For and against psychoanalysis
Haven’t you noticed that today therapy has never been so popular? We are increasingly surrounded by friends, partners, colleagues, you name them, who are in analysis, or who, at a certain moment in their lives, decide to go to a shrink to talk about their problems. We know the motivations can be varied. Personal growth, to go over a past/toxic relationship, resolve past traumas with their parents etc. Everyone seems to join Portnoy in a collective complaint, and that is not, or is it? exclusive of a certain social class, a bourgeois fad so to speak, but it is increasingly extended to people of different social extractions. Like a mobile phone, a holiday to an exotic destination, reached through a low-cost flight, so it is your therapist. I’m not going to spend hours boring you with sociological explanations, theories or whatever can be about a capitalisation and commodification of therapy. It is hard to tell whether it’s a true necessity dictated by our lifestyles, needs or just a well-being activity like Pilates, Yoga, a ceramics course or horse-riding. You choose it. Anyway, it is because of this mass explosion that I was thinking of the reasons for and against it. It might be a pointless exercise, I know, but I found an interesting pastime somehow. That’s what I’ve come up with.
Reasons for: Popper would say that it is just a form of pseudoscience, like astrology or acupuncture. You cannot falsify any of its statements: I can’t find the right person for me, “well, that’s because of the Oedipus complex, you still have a sexual bond with your mum that blocks you”. I actually can’t stand my mum, “well, you are probably in denial, and that’s why you cannot find the right person for you if you keep hating women”. I never said that. I don’t hate women, you say. Well, maybe not all of them, surely no more than men. And you get a dry reply like, “see, you are in denial again. Are you sure about it? You said something interesting now. This thing about men could be related to your dad. We should dig deeper into it”.
All right, maybe. Maybe that’s too harsh. One reason for: it might not be scientific, all good, but no one can deny that the ideas of the Id, the unconscious, the interpretation of dreams, the libido, our slips of the tongue and transfers have significant merit in our civilisation. One can add that they are a proper watershed between the 19th and the 20th century in our history of ideas, and we keep hearing that, exactly like the Copernican revolution, evolution, they changed how we perceived ourselves in the universe, especially in relation to ourselves. Before Freud came around, it was enough to say I think, therefore I am to be sure that we were rational beings, conscious of ourselves. And then it took one guy asking questions to women lying on velvety sofas in Vienna to show that we are not so rational after all! And it is not just about the power that our genital organs exert on our lives, a proper slavery, trust me, that causes so much pain and suffering, tears and divorces. But then Jung came and said that it’s more than that! All art and religion and culture can be understood as a manifestation of the unconscious, of Platonic archetypes, of symbols through which we can interpret and find ourselves and traces of our past. Not too bad!
Anyway, before you get too excited about it, and hail our therapists as the new healers of our past traumas and broken marriages, you should not forget about the authority that we are bestowing upon them: in the past, priests were the only ones who knew everything about our secrets. It only needed a confessional and a few Our Fathers to know who was cheating on whom, the sins of unfaithful husbands and dissatisfied wives. Today we have replaced the priest with the shrink, who is inflating our extreme individualism in the name of our happiness, who has become the depositary of our misdeeds, fears, secrets and dreams.
You can object, however, that I should not be so drastic, oversuspicious and dramatic. I could hear now the voices of an array of rejuvenated patients vividly and confidently hollering from their tribunes that after all, therapy helps a lot of people overcome their problems, understand their past and other aspects of ourselves of which we were not aware before. A good chunk of them would add that it can be a healthy way of calling oneself into question, to see situations, relations with other people, our whole lives from different perspectives, and that it is not a bad thing either if it can help people to grow and become who they want to be. A nice hoard of fierce feminists saying that it can be conducive to important and better decisions for our professional careers, our jobs and our relationships, which otherwise people would never start. A fabulous tool of emancipation to empower minorities. How can you argue against that?
But then came Herzog. Yes, the film director, the one of Fitzcarraldo. I was on the couch, scrolling compulsively on Instagram to fill up the void moments of my days, which — and that’s between us — are becoming increasingly numerous, long and frequent, when I heard him thundering from the little screen that I hold in my hands that psychoanalysis is a stupid mistake, a catastrophic event of the 20th century. He said that wanting to explain every dark and little corner of our soul is a very unhealthy, dangerous and stupid thing; and that we should not do that, period. He used an analogy that struck me. He said that when you live in a house and want to explain every dark corner of it, then it becomes just uninhabitable. I was musing for a while as that got my thinking: mustn’t there be secrets that we should not reveal even to ourselves? Shouldn’t we keep something inside us as a mystery? Is this the secret lying behind any form of art and creation, behind our imagination, behind our freedom, folded in our dreams, buried in the nooks and crannies of our memory and past experiences? Do these dark corners contain the reasons that keep us curious and alive and never reconciled with ourselves because we will never be, at any rate? Can our demons be our guiding angels? What if they are the local and perennial dwellers of our abodes, our guardian spirits and our Lares, instead of uncanny and invasive intruders?
I guess one can interpret the quote as it pleases. I leave it to you. For what concerns me, whether for or against psychoanalysis, I take it as a way to admit that we should probably surrender to the fact that we’ve got to live with our contradictions no matter what, without being afraid of dark corners. They will always be there. It is just a matter of sharing spaces with our uncanny hosts.
It’s a good metaphor. Can you tell me more about it?
Who are you?
Well, I am your therapist, and this is our weekly session.
Oh, is it?
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Well, I am afraid it is. And you better come to yourself if you don’t want to be referred to a psychiatrist with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Alright, alright. I was letting it go a bit too loose.
Well, I have seen it. And I think it’s ok for today. We can keep this conversation about contradictions for next session if you don’t mind.
Why? I was making very good progress.
I hear you, but our time for this week is over.
But that’s unfair!
Well, I am afraid it is. Maybe we can talk more about your feelings of unfairness next time.
That would take me a long time.
No problem. No rush.
Everything started when I read Karl Marx for the first time. I was gripped by the idea that money converts concrete human labour into an abstract tool of control measured by time. It was an eye-opening experience!
That’s very interesting. We can start from there next week.
Thank you.
Now, how would you like to pay today?
