File spoon-archives/habermas.archive/habermas_2001/habermas.0109, message 175


Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 16:22:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gary E Davis <gedavis1-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: HAB: Ken's psychoanalytic addendum



[K] In Habermas's earlier work (Towards a Theory of Communicative
Competence, 
129 and in the essay on hermeneutics and universality, 202) he makes 
explicit the correspondence between the agencies of the personality
and the 
deformations of intersubjectivity.

[G] Of course. Distorted intersubjectivity is reflected in
distortions of intrapsychic processes. Internalization of distortion.
But mapping intrapsychic processes into intersubjective processes of
norm-formation and norm-testing is not valid. It's like saying: A
maps to B, therefore B maps to A. Not valid.

[K]  He also notes, in Theory and Practice (242, 244), that the
superego is not excluded from public communication, rather, is
libidinally charged. 

[G] O, great. Because Habermas writes about the superego in 1971,
you're going to apply it to discourse-theoretical contexts without
argument in 1990 or so. 

[K] This libidinally charged superego is 
subject to rationalization, in a sense, which is indicated when
Habermas translates Freud's energetics model into a communicative
model.

[G] But rationalization of intrapsychic processes (as psychoanalysis
normally done) is not discourse-theoretical moral work. 

[K] This is further evinced in Habermas's Communication and the
Evolution of Society (70) and in TCA, II where are talks about the
integration the superego....

[G] Interest in Freud is evinced in another context where he talks?
But this isn't relevant to undertanding the intersubjective role of
identity in moral deliberations.

[KJ] ... and the I in his discussion of Mead (41-45) and where he
points out that social roles take form along the lines of the
superego (and social desires along the lines of the id) (99). 

[G] Whoa, guy. Processes of identity formation are a very different
context from representation of subjectivity in norm-testing
processes. You're all over the map. If you get to a quote from the
Mead essay, you'll find that you're exploiting Habermas's text for
your vague context.

[K] The idea ....

[G] Which idea? You're just writing, not arguing anything cogent.

[K] ...is also manifest in Habermas's Genealogical essay (4) and in
Habermas's essay "Individuation through 
Socialization" (183). Framing the question of individuation through 
socialization in psychoanalytic terms is not antithetical to
Habermas's understanding of the cognitive content of morality. 

[G] But Habermas does *not* "frame the question of individuation...in
psychoanalytic terms," and this is irrelevant to moral discourse,
while remaining no more antithetical than that identity plays into
one's deliberations on value and norm-proposal acceptability in
interaction. But discourse about identity formation is not a
framework for discourse about moral deliberation.

[K] Although Habermas does not explicitly formulate it in
psychoanalytic terms, he could have. 

[G] Well, then make arguments about what could have been done, don't
map your own interest into his text and then make claims about what
he's doing. Your burden to make sense of your own problematic is not
a basis for claims about what Habermas is doing. 

[K] More to the point, his work does require psychoanalytic
confirmation as part of its cumulative success regardless.

[G] "His work"? In total? It requires nothing of the sort.  

[K] I'd also wager that the burden, given Habermas's consistency
above and my appropriation of this consistency, does not reside on my
part to show the way in which the superego, the ideal-ego and
intersubjectivity are linked.

[G] WRONG. But you've not *indicated* any singular context of
consistency; you've found Freud relevant to several discursively
distant contexts. You've not appropriated any consistency at all. Yet
of COURSE the superego, ego ideal and intersubjectivity are linked
*for identity*. But how identity figures into *intersubjective*
processes of norm-binding deliberation and norm-testing *presumes* a
given identity formation, not a on-the-spot reconstruction of
identity-formative processes or reformation of identity (except
indirectly, in complex effects of radical interactions). 

Gary


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com


     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005