, yet (most fun) Eros, Thanatos and Logos.

Ricoeur sees psychoanalysis as a dualistic process dealing with desire in a social context. He emphasizes its diagnostic nature, aiming to uncover truths beyond the pleasure principle during the analytic session, likened to a journey through life. Ricoeur shows how the aforementioned triads symbolize the interplay of energetics, economics, and more in the analysand's mind, substituting for reality. Interpretation relies on the analyst's shifting gaze and transference to address the analysand's distorted access to resistances. Freud believes truth emerges when illusions collapse, with illusion being a crucial precursor to understanding truth.

By the way, the school of suspicion is "école du soupçon" for Philofrancos (the term Francophile is a little off-putting, and you can see now, by my self-distance, what the hang-up says about me).

[Ahmet Bakir Sbaai]

Ricoeur, P. (1965). De l’interprétation : Essai sur Freud.


يستكشف بول ريكور في هذا الكتاب أعمال سيغموند فرويد كميدان للتأويل، مقترحا أن التحليل النفسي ليس مجرد علم نفسي، بل هو أيضا ممارسة تأويلية تكشف عن دلالات اللاوعي. بهدف إبراز كيف يساهم فرويد في فلسفة التأويل من خلال تحليله للأحلام، الرموز، والدوافع البشرية، مع إظهار حدود منهجه الاختزالي واقتراح تأويل أوسع.
التأويل الفينومينولوجي: المنهج
يؤكد ريكور أن التأويل هو عملية فينومينولوجية تبدأ بتعليق الموقف الطبيعي، كما اقترح هوسرل، للتركيز على الظواهر كما تظهر للوعي. لكنه يتجاوز هوسرل بالتركيز على الرمز كمدخل لفهم المعنى. الرمز، بمعناه المزدوج، يحمل معنى أوليا (حرفيا) ومعنى ثانويا (كامنا)، مما يتطلب تأويلا يكشف عن هذا التعدد. على سبيل المثال، في سياق فرويد، حلم قد يظهر كقصة عشوائية، لكنه يحمل دلالات عميقة عن الرغبات المكبوتة.
وعلى هذا الأساس، يكون فرويد، كما يراه ريكور، مفكرا تأويليا لأنه يتعامل مع الرموز (الأحلام، الهفوات اللغوية، الأعراض العصابية) كتعبيرات عن اللاوعي. لكن منهجه يختلف عن التأويل الفينومينولوجي في كونه تأويل الشك (Hermeneutics of Suspicion)، حيث يسعى إلى تفكيك الرمز للكشف عن دوافع خفية.
فرويد واللاوعي: التأويل الاختزالي
في قلب التحليل النفسي عند فرويد يكمن مفهوم اللاوعي، الذي يعد خزانا للرغبات المكبوتة والذكريات المحجوبة. فرويد يرى أن الأحلام، الهفوات اللغوية، والأعراض العصابية هي طرق ملكية إلى اللاوعي، حيث تشفر الرغبات في رموز. في كتابه تفسير الأحلام، يقترح فرويد أن الحلم هو تحقيق مبطن لرغبة، حيث يتم تحويل المحتوى الكامن (Latent Content) إلى المحتوى الظاهر (Manifest Content) من خلال عمليات مثل الإزاحة (Displacement) والتكثيف (Condensation).. هذا المنهج تأويلي بطبيعته، لأنه يتطلب فك شفرة الرموز. لكن تأويل فرويد اختزالي، لأنه يربط الرمز دائما بالدوافع الغريزية، خاصة الجنسية أو العدوانية. هذا الاختزال، في نظر ريكور، يحد من فهم الرمز، لأنه يهمل أبعاده الثقافية، الروحية، أو الوجودية.
الأحلام كميدان للتأويل
الأحلام، كما يحللها فرويد، هي نقطة مركزية للتأويل. في الفصل الثاني من الكتاب، يوضح ريكور أن الحلم ليس مجرد تعبير عن اللاوعي، بل هو نص يتطلب قراءة تأويلية. فرويد يقسم الحلم إلى محتوى ظاهر (القصة التي يرويها الحالم) ومحتوى كامن (الرغبات المكبوتة). التأويل، في هذا السياق، هو عملية كشف المحتوى الكامن من خلال تحليل الرموز.

الرمز والصراع التأويلي
يرى فرويد الرمز كتعبير عن اللاوعي، لكن هذا المنظور يتناقض مع التأويلات الأخرى، مثل التأويل الديني أو الفلسفي. في الفصل الثالث، يوضح ريكور أن الرمز يحمل معنى مزدوجا: معنى أولي (حرفي) ومعنى ثانوي (كامن). على سبيل المثال، رمز الأم قد يشير إلى شخصية حقيقية، لكنه قد يحمل أيضا دلالات أسطورية (مثل الأم الأرض) أو نفسية (مثل الأمان). هذا التعدد يخلق صراعا بين التأويلات. التأويل الفرويدي اختزالي، لأنه يربط الرمز باللاوعي، بينما التأويل الديني توسعي، لأنه يربط الرمز بالمقدس. أقترح أن هذا الصراع ليس عقبة، بل مصدر إثراء. التأويل الشامل يدمج بين الشك (كما عند فرويد) والإيمان (كما في التأويل الديني)، مما يسمح بفهم أعمق للرمز.
التأويل والذات: الذات الجريحة
يكشف فرويد عن الذات الجريحة وهي الذات المشروطة بالصراعات اللاواعية. في الفصل الرابع، يشرح ريكور أن التحليل النفسي يساعدنا على فهم هذه الجراح—مثل الشعور بالذنب، القلق، أو الاغتراب—من خلال تأويل الأعراض. لكنه يتجاوز فرويد بالتركيز على إمكانية استعادة الذات من خلال التأويل. التأويل ليس مجرد كشف عن اللاوعي، بل هو أيضا عملية إعادة بناء الذات. من خلال فهم الرموز، تستطيع الذات أن تكتشف إمكانيات جديدة للوجود. هذه الحركة من التفكيك إلى الاستعادة هي جوهر التأويل حسب ريكور.
حدود التحليل النفسي
ينتقد ريكور الاختزالية الفرويدية، التي تربط كل رمز بالدوافع الغريزية. هذا المنهج يهمل الأبعاد الثقافية والروحية للرموز. مقترحا تأويلا فينومينولوجيا يوسع منهج فرويد بالانفتاح على تعددية المعاني. التأويل الفينومينولوجي لا يرفض الشك الفرويدي، بل يدمجه في إطار أوسع يحترم البعد الروحي والثقافي. على سبيل المثال، يمكن تحليل حلم نفسيا للكشف عن رغباته الكامنة، ثم تأويله دينيا لاستعادة دلالاته الروحية.
التأويل والعالم الحي
التأويل ليس مجرد عملية نظرية، بل هو طريقة للعيش في العالم الحي وهو أفق التجربة الإنسانية، حيث تتشكل المعاني من خلال التفاعلات الثقافية والاجتماعية. يكشف فرويد، من خلال تحليله لللاوعي، عن جانب من هذا العالم—الصراعات النفسية—لكنه يهمل جوانب أخرى، مثل التجربة الروحية أو البينية. في الفصل السادس، يحاجج ريكور أن التأويل يساعدنا على فهم مكانتنا في العالم الحي. من خلال تأويل الرموز، نكتشف أنفسنا ككائنات تأويلية، نعيش في عالم مليء بالمعاني المتعددة.
التأويل كحركة مزدوجة
جوهر التأويل لدى ريكور هو الحركة المزدوجة بين الشك والإيمان. فرويد يمثل تأويل الشك، حيث يتم تفكيك الرموز للكشف عن دوافع خفية. لكن هذا الشك لا يكتمل إلا من خلال تأويل الإيمان، الذي يسعى إلى استعادة المعاني العميقة. هذه الحركة المزدوجة تجعل التأويل عملية ديناميكية.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my very favorite Ricoeur, but meeting on it for three and a half years in discussion with a psychologist, a literary theorist, historian and a others helped me understand it. Very close reading of Freud! Called by several scholars (including Richard Bernstein) the best secondary source on Freud! Don’t know if I want to read it again for at least a few months...

[jt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite dense, but helpful nonetheless, particularly regarding Freud's understanding of the role of religion throughout both individual and civilizational development.