ABSTRACT
Intuition is a word not frequently found in psychodynamic writings. This follows from a point of view that considers intuition an unreliable tool when trying to understand the interaction between patient and therapist. Rycroft ("The present state of Freudian psychoanalysis", in Psychoanalysis and Beyond, pp. 52-57) formulated this question in a very lucid and convincing manner:
What I am suggesting is that one of the unresolved contradictions in Freud's thinking is between psychoanalysis conceived of as a natural science—objective, detached and intellectual—and psychoanalysis conceived of as an intuitive, receptive mode of relating to others; and that awareness of this contradiction combined with failure to resolve it is part of the contemporary "malaise" of psychoanalysis. If an analyst conceives of himself as only a scientist he will apply theory to his patients and risk seeing only what he already knows. If, on the other hand, he conceives of himself as only a "freefloating attention", existing "in a state without memory or desire", as André Green recommends he should—or displaying Keatsian Negative Capability, "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts", as another analyst, Bion, has recently advocated—he risks not being able to express what he discovers in terms comprehensible to others. 32Faced with this dilemma, it is hardly surprising that some analysts cling defensively to the theoretical model Freud constructed when wearing his "natural scientist" hat, while others form coteries and sub-schools in which they pursue the implications of Freud's more muted, less publicized subjectivism.
In "Psychoanalysis and the literary imagination" (pp. 261-277 in same book), Rycroft focuses more explicitly on symbolism and the role of intuition:... the embarrassing, unscientific nature of symbolism arises from the fact that symbolic interpretations can be arrived at intuitively and, as Freud himself put it, intuition "is exempt from all criticism and consequently its findings have no claim to credibility" (Freud, S. in Standard Edition, vol. V, p. 350). Although this is a very respectable scientific opinion, it is hardly applicable to the subject of symbolism, since symbolism is a form of metaphor and, as Aristotle said, "a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars". [in Poetics, Chapter 22]
