Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 18:45:30 +0200 (EET)
From: j laari <jlaari-AT-cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: M-TH: happy new year! /re:movement/psychoanalysis


Carrol,

you may want to take a look at Donald Levy's "Freud among the
philosophers: the psychoanalytic unconscious and its philosophical
critics" (Yale UP 1996). It's a clear and short (189 pages) analysis,
obviously for U.S. audience, concerning the unconscious. 

He goes through the central critiques of Freud, as he calls them, by
Wittgenstein, James, MacIntyre, and Gruenbaum, and shows where and how
they have misinterpreted Freud's theory. Showing the errors of
interpretations neutralize the criticisms, Levy thinks.  However, he
does not think that this means positive justification of Freudian
theory - philosophical analysis has its limits. Levy thinks that
psychoanalytic theory has given something new and "original",
something that no one else in modern thinking has been able to give: 
"The project of 'unfolding' individual subjectivity is one that
psychoanalysis can claim to have advanced in a specific way." 

Whatever Freud's shortcomings, he really managed to open a fruitful
perspective into human subjectivity and agency beyond reified,
atheoretical "social science". 

Happy new year for everyone!

Jukka L



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