In his book on Freud, Jonathan Lear
argues that theorists systematically misunderstand the nature of the
unconscious. In particular, psychoanalysts and philosophers model the
unconscious after a second mind with “an articulated, rationalizing structure,”
which he argues “is the wrong way to conceive of the unconscious, at least in
its deepest forms[.]”[1]
In pursuit
of this thesis, Lear recounts an event from one of Freud’s patients, Mr. R:
He is walking along a road on which
he knows his lady-friend will later be traveling in a carriage. He removes a
stone from the road so that the carriage will not be damaged. A bit later he
feels compelled to go back to replace the stone in the road.[2]
What accounts for Mr. R’s seemingly contradictory behavior?
Lear posits a “second mind” explanation wherein the act of replacing the stone
is an act of anger towards his lady-friend, flowing from “reasons . . . of
which he is unaware.” In other words, when Mr. R removed the stone it was an
act of love motivated by a set of internally-consistent reasons. Similarly,
when he replaced the stone, it was an act of hate motivated by a set of internally-consistent
reasons. The contradiction, on this “second mind” view, arises when the two
behaviors get juxtaposed together, “[f]or there doesn’t seem to be any
perspective from which this behavior [the taking and replacing of the stone] looks reasonable.”[3]
In short,
to make sense of two severable activities—those of removing and replacing the
stone—which taken together are irrational, “we must partition his [Mr. R’s]
mind into quasi-independent structures—a conscious mind and an unconscious
mind—each part having a certain rationality of its own.”[4]
Accordingly, “within each part of the
mind there is a holistic coherence; the incoherence arises when motivations
from these disparate parts clash.”[5]
This clash supplies ample reasons to posit an unconscious mind with a rational
structure that functions like “another person” with motivations all his own.
Lear,
however, rejects this Jekyll/Hyde view in favor of a brooding unconscious rife
with emotion, but wanting any rational structure. In favor of this view, Lear
introduces developmental psychology as applied to emotive life. Drawing on
examples from Mr. R’s life again, Lear notes that Mr. R would, during moments
of intense anxiety, leap from Freud’s couch, fearing that Freud would hit him as his father used to.[6]
Lear suspects that Mr. R “never developed the capacity to tolerate anxiety,
thus he does not have the capacity to let anxiety develop into more fully
formed emotions.”[7]
Mr. R’s poor tolerance, Lear further suspects, is the result of his father
repeatedly beating him as a child.[8]
Accordingly, fearing not only the rage of others—like his father—and his own
rage, Mr. R unintentionally and automatically responds like a child in the face
of fear; he recoils and runs from the good doctor.[9]
So what
exactly is going on here? “In such cases, the experience of fear inhibits the development of the capacity
to experience [mature] fear.”[10]
In short, fear becomes a stimulus inducing an automatic response to inhibit the
experience of further fear. Where is the unconscious in all of this? Lear
claims that,
Mr. R’s problem is that,
unbeknownst to himself, he has taken over this inhibiting process and made it
his own. . . . So, when he starts to feel threatened, he reacts with that
behavioral-and-emotional pattern he learned from childhood: he jumps-and-cringes-and-flees.
. . . He is deploying his own emotions to disrupt his own emotional
development.[11]
In short, Mr. R unconsciously induces “anxiety” and “fear”
because it “has some strategic value; and that
is why it has been selected.”[12]
As a strategic response, it has become a defense mechanism, used to ward off
intense emotional experiences Mr. R is unable to tolerate.
Lear
insists that “there is no easy or clear language with which to describe” what
occurs when Mr. R automatically and unintentionally leaps from the couch. That
response, “does not express a propositional attitude.” Instead, “[t]he
emotional outburst is motivated, it does flow from an emotional orientation
towards Freud, but that orientation does not have sufficient structure to count
as a reason. . . . It is the stuff from which a reason might develop—if only
emotional outbursts like this one were not themselves preventing the
development of reasons.”[13]
In other words, Mr. R’s unconscious motivates his action, but not through
internally-consistent acts, like a second-mind, but through emotively induced
behaviors.
At first
glance, this all appears muddled. However,
the following is, I believe, what Lear is saying: During childhood a
particular event disrupts the normal development of a particular emotion. The
particularly intense experience causes an emotional “tick” to form in the
child—in this case, running and fleeing. When future events induce the emotion,
the tick reemerges, suppressing further experience of the emotion that the child
cannot tolerate—somewhat like learned muscle memory responding to a stimulus. At
some point in the child’s maturation, he unconsciously takes over this “tick,”
inducing it—in this case, inducing fear and anxiety—as a strategy to ward off
further experiences of the emotions, since he never developed a tolerance to
them. Again, as Lear indicates, “[n]ow Mr. R’s problem is that, unbeknownst to
himself, he has taken over this inhibiting process and made it his own.”[14]
This view
of the unconscious appears problematic, however. First, it is unclear what
positing an unconscious taking over
of the process is adding, when the inhibiting behavior—i.e. fleeing and
cringing—already automatically manifested itself. In other words, we can save
the appearances and posit these responses as learned behaviors in response to a
given type of stimuli. The unconscious, in other words, lacks theoretical
economy, thereby succumbing to Ockham’s Razor.
Second, the
notion of willed emotions smacks of implausibility. Emotional responses are not
under our direct control. During spells of deep depression, I cannot will
happiness. Our emotive life doesn’t work that way. I can structure my life in
certain definite ways to foster certain
preferable emotions to manifest—for example, by surrounding myself with
optimistic and loving individuals, exercising, maintaining a healthy diet and
consistent sleep schedule, I can foster
a better temperament. In other words, emotions are indirectly under my control,
not directly. I cannot deploy them at will for their strategic value. And it is
not clear how attributing this magical willing of emotions to the unconscious
solves the problem.
In
the end, however, the most questionable aspect of Lear’s thesis is that it
doesn’t seem to escape the “second-mind” model. Lear may rejects that model—which views the unconscious as an internally-consistent
rational structure capable of giving reasons for acting—and introduces in its
stead an unconscious tactician-wizard. His unconscious is a tactician insofar
as it deploys emotional states because they have “some strategic value; and that is why it has been selected.”[15]
Similarly, his unconscious is a wizard insofar as it possesses powers unknown
to the conscious mind, directly
conjuring emotional states at will. So, while Lear’s proposal is fascinating and
attempts to provide a more holistic vision of the human subject, while
incorporating an unconscious, in the end, I am doubtful whether Lear’s proposal
actually eliminates the “second-mind” model. In short, we’ve returned to the
second-mind model, where the mind is a master tactician and a wizard of the
emotions.
[1]
Jonathan Lear, Freud (New York:
Routledge, 2005) 24 – 25.
[2]
Freud, Notes on a case of obsessional
neurosis, S.E. X:191 – 92 (as cited in Lear, 24).
[3]
Id., 26.
[4]
Id.
[5]
Id.
[6]
See id. 30 – 41.
[7]
Id. 33.
[8]
Id., 34 – 35.
[9]
Id.
[10]
Id. at 36.
[11]
Id.
[12]
Id. at 37.
[13]
Id., 38.
[14]
Id., 36.
[15]
Id. at 37.
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