Wittgenstein Reads Freud: The Myth of the Unconscious

by Jacques Bouveresse, Vincent Descombes (Foreword), Carol Cosman (Translator)

Did Freud present a scientific hypothesis about the unconscious, as he always maintained and as many of his disciples keep repeating? This question has long prompted debates concerning the legitimacy and usefulness of psychoanalysis, and it is of utmost importance to Lacanian analysts, whose main project has been to stress Freud's scientific grounding. Here Jacques Bouveresse, a noted authority on Ludwig Wittgenstein, contributes to the debate by turning to this Austrian-born philosopher and contemporary of Freud for a candid assessment of the early issues surrounding psychoanalysis. Wittgenstein, who himself had delivered a devastating critique of traditional philosophy, sympathetically pondered Freud's claim to have produced a scientific theory in proposing a new model of the human psyche. What Wittgenstein recognized--and what Bouveresse so eloquently stresses for today's reader--is that psychoanalysis does not aim to produce a change limited to the intellect but rather seeks to provoke an authentic change of human attitudes. The beauty behind the theory of the unconscious for Wittgenstein is that it breaks away from scientific, causal explanations to offer new forms of thinking and speaking, or rather, a new mythology.


Offering a critical view of all the texts in which Wittgenstein mentions Freud, Bouveresse immerses us in the intellectual climate of Vienna in the early part of the twentieth century. Although we come to see why Wittgenstein did not view psychoanalysis as a science proper, we are nonetheless made to feel the philosopher's sense of wonder and respect for the cultural task Freud took on as he found new ways meaningfully to discuss human concerns. Intertwined in this story of Wittgenstein's grappling with the theory of the unconscious is the story of how he came to question the authority of science and of philosophy itself. While aiming primarily at the clarification of Wittgenstein's opinion of Freud, Bouveresse's book can be read as a challenge to the French psychoanalytic school of Lacan and as a provocative commentary on cultural authority.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Nonfiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Élève de l'École normale supérieure Ulm (1961-1966)

Agrégation de philosophie (1965)

Doctorat d'État en philosophie à l'Université Paris I) (1975)

Assistant, puis maître-assistant, à la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de Paris, puis à l'Université Paris I (1966-1971)

Attaché de recherche, puis chargé de recherches au CNRS (1971-1975)

Maître-assistant, puis maître de conférences, puis professeur à l'Université Paris I (1975-1979)

Professeur extraordinaire, puis ordinaire, au département de philosophie de l'université de Genève, chargé de l'enseignement de la philosophie analytique (1979-1983)

Professeur à l'Université Paris I et professeur associé à l'université de Genève (1983-1992)

Directeur de l'Unité de Recherches associée au CNRS, UA 1079 (Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences) (1985-1988)

Professeur à l'Université Paris I (1992-1995)

Professeur au Collège de France (1995-2010)

Reviews

[Sophie Rivara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so lucky to know Jacques. He was my dad's best friend. I believe him to be one of the most brilliant yet humble philosophers of his time.

[Paul Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book - it was totally not what I expected! Jacques Bouveresse is clearly close to the Anglo-American philosophical tradition and this essay offers an excellent scholarly discussion of what Wittgenstein said about Freud and how a variety of philosophers have understood this. His reading of Wittgenstein seems pretty good to me, but it is strange that Bouveresse seems to recognise that Wittgenstein undermines the basic picture of the mind that Freud starts from, but Bouveresse doesn't seem very interested in exploring or building on this point. As with most Wittgensteinians (and perhaps more understandably for a French philosopher!), he does not seem very sympathetic to Freud. Unlike Heaton, he is not out to attack Freud, but it is not clear what if any merit he sees in Freud. In a way, I suppose that is fair enough, since it is not obvious what Wittgenstein liked in Freud :-)

[Kevin K · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most balanced critique of Freud I've read so far. Some highlights:

1. Wittgenstein sees psychoanalysis as both important and mistaken
Very refreshing. Some anti-Freud partisans dismiss Freud completely because psychoanalysis is a pseudo-science and ineffective therapy. Wittgenstein agrees Freud is a pseudo-scientist. However, he concedes the great fascination and cultural cachet of psychoanalysis and tries to explain it.

2. The unconscious and mind-reading
Does the unconscious mind exist? Modern cognitive psychologists sometimes claim Freud has been vindicated because a great deal of mental activity is unconscious (automatic). This is a case of Motte and Bailey; automatic processes (like breathing, or riding a bike) have nothing to do with the Freudian unconscious. Freud's unconscious exists only when memories, motives, or desires have been repressed. Bouveresse captures the notion well:

"Unconscious processes, in the strictly Freudian sense of the term, are not only processes which the conscious mind does not perceive at the moment they are taking place, but processes which it cannot perceive because something is preventing it. These are not only unknown processes but processes the subject "does not want to know," and they can succeed in making themselves known only indirectly and in a disguised form that renders them more or less unrecognizable."

Freud's unvarying schtick is to excavate the repressed material, and thereby tell us what things "really mean."

A classic case is Freud's patient "Wolf Man" (Sergei Pankejeff). Pankejeff suffered from depression and other nervous symptoms, and when analyzed by Freud, recounted a childhood nightmare:

"The night before his 4th birthday, Pankejeff dreamed that he was lying in bed when all of a sudden the window swung open. Peering out, he saw six or seven white wolves sitting in the tree outside his bedroom, their eyes fixed on him. Terrified by their gaze, he woke up screaming."

Freud's conclusion:

"[...] the dream [...] was the result of Pankejeff having witnessed a "primal scene" — his parents having sex a tergo or more ferarum ("from behind" or "doggy style") — at a very young age. Later in the paper, Freud posited the possibility that Pankejeff instead had witnessed copulation between animals, which was displaced to his parents."

A wolf dream indicates trauma: seeing your parents doing it doggy style. Get it? Wolf → Dog → Doggy style. LOL!

To license this dubious mind-reading Freud posits the unconscious—a mysterious place inside the subject he can pull his fanciful theories out of. The subject has no access to this place, hence the need for a psychoanalyst. "Psychoanalytic technique—and it alone—can triumph over resistance and bring to consciousness ideas that resistance has previously made inaccessible."

How does Freud know, scientifically, that his explanations are correct? Well, he regards his theories as proven when the subject agrees with "an inner conviction based on [...] lived experience." Wittgenstein sees this as unscientific because (among other things) science investigates causes, and causes are blind. Your stomach hurts due to an ulcer and your agreement/disagreement with the diagnosis is irrelevant.

Sometimes the patient disagrees with Freud:

"Mr. Pankejeff saw Freud's interpretation of his dream as 'terribly far-fetched.' Mr. Pankejeff said, 'The whole thing is improbable,' since in families of his milieu young children slept in their nanny's bedroom, not with their parents."

Does this disprove Freud's mind-reading? Ha ha, don't be silly:

"In answer to the objection that the subject constitutes the final authority when she agrees with the psychoanalyst’s reconstruction but doesn’t count when she expresses her disagreement, Freud himself proposes the analogy of the judge who treats the accused man's confession as definitive proof of criminality but does not feel compelled to accept his pleas of innocence."

The specific nature of the unconscious is not that important (Wittgenstein regards it as just a manner of speaking). What matters is that it licenses a psychoanalyst to tell you, in a pseudo-scientific framing, what your hidden motives, real beliefs, and repressed memories are, even in the face of your denials. Vindicating the Freudian unconscious amounts to recognizing the legitimacy of this mind-reading ploy.

3. Why does this process have charm?
Wittgenstein believes Freud's explanations

"have nothing in their favor except the fact that they correspond to a way of thinking which, when proposed to us, seems extremely natural and easily accepted."

They provide a new mythology that people find very attractive:

"Freud refers to various ancient myths in these connexions, and claims that his researches have now explained how it came about that anybody should think or propound a myth of that sort. Whereas in fact Freud has done something different. He has not given a scientific explanation of the ancient myth. What he has done is to propound a new myth. The attractiveness of the suggestion, for instance, that all anxiety is a repetition of the anxiety of the birth trauma, is just the attractiveness of mythology. “It is all the outcome of something that happened long ago.” Almost like referring to a totem.
Much the same could be said of the notion of an "Urszene." This often has the attractiveness of giving a sort of tragic pattern to one’s life. It is all the repetition of the same pattern which was settled long ago. Like a tragic figure carrying out the decrees under which the fates had placed him at birth. Many people have, at some period, serious trouble in their lives—so serious as to lead to thoughts of suicide. This is likely to appear to one as something nasty, as a situation which is too foul to be a subject of a tragedy. And it may then be an immense relief if it can be shown that one’s life has the pattern rather of a tragedy—the tragic working out and repetition of a pattern which was determined by the primal scene."

4. The superstitious, magical side of Freud
Superstitious, magical peoples don't believe in coincidences. William S. Burroughs:

"In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. [...] I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it's for a reason. Among primitive people they say that if someone was bitten by a snake he was murdered. I believe that."

Despite his self-image as a hard-nosed scientist, Freud viewed the mental world in just this way: there are no accidents in the mind. He indignantly rejects the idea that mental processes might be random: "Do you want to say, gentlemen, that changes in mental phenomena are guided by chance?" Dreams have no meaningless elements. There's no such thing as a random, arbitrary act, or a meaningless slip. "In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, for example, Freud claims that it is impossible for a number (or a proper name) to be chosen at random." Freud's attitude in this regard is akin to paranoia, a monomaniacal drive to explain the hidden meaning of everything.

Regarding this attitude,

"Wittgenstein suggests that [it] might be ultimately closer to superstition than to the rational approach that Freud’s discoveries were to have made possible. Freud does succeed in giving the impression that the only choice is either to accept his way of seeing or to resign oneself to ignorance or incomprehension, pure and simple, something no rational being can accept."

Freud here is like a primitive aghast that there is no reason (i.e., supernatural reason) behind the recent catastrophic flood. How could a rational being accept that the flood happened for no reason? It's paradoxical because Freud sees this attitude as the epitome of science: everything must have a reason!

[Chris]

I really enjoyed this book. The author is French and it's definitely written with Lacan as a major reference point for what exactly psychoanalysis is. I wish I'd read Cioffi's Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazer first, as it's an earlier work that is referenced a fair amount and was added to the reading pile at the same time as this book. I finished this a few weeks ago, and Wittgenstein's criticism of Freud for confusing causes with reasons and Wittgenstein's claim that the unconscious is a "manner of speaking" rather than something that actually meaningfully exists have stuck with me, and I imagine I'll continue thinking about those for quite a while to come. Also the claim that what Freud was doing in his dream interpretation was closer to very clever art criticism than to anything resembling science is something that really struck me. If someone is interested in both of these figures and is wondering whether Wittgenstein ever had anything to say about Freud (he did!), I would definitely recommend this book. It's also great for providing a mostly contemporary critique of Freudian psychoanalysis as non-science that is not coming from the positivist Popperian falsifiability angle.

[Brey Laude · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an elegant critique of Freud. I don't agree with it.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Multiple shiv-thrusts into the major organs of Freud's body of work....

[Mick Maurer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend first reading, ‘Wittgenstein Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief’ and ‘Culture and Value’.

[Adam Paradis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was boring.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

So fun and creative to read!