Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 21:53:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lois Shawver <rathbone-AT-crl.com>
Subject: Lyotard and psychoanalysis





> 	Thankyou for responding....I would love to discuss Lytoard in 
> relation with Aesthetical theories or maybe even Freud, like you 
> suggested, and his thoughts on pysco-analysis....if there are any. 
> Do you know if he finds pyscho-analysis a "meaningful" endeveour??/
> omar nasim

Sorry to have taken so long to get back to you, but perhaps I can provide 
us something to work with.  I have spent some time today reading and 
summarizing a work on Aesthetics and psychoanalysis by Lyotard that 
appears in two places.  I did a close reading of:

Lyotard, J. F. (1979). The Psychoanalytic Approach.  In Dufrenne, M. (Ed.)
Main Trends in Aesthetics and the Sciences of Art.  New York: Holme and
Meir, 134-149. 

I did a casual reading of a slightly modified version of this work in:

Lyotard, J. F. (1993). The Psychoanalytic Approach to Artistic and 
Literary Expression.  In R. Harvey & M. S. Roberts (Eds.) Toward the 
Postmodern.  New Jersey: Humanities Press, 2-11.

The translator for this work is anonymous.

I want to pass my summary of this work on.  For clarity of presentation, 
I am maintaining the author's voice, but it is much shorter than his work 
and almost completely rewritten in my more American style.

Lois Shawver's summary:

With graphic arts, the art and its commentary do not belong to the same 
frame of reference.  Graphic art belongs to geographical space, whereas 
commentary belongs to verbal space.  For a literary piece, on the other 
hand, the work and its commentary both belong to the same written form.  
Nevertheless, they can be profoundly different in that the artistic work 
is more laden with 'figure'.  
 
At least three types of figure can be identified with the literary piece: 
the imagery produced for the reader, the metaphorical structure governing 
the composition of the literary work, and the organization of the 
literary work.  These three kinds of figures constitute layers of meaning.
 
And because the literary work contains such figurative layers, we might 
say that borrows its reality from other linguistic realms.  In other 
words, literature is not merely concerned with communicating 
information.  It is concerned with the creation of other worlds through a 
kind of theatricality.  The theatricality of a literary piece is what 
gives it a density of meaning that can be unpacked in a commentary.
 
A similar kind of theatrical expression is at the heart of the Freudian 
concept of repression, and perhaps of the unconscious as well.  
In the Interpretation of Dreams (1900), particularly in Chapter VI, there 
is a list of the operations that take place when what was initially a 
'text' is transformed into a 'theatrical scene' or dream sequence.  
Interpreting the dream, therefore, has much in common with a critic 
interpreting a literary work.  
 
Because a dream is a kind of artistic production, much of its meaning is 
not contained in the text of the production.  Psychoanalysis is not  
merely a matter of uncovering factual knowledge.  It is more a matter of 
unpacking the depth meaning much as one would do with a work of art.
 
To unpack depth meaning, and to locate the unconscious, Freud tracked 
down the figurative dimensions of language as he described in Jokes and 
their Relation to the Unconscious.  The figurative language that 
undergrids the joke (or the dream) is much like the language used in a 
literary piece.  This 'figure' belongs to a different realm of meaning 
than does simple informative text.
 
In this dreamlike realm, fantasy and perceptual reality interpenetrate 
each other.  It is not a fusion or blending of reality, but a layered 
reality made possible by the wish that cannot become a reality but lives 
on as a wish.
 
In spite of their similarities, it seems that this interpenetration of 
reality and fantasy is different in art than it is in the dream.  Both 
art and dream work by condensation, displacement, figuration, but the 
artist means to reveal the wish whereas the dreamer is intent on 
disguising the wish.  The artist desires to look at what is forbidden 
(e.g., death).  The dreamer wishes to enjoy it surreptitiously.  When the 
artist is neurotically burdened, the hidden layer of truth will only be 
externalized, not revealed.  Art that is not so burdened leaves the field 
free for the elusive hidden figure to leave its trace".
 
3. The psychoanalytic approach to literary criticism that we have seen 
fails to give due recognition to the artist's urge for truth.  In this 
failure, it continues in a shameful way of giving diagnoses to the 
artists of works.  Really, it is of no interest to the art if the artist 
has a mental illness.
 
On the other hand, some psychoanalytic works (M Klein, Ch. Mauren) show 
how the deep meaning of the work is exposed by the deconstruction of the 
frozen forms that disguie it.  When similar anaylses are done of art, the 
hidden exists only within the artistic work, within its content, not 
within the artist.  The criticism deconstructs the factual space to open 
up a figurative space that reveals the trace of the unconscious.
 
As Aristotle (and Freud) have taught us, art is a form of catharsis, an 
opening up of free space in which the deepest figures inside us can 
become manifest.  Psychoanalysis, like art, opens up such a space and 
allows for a new kind of meaning.  Freud's effort is concentrated on 
building up a system of knowledge.  The neurotic symptom closes off this 
hidden meaning.  But free association opens the patient up to perceiving 
the figural forms, and, similarly, the analyst's poised attention does 
the same.  In short, psychoanalysis has given us new ways to read both 
the patient and the literary work.
 
-------

commentary:  I think this work reveals a great deal of acceptance of the 
Freudian vision.  I was surprised how much acceptance, given the fact 
that Lyotard is the author who is incredulous of metanarratives and 
includes the psychoanalytic metanarrative among the list.  The major 
thrust of the article seems to be an argument for a more Lacanian, even 
Jungian (can you see the archetypes above) interpretation of Freud and 
less American simplification of psychopathology as the natural expression 
of neurotic behavior by diagnostic entities.
 
But, on the basis of my reading of this article, I would say that Lyotard
embraces a continental brand of psychoanalysis.  I hope that comment
receives some commentary by others. 

..Lois