Psychoanalysis: A Theory of the Human Subject

Ahmed Fayek

Description

When humans became conscious of their existence as objects in the world, their nature proved to be an enigma. It kept thinkers and philosophers--for centuries--busy dealing with its mystery. In all the impressive efforts made by great thinkers, there was always a missing element that prevented a full closure on its makeup. Late in the nineteenth century when Freud was experimenting with psychotherapy, he discovered and established the existence of unconscious processes that permeate the subject''s psychological life. They coexisted in every conscious and cognitive human activity and made it difficult to understand the nature of the subject as a simple entity. Freud and some talented coworkers made strides in discovering the nature of the subject. However, they did not realize that they were building a theory of the human subject. Because they were working in the field of psychotherapy and mental health, psychoanalysis was thus branded a technique of psychotherapy.This book is of the view that psychoanalysis is a theory of the human subject, which could have a psychotherapeutic facet. Few psychical features of the human subject were chosen in this book to be explained in their psychoanalytic capacity. Psychoanalysis was also discussed as an act of treating the subject, not some isolated and separate attributes of it.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Psychology

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
• Date de parution: 28 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645751526
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Psychoanalysis: A Theory of the Human Subject
Ahmed Fayek
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-02-28
Psychoanalysis: A Theory of the Human Subject About The Author Dedication Copyright Information © Preface Introduction Point of View Chapter One Functionalism and Structuralism in Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis: Learning or Training? Chapter Two Psychoanalysis: The Issue of Its Subject Matter A Brief Account of Misguided Efforts The Gradual Birth of the Subject The Subject in Philosophy The Need for a Theory of the Subject The Intrapsychic and the Subject Chapter Three The Roots of Psychoanalysis in Philosophy The Search for an Origin for Psychoanalysis A Brief Account of the Western Philosophical Movement The Cogito and the Subjects The Forerunners of Psychoanalysis Conclusion Chapter Four The Subject’s Basic Duality and Narcissism I and Me The Place of Psychoanalysis in Epistemology I, Me, and the Other The Counterpart and the Particularity of the Psychoanalytic Theory The Counterpart and the Intrapsychic Chapter Five The Psychology of the Wish The Wish as the Prototype of the Psyche Thinking in Functional and Structural Theories Dreams and Wish Fulfillment The Interpretation of Wish The Wish and Its Antithesis Chapter Six Sexuality and the Trieb (Instinct) Sex as Trieb The Libido Theory: Problem or Solution Sexuality and the Wish Chapter Seven The Duality of Life and Death A Basis for Narcissism Life and Death of Trieben and Narcissism A Brief Account of the Myth Goes Like This Back to Psychoanalysis Addendum Chapter Eight The Subject and the Unconscious The Aconscious The Puzzling Unconscious The Solution of the Puzzle Chapter Nine Reconstituting the Subject The Subject Matter of Psychoanalysis The Subject in a Structural Theory 1. I and Me Duality 2. The Manifest and the Latent Duality 3. The Conscious-Unconscious Duality Chapter Ten Psychoanalysis: A Science of the Subject The New Subject of Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis: Skill (Practice) or Science (Education)? The New Subject of Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis as a Human Science Psychoanalysis and Research Chapter Eleven Psychoanalyzing and Psychotherapy The Essentials of Psychoanalyzing Interpretation and Reconstruction The Freudian Clinical Protocol in Perspective The Conditions of Psychoanalyzing Freud’s Insight and the Issue of Training Epilogue Modern Psychoanalysis and the Issue of Training Psychoanalysis and Academia Index References
About The Author
Ahmed Fayek was an associate professor of Clinical Psychology in Cairo, Egypt, before immigrating to Canada.
His interest in psychoanalysis was a major factor in his immigration to Canada in 1971. He had an accredited training in the Montreal Institute of Psychoanalysis and became a training analyst in 1980.
He was Director of Psychology at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, before retiring in 1989.
In the last fifteen years before fully retiring, he did some consulting and supervising work in the Middle East and dedicated the rest of the time to writing and publishing.
Dedication
To Jack, Sophie, and Alex.
Copyright Information ©
Ahmed Fayek (2020)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Fayek, Ahmed
Psychoanalysis: A Theory of the Human Subject
ISBN 9781645751519 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781645751502 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645751526 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019917692
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2020)
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Preface
Early analysts and several weighty thinkers, with penchant toward psychoanalytic thinking, recognized and documented a great deal of facts about the nature of the human subject. Learning about the subject – as such – was triggered by psychoanalysis in the first place and it remained its core endeavor for several decades. However, it gradually seized to be the only source of that knowledge because of the psychoanalysts’ insistence on limiting psychoanalysis to the profession of psychotherapy, meanwhile the theory of the subject was getting expanded and enriched by contributions of other human sciences. A worrying gap opened, and is getting wider, between psychoanalysis and the facts about the subject that other equally capable authorities are gathering.
A genuine interest in this issue would reveal a major problem that is rarely addressed. Although psychoanalysts claim to be the legitimate heritor of psychoanalysis, by virtue of being its only practitioners, they did not and still do not have a defined theory of their practice. There are few recommendations about practice in the theory, and the analyst has to rely on his experience in didactic personal analysis and rare remarks usually exchanged in the rest of the training activity. However, the rest of the theory of psychoanalysis has all the elements of a theory of practice, but only if analysts notice and accept that psychoanalysis is not a theory of psychopathology but a theory of the subject as an epistemological entity. In better terms, psychoanalysis is a theory of the subject that could succumb to psychoneurotic conditions in the course of his life. When that happens, and the subject seeks psychotherapy, the therapist has to know first what the healthy condition of the subject is. Physicians have to learn the anatomy and physiology of the healthy person before they advance to the stage of medical practice. Without a theory of the subject – as a healthy being and a subject matter in his own right – psychoanalysis is a useless base for any practice of psychotherapy.
Introduction

Point of View
The IPA, since its inception in 1910, went through many crises, which were – at the beginning – mostly caused by personal conflicts among its members. The personal conflicts evolved to be considered theoretical differences. The theoretical conflicts – as expected – took the form of crises. The crises were a mixture of personal conflicts, theoretical disagreements, and some serious attempts at controlling the IPA movement. In periods in the fifties, the sixties, and in North America in the seventies too, the classical theory of psychoanalysis was ‘free for all’ to criticize and suggest modifications. Things deteriorated because the differences were not considered legitimate results in a developing science and a changing profession.
The IPA was becoming aware of the gradual disintegration of the theory of psychoanalysis. The splits within the local societies, almost everywhere, and the notion of schools of psychoanalysis which emerged in the USA in the late sixties of the last century overwhelmed the IPA. In 1989, Wallerstein – the president of the IPA in that period – suggested accepting theoretical plurality as a politically expedient solution to the impending danger of the breakup of the psychoanalytic organization. His plea was not officially accepted but was pragmatically recognized. Thus, the IPA was saved by lowering its criteria of accrediting the previous local and regional societies and made it easy for the new ones to join. The splinter societies, with their training institutes, were and still are common additions to the IPA membership, without an open scrutiny of their credibility.
In 1995, the IPA acknowledged that psychoanalysis was going through a serious crisis of credibility and that it is time to revise it (Cesio, 1995). The crisis in 1995 was different than the previous ones. It was related to a steady decline in the number of patients who sought psychoanalytic treatment, and the number of young professionals who sought training in the profession of psychoanalysis. It was also of global nature and not pertaining to particular conflicts, like the crisis of the ‘controversies’ in Great Britain in the early forties of last century (King & Steiner, 1991), or local circumstances in one region like the crisis of Lacan in France. The members of the IPA’s committee for the study of the crisis agreed that the state of the theory and training play an important role in the creation of the crisis, in addition to some external factors like social and economic changes that did not exist before in a manner that would affect psychoanalysis. However, they neither agreed on the nature of the theoretical factors and the flaws in training systems that have a role in the crisis, nor offered meaningful remedies to the situation. The leader of the committee, after reviewing the different reports prepared by different psychoanalysts from different regions of the IPA, concluded that: “A plague such as the one we psychoanalysts are facing today is a pandemia comparable to the one that descended on Thebes because of the murder of Laius, the father. And now: could it be [the crisis] the result of the murder of Freud, the father? Will we not discover, like Oedipus, that we ourselves are the murderers?” (Cesio, 1995, p. 2).
The presumed solution of accepting theoretical plurality to avoid the declining status and influence of psychoanalysis reveals a dormant problem in the discipline of psychoanalysis. Traditionally, the protection and survival of the IPA was considered the safeguard and the means to maintain psychoanalysis