The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, V. 12

Essays in Honor of George Devereux

L. Bryce Boyer, Simon A. Grolnick, L. Bryce Boyer, Simon A. Grolnick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781317737087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychologie appliquée

Volume 12 includes chapters on the hermeneutics of structuralism and psychoanalysis (H. van Velzen); prophetic initiation in Israel and Judah (D. Merkur); the cult phenomenon and the paranoid process (W. Meissner); the ego and adaptation (P. Parin); male adolescent initiation rituals (L. Rosen); gender identity in a New Guinea people (E. Foulks); and the film Cabaret (S. Bauer).

1

Irma’s Rape: The Hermeneutics of Structuralism and Psychoanalysis Compared¹

H.U.E. THODEN VAN VELZEN

The relationship between structuralism and psychoanalysis has always been an uncertain one. Prominent structuralists such as Lévi-Strauss (1955, p. 37–47) and Lacan (see Kurzweil, 1980), ch. 6) have repeatedly stressed the similarities between these two approaches to the study of humankind. What Lévi-Strauss and Freud had in common was a belief in the key role of the unconscious. Both men, however, held quite different views about the nature and functioning of this agency. For Lévi-Strauss the unconscious was the product of brain physiology; for Freud, it was fathered by the body and its instincts. The unconscious of the structuralist may be compared with a “thinking machine”; the unconscious of psychoanalysis can be likened to a battlefield of warring forces, hidden deep in the psyche, sometimes betraying itself by inducing somatic changes and emitting coded messages. In Badcock’s (1975) apt phrase: “the latent content of Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism [is] a de-libidinized Freudianism, a Cartesian psychoanalysis” (p. 111). For Freud’s libido Lévi-Strauss substituted Descartes’ cogito (p. 110).

Such pronounced divergencies are bound to come into the open sooner or later. The attempt by the anthropologist Kuper and the psychiatrist Stone (1982) to restudy Freud’s (1900) specimen dream (“the dream of Irma’s injection”) reveals how irreconcilable psychoanalysis and structuralism are.

Kuper and Stone consider the structuralist approach superior to psychoanalysis, even for the study of dreams. After reopening the Irma case, the authors present a tightly knit argument purporting to demonstrate the greater analytical value of their methods over Freudian tools. “Our method,” they observe “revealed not only the structure of the dream but also its central message. Both were hidden to investigations that relied on association and symbolism” (p. 1233).

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of structuralists Kuper and Stone at work: about procedures adopted when constructing arguments and when handling empirical data. These procedures, and the results, are then compared with the work of depth psychologists. The testing ground is provided by the specimen dream of psychoanalysis, “the dream of Irma’s injection.”

THE “THINKING MACHINE” AND THE UNDERWORLD

Kuper and Stone’s position appears to be that Freudian dream analysis fails where structuralist interpretation brilliantly and unexpectedly succeeds. Before assessing these claims, let us first examine the main differences between the two approaches. Freudian dream theory is familiar ground. In psychoanalysis, dreams, like neurotic symptoms, jokes, and parapraxes (“Freudian slips”), are considered compromises between wishes striving for expression and a repressing agency, a censor or a superego. During sleep, a time of lowered vigilance, impermissible impulses may present themselves for fulfillment in the imaginatory and hallucinatory language of the dream. Daytime events, by serving as catalysts, usually decide which wishes will thrust themselves forward. To allow these forbidden longings to be expressed and fulfilled, the censor camouflages or distorts them. Once masked through the mechanisms of condensation, displacement, and representation (the dream work), the dream thoughts containing the repressed materials form the elements of a dream. Together these elements constitute the manifest dream. Free association, Freud argued, enables the dreamer to decode the elements of the manifest dream and thereby gain insight into the underlying unconscious wishes and conflicts. Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.

Structuralists also recognize a distinction between surface and underlying phenomena. They, like psychoanalysts, insist that outward appearances are often misleading. Or, in Lévi-Strauss’ (1955) words: “True reality is never the most visible one; and the nature of the real becomes transparent through the care taken to camouflage itself” (p. 44). But that is where the correspondence with psychoanalysis ends. For the structuralists, what is concealed from direct view are the principles of thinking, predetermined by the brain’s structure and physiology. Opposition and correlation characterize mental functioning. From a dynamic point of view, thinking develops according to dialectical principles moving from one point to its opposite and then again to a mediation or reconciliation that supersedes both earlier positions. In due time the synthesis thus formed will generate a new oppositionary entity (term, concept). The results of mental activity reveal numerous binary structures, levels dominated by paired terms or other forms of opposition. Each of these levels refers to other levels, its basic structure being isomorphic with oppositionary structures in other fields or on other levels. Thus, a multilayered structure emerges.²

The structuralists’ view of the psyche therefore is radically different from the one found in Freud’s writings. Structuralists do not base their understanding of the mind on a distinction between an ego as the seat of reason, and an underworld where different mental processes dominate. The principles of thinking, the structuralists’ “thinking machine,” holds full sway throughout the psyche. There is no need for the ego to be on its guard against unwelcome “volcanic” activity originating in the unconscious. Hence no lessons are to be learned from the malfunctioning of the body (symptoms) or the malfunctioning of the mind (slips of the tongue, for instance). And neither need inadmissible longings and impulses be kept from view.

Kuper and Stone have summarized their approach in the following passage:

The analysis as it is here applied to dreams proceeds on the basis of three assumptions. The first is that two concepts or terms are in conflict or opposition in the manifest content of the dream and that the manifest dream will work toward a mediation of these conflicting concepts or terms. A second or correlative assumption is that the manifest dream will follow a pattern or sequence of steps or stages working toward the mediation or solution. The third and final assumption is that the move from one stage to the next can be described as a coherent progression. In sum, the dream is a kind of argument, which proceeds from step to step by a quasi-logical dialectic [p. 1226].

When they have approached the end of their reanalysis, the authors feel justified in concluding:

The Freudian assumption is that the unconscious mind works by making associations, which are idiosyncratic in nature. We proceed on the assumption that even in dreams the mind works by applying quasi-logical rules to scenes, sentences or premises in order to proceed beyond them. This is borne out by the dream analysis, while the associations produced by Freud do not radically change our view of the dream. Thus the analysis suggests a very different conclusion about mental processes from that favored by Freud [p. 1233].

STRUCTURALIST ASSUMPTIONS

The Cognitive Perspective

The key metaphysical notion in Kuper and Stone’s work is Cartesian: People are primarily thinking creatures, with a natural tendency to follow the rules of logic. As a motto for their article, they chose Descartes’ saying: “I see light. To Dream is to think, and to think is to Dream.” The mind of the dreamer relies on the same “‘quasi-logical transformations’ and ‘logical operations’ as does the mind of the scientist, (p. 1226). Hence their insistence that the decisive processes of the mind are logical and adaptive.

The Structuralist Perspective

The key concepts that characterize the workings of the mind are structure and transformation. The structure, the conceptual framework of myth or dream, is built up of a series of oppositions: “… they always trace down to an underlying opposition of paired terms—high and low, right and left, peace and war,… (Geertz, 1973, p. 354). In the Irma dream, as we will soon learn from their reanalysis, the oppositions are between organic illness and hysterical affliction, between a patient’s responsibility and a doctor’s negligence, between catharsis and infiltration. Transformation is the other key concept. When two ideas or concepts are in conflict, the manifest dream will work toward a mediation of these oppositionary terms (Kuper and Stone, p. 1226). After mentioning their debt to Lévi-Strauss, Kuper and Stone explain the core of their method with the following words: “Myths develop in a much less arbitrary and irrational manner than had often been supposed. They follow coherent rules of development, moving in a dialectical fashion from an initial problem to a resolution…. dreams are comparable artifacts of the mind, governed by the same rules of internal development …” (p. 1225). This development, this transformation, “occurs through a distinct process of contrasts and reconciliations (p. 1229). In brief, “the dream makes a dialectical argument” (p. 1229).

A Positivistic Perspective

One expects structuralists to be on their guard against the misleading effects of outward appearances, always searching for the “hidden logic” underneath, yet there are moments in the essay when the reader feels unsure about the direction the authors take. Kuper and Stone appear to limit their attention to data that are (almost) observable, registered directly after the dream, arranged in a neat sequence and with minimum interference by the processes of introspection. They seem unconcerned about the processes of secondary revision (Nagera, 1969, pp. 88–92) that take place whenever dreamers put their confused recollections on paper. Dream analysts, they appear to say, should steer clear of the dream thoughts—the latent content of the dream—where interpreters can easily become lost in a labyrinth of idiosyncratic and subjective associations. The logic of the manifest sequence’ should be our panacea for all those who are disturbed by the dizzying and floating feelings resulting from an avalanche of personal and strongly emotional associations.

The Ordinariness of Dreams

Dreams reflect the day-to-day thinking of the dreamer. Day residues dominate the manifest content, to rephrase this point in Freudian jargon. This perspective is perhaps the most productive of all. As Schur (1966, 1972) has demonstrated, the events preceding the Irma dream influenced the dream’s manifest content. Kuper and Stone (p. 1228) convincingly show that Freud’s scientific ideas of the early 1890s return in his dreams.

THE FLIESS OPERATION

For their reinterpretation of the Irma dream, Kuper and Stone make use of two sources: Freud’s own preamble to the dream and Schur’s (1966) reconstruction of the dramatic events of the months preceding the night of the dream (July 24, 1895). As each account appears essential both for our understanding of Freud’s dream and for an assessment of Kuper and Stone’s critique, they will be related here. The occurrences revolve around Freud’s friend in Berlin, Wilhelm Fliess, and his patient (and later assistant) Emma Eckstein. This new background to the dream was given by Max Schur, Freud’s personal physician during the last 11 years of his life. For many years, Fliess, a Berlin rhinologist, was Freud’s confidant and adviser. In Schur’s words: “He was also the only one who not only believed in Freud’s theories but also took the repeated changes of Freud’s tentative formulations for granted, encouraged any new discovery, however revolutionary, and provided Freud’s only ‘audience,’ his only protection from isolation” (p. 70). During 1894, severe cardiac distress led Freud to turn to Fliess for support and treatment. Around this time, the friendship between the two men deepened. Freud came to put Fliess in an exalted position. He idolized him, addressing him in letters, for example, as “Dear Magician.” In 1950, a selection from Freud’s letters to Fliess (the letters Fliess wrote in return are lost, probably destroyed by Freud) was published under the title The Origins of Psychoanalysis (Bonaparte, Freud, & Kris, 1954). The correspondence covers the period between 1887, shortly after they first met, and 1902, the year of their final breakup.

When in the early 1960s Schur was working on a paper about Freud’s death fears, he received permission to read all of Freud’s letters to Fliess that had been preserved. Schur (1966) discovered that the editors of The Origins had excluded valuable material from publication. Schur devoted special attention to a number of letters dealing with the fate of Emma Eckstein, Freud’s patient whom he had handed over to Fliess for a nasal operation (probably on one of her sinuses). The operation was performed in February 1895 in Vienna. Fliess returned to Berlin a few days later. As a result of gross negligence on Fliess’ part, complications arose that nearly killed Eckstein. Schur’s paper strongly suggests⁴ that the Irma of Freud’s dream is Emma Eckstein and that these dramatic events influenced the manifest contents of the dream. As we will soon see, little of this is to be found in Freud’s own preamble to the Irma dream or in the dream report itself. It seems that Freud had constructed his analysis in such a way that Fliess, to whom he sent drafts and proofs of all chapters of The Interpretation of Dreams, could not take umbrage. This meant that Freud had to delete almost anything that could link the Irma dream with the Emma episode.

Freud’s (1900) preamble to the Irma dream reads as follows:

During the summer of 1895 I had been giving psychoanalytic treatment to a young lady who was on very friendly terms with me and my family. It will be readily understood that a mixed relationship such as this may be a source of many disturbed feelings in a physician and particularly in a psychotherapist. While the physician’s personal interest is greater, his authority is less; any failure would bri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Editors
• Contributors
• Contents
• George Devereux: In Memoriam
• 1. Irma’s Rape: The Hermeneutics of Structuralism and Psychoanalysis Compared
• 2. Prophetic Initiation in Israel and Judah
• 3. The Cult Phenomenon and the Paranoid Process
• 4. The Ego and the Mechanism of Adaptation
• 5. Male Adolescent Initiation Rituals: Whiting’s Hypothesis Revisited
• 6. The Bimin-Kuskusmin: A Discussion of Fitz John Porter Poole’s Ethnographic Observations of Gender Identity Formation in a New Guinea People
• 7. Cultural History and the Film Cabaret: A Study in Psychoanalytic Criticism
• Author Index
• Subject Index