Borch-Jacobsen, M., The Freudian Subject, tr. Catherine Porter, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. —— Lacan, The Absolute Master, tr. Douglas Brick, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. —— The Emotional Tie: Psychoanalysis, Mimesis, Affect, tr. Douglas Brick et al., Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. * * *

doi:10.4324/9780203049129-13

Chapter

Borch-Jacobsen, M., The Freudian Subject, tr. Catherine Porter, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. —— Lacan, The Absolute Master, tr. Douglas Brick, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. —— The Emotional Tie: Psychoanalysis, Mimesis, Affect, tr. Douglas Brick et al., Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. * * *

Chapter

ABSTRACT

Does psychoanalysis have anything to do with philosophy? As is well known, Freud answered this question with a serene “no”. In the “Ego and the Id” he says that philosophers are simply incapable of understanding the idea of a psychical unconscious; and he continues:

Here we have the first shibboleth of psycho-analysis. To most people who have been educated in philosophy the idea of anything psychical which is not also conscious is so inconceivable that it seems to them absurd and refutable simply by logic. I believe this is only because they have never studied the relevant phenomena of hypnosis and dreams, which…necessitate this view. Their psychology of consciousness is incapable of solving the problems of dreams and hypnosis.1