Contemporary Psychoanalytic Foundations

Postmodernism, Complexity, and Neuroscience

Mark Leffert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781135468590
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Past scholars have tried to classify psychoanalysis as an intrinsically positivist science, with varying degrees of success. Their critics have fared little better with narrow applications of postmodern thought, which focus on smaller areas within psychoanalysis and, as a result, neglect the evolution of the discipline as a whole.

In an effort to provide a ground for current psychoanalytic thought, Mark Leffert creates an interreferential schema which balances the influences of postmodernism, complexity theory, and neuroscience as its key factors. Using the heterogeneity of postmodern thought as a starting point, he traces its impact on and implications for the development of the discipline, leading into the realm of complexity theory – which is relatively new to the psychoanalytic literature – and how it informs as well as constrains certain psychoanalytic assumptions. The book then turns to neuroscience, the "hard" scientific study of the complexities of the brain, and how recent research informs psychoanalytic theory and may shed light on aspects of memory, the conscious, and the unconscious. Taken together, these three elements create a firm basis for the current trends in psychoanalysis and the direction of its development in the years to come.

1

Postmodernism and Its Impact on Psychoanalysis

Introduction

A shift in the thrust of human discourse, from the modern toward the postmodern, has taken place over the past century. In keeping with the usual reactions to changes arising in psychoanalytic theory, the shift has been embraced or accepted by some, misunderstood by others, and rejected by still others. Unfortunately, many contemporary or more eclectic psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who might indeed find in postmodernism a useful addition to their work have dismissed it because of its relative inaccessibility. A recent collection of articles on the subject is entitled, fittingly, Bringing the Plague (Fairfield, Layton, & Stack, 2002a). The title embodies the degree of conflict and anxiety engendered by such change. This first chapter is both a survey of and a status report on postmodernism’s impact on psychoanalysis and its conflicts with modernism.

It is not that too little has been written concerning postmodernism in the psychoanalytic literature; rather, the considerable body of work that has been written has been misinterpreted or misunderstood. Elliot and Spezzano (1996) see a twofold origin of this problem. First, analytic critics of postmodernism treat postmodernism as another monotheory, another metapsychology, creating a choice between modernism and a unified postmodernism. Second, they observe the conflict between modernism and postmodernism as a new kind of conflict in the history of our already contentious discipline. An additional problem is the tendency of psychoanalytic critics to equate postmodernism with radical relativism, its most extreme incarnation.

We have three goals here, the first of which is to explore the heterogeneity of postmodern thought and its application to contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. A report of a panel of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), “Have We Changed Our View of the Unconscious?” (Dunn, 2003), describes each of its six participants as representing a particular analytic orientation, including a modern classical analyst, a modern Kleinian analyst, a self psychologist, a Jungian, an interpersonal analyst, and a final participant whose orientation was not labeled. No panelist was characterized as having a theoretical orientation informed by postmodern thought. The aim of the panel was stated as “clarifying the common and divergent ground underlying different theories … [to] enrich and expand psychoanalytic discourse and theory building” (p. 942).

In a similar vein, the requirements for graduation of at least one large institute of APsaA include the ability to formulate a case from two different theoretical perspectives. This and the panel’s aim are both well-meant endeavors. They involve some spirit of ecumenism that is a refreshing contrast to the internecine theoretical warfare that has plagued psychoanalysis. Certain questions must be asked, however, about the panel, the requirement, and any similar activities. What are the implications for psychoanalysis of different theories, each of which claim unique standing, each with loyal adherents and critics? What standing or privilege can such theories have or claim? What is involved in trying to award equal standing to all of them? A large group of analysts resides somewhere in the middle. What, or where, is this “middle”? How is it attained, and what standing can it claim? Our second goal of this chapter is to address these questions.

The third goal is to examine questions related to the postmodern realm. What does the terrain look like? What “ground” is there to stand on? Is all connection to objective reality abandoned? What is the fate of familiar theoretical concepts, and what new ones appear or become important? In any discussion of postmodernism, the answers to such questions will be diverse.

I would first posit that postmodernism represents one component of a sounder base from which to engage the ambiguities, uncertainties, simultaneities, and pluralities of the therapeutic encounter (the other proposed components, complexity and neuroscience, are discussed in subsequent chapters). This involves, in Bergmann’s (1993) terms, at least a modification of psychoanalytic thought at the edge of heresy. The charge of heresy itself, however, goes beyond Bergmann’s metaphorical use of the term. Heresy in psychoanalysis, as in other disciplines, has ultimately been about membership in or exclusion from power franchises and how external threats to such franchises are handled, a subject of particular interest and concern to postmodern theorists.

Postmodernism and Its Heterogeneity

Elliot and Spezzano (1996) addressed the deeply heterogeneous nature of postmodern theory by developing a spectrum of postmodern positions, ranging from the conservative to the most radical.¹ They correctly observed that psychoanalytic responses to the postmodern usually do not take cognizance of this heterogeneity and either fail to locate themselves on such a spectrum or appear unaware of its implications. They identified three areas of modernist/postmodernist debate: an aesthetic debate over the nature of representation; philosophical and cultural issues of postmodernity; and the personal, cultural, and social issues found in a postmodern society. Their list is an incomplete one; it particularly omits postmodernism’s placing a priority on characterizing the nature of discourse.

McGowan (1991) further explicates this heterogeneity, observing that “within the configuration of postmodernism, two (or more) incompatible things are desirable and … different strategies are involved in the effort to think these incompatibilities together” (p. 89). Other authors (e.g., Leary, 2002) maintained that postmodernism is not really even a theory in its own right, but “rather … involve[s] critiques that are meant to destabilize existing constructs” (p. 227). While this is certainly true of some deconstructionist postmodern discourse, it is equally true that postmodernism also involves fundamental statements about the nature and knowability of the human world that make it a body of theory in its own right. It is not simply an appendage to literary or critical thought. It is also not accurate to say that postmodernism operates critically only in a negative or detracting sense. McGowan discusses the positive rather than the negative critical goals of postmodernism, as, for example, increasing the level of freedom with which events of any kind can be approached, making a place for the emergence of new knowledges, something not at all dissimilar to what we clinically seek to accomplish as psychoanalysts. Latour (1991/1993) describes this as “constructive deconstruction.” Perhaps a working definition of postmodernism would be useful at this point. Postmodernism represents a method of discourse and inquiry that concerns itself with issues of knowledge and of being (epistemology and ontology).

Heterogeneity aside, there are issues endemic to postmodern texts that make them especially difficult to understand. Postmodern writing is often intentionally lengthy and obscure and at times actually seems to strive for an opacity and a lack of clarity. This is particularly true for the work of French postmoderns. Their reasons for these textual choices is to prioritize the reading over the text and encourage multiple interpretations. Derrida (1972/1984), for example, does this on occasion by having multiple columns of different texts on the same page and making use of humor or ridicule (tympaniser) as a tool of critique. There is, almost by definition, an essential absence of rules or signposts. They involve issues of ambiguity and uncertainty, not as problems to be tolerated until resolved but rather as an integral ongoing part of the concepts themselves. Many texts purposefully manifest a degree of unknowability consistent with the very nature of postmodernism. Postmodern authors such as Foucault and Derrida do this to allow the reader more freedom to develop personal meanings. Multiple ideas are seen to play out simultaneously rather than in sequence, while the reader naturally tends to cognitively prefer serial over parallel organizations. For psychoanalysts trying to grapple with postmodernism and its critics for the first time, analytic authors offer either too little or too much. Either postmodern concepts are not sufficiently described or, less frequently, extended discussions and citations of the postmodern literature are offered. Someone who is unfamiliar with postmodern thought is lost in either case, while to someone already working in the area these concepts are known and not very interesting.

Postmodern theory can be divided into at least four diverse but also related domains: poststructuralism, neopragmatism, neo-Marxism, and feminism, which are often fluidly combined (McGowan, 1991).² Poststructuralism involves the removal of structure, specifically the way knowledges and things are named and categorized, through deconstruction. Naming often has an agenda that determines and imposes meaning instead of signifying the named object or process. Deconstruction frees a text and allows new meanings to emerge. Poststructuralism suggests that the ability to critique such identity categories and signification is impaired by the observer’s being embedded in the structure that is being critiqued. Neopragmatism reflects a radical relativism in which deconstruction is deployed first to collapse all structure and categorization. It is then directed at the self so that it collapses as an identity category and collapses into the social matrix in which it is embedded. Neo-Marxism and studies of race, gender, and sexual identity are much concerned with issues of power relations within societies, the presence of dominated and elite groups, and their effects on identity and the self. Extreme positions in all of these areas have in turn resulted in a considerable body of critical response. These authors are not identified and do not identify themselves as modernist but rather as postmodern critics. Their work has then been subsumed under the same general umbrella of postmodernism that becomes in the process even more internally contradictory. Postmodern texts have their own complex, often arcane, strange-sounding vocabulary, some of which seems inferentially clear (when, in fact, it may not be), while much does not. Last, postmodern discourse contains at best some of the densest and, at worst, some of the most obscure philosophical texts. Secondary texts that are subject to multiple interpretations serve as necessary tools in navigating the field (McGowan provides an invaluable example).

Areas of Postmodern Thought

In trying to locate the postmodern in all of its plural, heterogeneous messiness, it is useful to think of it not as a series of ideas lying along a single axis but rather as a number of areas that a postmodern work can address. Four of the areas that are discussed here can more or less locate where a particular author or position lies. Each can be described in terms of a series of positions that move ever further away from the modern. To conceptualize them in this way involves a degree of bridging the postmodern and the modern that can also be attempted from a vantage point such as psychoanalysis. It must be acknowledged that many postmodern theorists would find such an attempt at quantification ludicrous or impossible. How can one classify or seek order in an area of thought that endeavors as one of its most basic tenets to do away with—to deconstruct—classification and order?³ Attempting to seek understanding through order is, inevitably, a modernist and structuralist undertaking and serves to highlight the often-dialectical nature of the interface between the two.

The first of these areas referred to involves the existence and relevance of the objective, the nature or existence of reality,⁴ and the possibility of a human connection to it. The modernist position is that we exist in a reality that can be accurately and reliably assessed and grasped through perception and measurement freed of bias. Moving away from this is first the position that what is out there cannot be directly engaged but can be consensually known by multiple objective observers. Still further away from the modernist stance is the position that objective assessment is impossible, that all perception is subjective, and that the reality of a situation, while relevant and important, remains inevitably at least partially unknowable. Finally, the most extreme postmodern theorists see this objective as either irrelevant or nonexistent. Reality in general and science in particular exist independently for them, entirely cut off from human experience.⁵

To illuminate this area in another way, we might look at the story of the three umpires, which I have already encountered twice in the relational postmodern literature (Greenberg, 1999; Moore, 1999). It seems that three umpires meet and discuss how they call plays. The first umpire says, “I observe the play closely, study and measure each part of it, and then am able to call it correctly.” The second umpire says, “I just follow my gut to call them as I see ‘em.” The third umpire says, “The play doesn’t exist until I call it.”

The second area involves defining or describing the nature of a text or discourse for which text is defined as any accounting or event. Again, the modernist position is that external texts exist and can be first read, then subsequently and reliably interpreted. The motivations of the author and the meaning that the author wishes to convey are potentially knowable and have standing in the problem of interpretation. Disagreements about meaning are possible between informed readers, but the goal of such disagreement is always the pursuit of a single “correct” interpretation or unifying principle. The postmodern position moves away from this to first the unknowability and ever-increasing irrelevance of the author, the replacement of a text by the reading of it, the inevitable subjectivity of its interpretation, then to the text’s irrelevance and finally to its nonexistence. For all of these positions, each reading of a text is a new interpretation and a reinterpretation of all past experience with the text that is available to the reader. The author is minimized; the interreferential reader and text are prioritized. Discourse is and should be plural. It is at first consensual, then subjective, and finally, the discourse becomes the text. Discourse goes from subjective but meaningful discussion to the deployment of language games that pretend to be, indeed insist that they are, nothing but what they are.

A third area has to do with the nature of the subject as agent of discourse and the degree to which the subject is embedded in the matrix of the social and the historical (subject references the self in postmodern discourse). Related issues pertain to the relevancy of this embedding, the identity categories of the subject, and the nature or pursuit of meaning. A modernist position would be that reliable, dispassionate, consensual inquiry frees discourse from its social and historical underpinnings. In psychoanalysis, an example of such a view would be that, although psychoanalytic practice and theory building in the United States, at least until the 1960s, was largely an undertaking of white, male physicians, this fact would have had no significant effect on the nature or results of these activities. Postmodern positions move away from this, first to the relevance of the social and historical matrix, then to the inseparability of subject from matrix and finally to the nonexistence of the subject as discreet from the matrix after its identity categories have been deconstructed. Such categories include race, gender, class, and sexual identity, usually linked to aspects of power. Postmodern critical studies in these last areas fall short of the extreme radical relativism in which the self is completely deconstructed and disappears into its social matrix.

A fourth and final consideration has to do with the role of structure, the existence or relevance of unifying principles of meaning in understanding a text. Such principles are metanarratives. In the modern world, we learn or are taught metanarratives as ways of navigating and locating meaning. Postmodern critiques focus not on what is understood, but rather on what is excluded or left out as a result of deploying such overarching concepts. These critical responses range from a loosening of metanarratives from the subject or text to free or increase their meaning, to their total destruction that some authors deem necessary as the price of textual freedom.

All of these areas are ultimately concerned with postmodern responses to questions of meaning, ranging from attempts to grapple with it, to regarding it as infinitely plural, individual, and irreproducible, created new each time. Similarly, dealing with questions of meaning does, does not, or can require dealing also with all prior discourse on a particular subject. Most extremely, meaning is seen as a hopeless prisoner of language, described as a surface with nothing underneath it.

Deconstruction and Différance

At this point, the term deconstruction requires some explication. On a surface level, it refers to any operation that takes apart a text, breaking it into pieces. While some postmoderns employ deconstruction critically to shatter or disperse meaning and context, others deploy it “constructively” and preservatively to enhance and add to both. This latter usage has much more of a role in psychoanalysis. An immediate goal of this form of deconstruction is to be able to observe what has been added or lost by co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Postmodernism and Its Impact on Psychoanalysis
• 2. Modern and Postmodern Trends in Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Integration
• 3. Complexity and Postmodernism in Contemporary Theory of Therapeutic Change
• 4. Neuroscience, August 2007: Memory, Mind, and Psychoanalysis
• 5. Unconsciousness: The Unconscious and the Not-Conscious
• 6. Consciousness and the Self
• 7. Power and Politics in American Psychoanalysis
• 8. Not in Kansas Anymore
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index