Search

This paper explores an open frontier between psychoanalysis and critical theory, the relations between subjective experience and collective history. Its drive is a concern with the question of freedom: How might contemporary psychoanalysis help us think about freedom? How could it, as a practice, help us to be free? On the theoretical level, the paper follows the critique of psychoanalysis offered by Foucault and Adorno, particularly the latter's close reading Ferenczi in Negative Dialectics and his notion of 'the spell.' I employ their critique in order to articulate the dilemma psychoanalysis faces vis-a-vis the notion of freedom in social context. I argue that, unlike traditional psychoanalytic discourse, relational psychoanalysis can address this dilemma in a generative way. I find this prospect in the readiness of relational psychoanalysis to realize the potential inherent in the psychoanalytic setting: the creation of a mutually constituted intersubjective space. I tell the story of a young woman for whom love seems impossible, and of a psychoanalytic expedition that finds her ability to love being held hostage. I suggest that what appears in one register as gender and sexual trouble appears in another as a dilemma of attachments and loyalties: my patient's ability to love is spellbound, trapped in a subjective-collective no man's land between her desire to be for herself and the unconscious demands of collective heritage. I argue that for psychoanalysis to be a practice of freedom, it must address the ways in which subjective experience answers to social forces and collective history. I question in this context the relations between freedom, guilt, and responsibility. Re-engaging Adorno, I agree that selfhood may always involve a guilty betrayal of others but argue against him that we must allow this guilt to be reconciled with living. I suggest, in conclusion, that theory is the bearer of collective responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My reply to the commentaries first addresses the question of the relations between psychoanalytic theory and practice. Drawing on the ancient Greek concept of theoria, I expand on this question by evoking a third register, that of psychoanalysis as a collective that theorizes and practices in a particular socio-historical context. I argue for a view of psychoanalysis as a collective residing at the intersection of general discourse, social power, and subjectivity, a position that should be consciously considered as part of its ethos and its ethics. I examine in this context Stern's notion of clinical philosophy and the potential for a variety of dialogues between clinical psychoanalysis and critical theory. I look at the unique possibilities offered in this domain by relational psychoanalysis, and argue that mining these possibilities may require that we explore new kinds of theoretical narrative. Looking at the history of the psychoanalytic theoria, I raise the question of theoretical and clinical activism. Given its discursive and social position, what is the responsibility of psychoanalysis vis-a-vis individuals and societies? How might it address what Kafka refers to as collecting and uncollecting? I conclude in turning to psychoanalysis' own collective trauma, the destruction during World War II of its German-speaking centers, and the theoretical-political shifts that followed, as its central European pioneers became exiles in the now dominant centers of the United States and the United Kingdom. I suggest that our collective trauma might hold some clues for our contemporary limitations, and potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that social and historical forces play an unconscious yet decisive role in our lives. Telling the story of a conversation between Israeli parents about the prospect of their children becoming soldiers, and of an analytic relationship between two Israelis, the paper aims to bring to light a hidden balance of power between family bonds and collective attachments. The paper uses ideas developed by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari in the field of critical theory to examine the ways in which families function as social agents, that is, as socializing institutions. It suggests that, as a result, in some situations, families may face a conflict of identifications, a dilemma between responsibility to kin and responsibility to the collective. If the dilemma commonly persists unheeded, it becomes painfully evident in extreme situations. Such is the case when parents are asked to allow their children to become soldiers, or when individuals strive to care for themselves against a binding ethics of communal and intergenerational responsibility. The paper examines the effect of the collective trauma underlying the dominant discourse of the Israeli society, and the hypercollectivity of the Israeli Kibbutz, in generating powerful unconscious conflicts that haunt subjective and family life. The paper argues that collective affiliations and consequently, collective politics are inseparable from individual psychology and interpersonal relations. It suggests that, for this reason, political awareness and political exchange can play a crucial, liberating role in the therapeutic relationship, and life in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]