There’s Nothing Suspicious about Freud

Abstract

Trends in the philosophical reception of Freud’s work often tend to characterize his method of interpretation, in one way or another, as a hermeneutics of suspicion. According to such characterizations, psychoanalysis becomes a project of deciphering the hidden, unconscious meaning beyond, behind, or beneath our conscious thoughts and actions. As such, interpretation amounts to translating the truth of the unconscious to consciousness, thereby expanding the field of consciousness itself. However, throughout his career, Jean Laplanche continuously combatted such hermeneutic understandings of psychoanalysis both within and without the psychoanalytic clinic. The stakes of his struggle against hermeneutics were high; at stake were both the fundamental and revolutionary method of interpretation essential to the practice of psychoanalysis and the status of the unconscious in it. For Laplanche, the fundamental method guiding psychoanalysis should be understood as an anti-hermeneutic method of interpretation, which works in the service of de-translating the analysand’s free associations to allow the unconscious to speak.

Keywords:

• Jean Laplanche Keyword: Jean Laplanche
• method Keyword: method
• interpretation Keyword: interpretation
• Hermeneutics Keyword: Hermeneutics
• Philosophy Keyword: Philosophy

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Rights: In Copyright