ABSTRACT
The distinctive feature of psychoanalytic discourse as the method of perpetually listening, opening and changing through free-associative speaking is introduced as the radical dimension of Freud’s discipline that works and plays against the stultifying and compulsively repetitious modes of interpretation that imprison us. This emphasis on method-as-praxis implies that psychoanalysis is foremost to be appreciated not as a set of theoretical models that guide interpretation, nor as a technique directed to achieve the therapeutic goals of personal adaptation and maturation. Rather, it is argued that the psychoanalytic pursuit of freedom and truthfulness takes this discipline beyond the coordinates and limitations of therapy. In this context, a history and critique of psychotherapy is presented, focusing on the ideology of its inherently conservative sociopolitical underpinnings. The values of self-expression that define the humanistic orientation of many modes of psychotherapy are then called into question. The complicity of self-expression and interpretation is inescapable, such that procedures of narrating or performing ‘one’s own story’ of ‘self’ actually shortchange patients by keeping them ideologically entrapped. Thus, psychoanalysis as a scientific venture of healing must go beyond the mandate of psychotherapy.
