Welcome to the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. The lecture you are about to listen to was created by Associate Professor Doris McIlwain. This course has been made publicly available, but was recorded for a live student audience. Please enjoy. Lecture 1. An Introduction to Psychoanalysis. One of the things that I find difficult about the way that psychoanalysis is viewed in the sort of public sphere is that people often say it's unfalsifiable and it's wrong, which is a bit strange. Because if something's unfalsifiable, you really can't say it's wrong, because there's no way of proving one way or the other. People often see it as unscientific, as outdated, as sort of assuming that there are what's called flush toilets in the nervous systems, as a sort of catharsis method. People often picture it as a therapy, but are perhaps less likely to pick up on it as a philosophy of mind or as a theory of action. So it's lovely that there was both the therapeutic, which I'm deeply interested in, and the sort of theory of mind, which I'm also deeply interested in. Some people also see it as a cultural critique, which I think in part it is. It really is a basis for looking at the sort of pressures and impositions and expectations that our culture places on us, like what the conception of a good woman or a good man is, are things that we tacitly live our lives trying to live up to. It can also be seen as quite anti-religion, which it is, I'm afraid. Freud really doesn't see much place for religion in an enlightened society. He sees religion as a sort of an obsessional neurosis of the masses, basically. So he's really quite an outspoken critic of religious beliefs, which is really fascinating. And some people sort of see it as a worldview. Now, one of the things that I think is really interesting about psychoanalysis is there's this assumption that the people who practice it or the people who understand it should perhaps be wise or less neurotic or less likely to have schisms and splits and intellectual fights and things like that. And the briefest glance at the history of psychoanalysis will tell you that is not true. Some of the most vicious intellectual wars I've ever seen in my life have been going on in the pages of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. When psychoanalysts fight, oh God, fur flies. It really flies. And sometimes, you know, they agree about just about everything. Yes, there are unconscious determinants of behavior. Yes, we've got a multiplicity of drives. Yes, the self is not a unitary thing. But you assume X, this tiny little thing, and that's the war is on. And Freud called that the narcissism of small differences. And you see it, you know. They joke that in academia, the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so low. And it's a bit like that in psychoanalysis, I think. But what can psychoanalysis teach us? Well, I'm actually just going to sort of chat to you now about the things that I find psychoanalysis really useful for. And, you know, in philosophy and in early psychology, like the days of Wundt in his laboratory in Germany, he's one of the earliest psychologists, the whole project was to introspect. You know, what goes on in my mind when I'm seeing an apple? Do you know? And so what psychoanalysis teaches us is that introspection, just the simple looking inside, isn't necessarily going to give you the full story. Because some of the processes that are powerfully shaping your thoughts and your behavior are unconscious processes. And so what psychoanalysis teaches us is that in some ways we are strangers to ourselves. There are things going on within us and we know nothing of them, which is a very strange kind of realization. And Freud is often sort of, you know, in the same breath as Copernicus. Copernicus taught us that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth. And Freud says, and you're not even in control of your own mind and you can't even fully know your own mind. But what I love about psychoanalysis is it says nothing is irrelevant. Just nothing is irrelevant to our theory. Often when you first see a client on the first meeting with them, they'll talk nonstop. And at the end of it, there'll be this moment of shame where they'll go, gosh, I've just been off on tangents. Just been on tangents. And I always say, there is no such thing as a tangent. There is just no such thing. Do you know? Because part of what reveals another person to you is the links between their thoughts. Like what makes them move from one thought to another? What's associated for them? It might seem unusual to me, but I assume it's got meaning and significance and it's telling me something. Like if I ask them about, you know, what they'd like to change about themselves and in the next breath, they're talking about their father and how he was a real perfectionist. Okay, I'm not going to see that as random. I'm going to go, okay, the father had some ideals that are relevant to how well that person views themselves as a good person. You know, and the fact that the two things are juxtaposed as one thing follows another in their speech. I'm going to be listening, not just to what they say, but to the connections between their thoughts. That's why, as you were saying, you know, the fact that it's an unstructured conversation, fantastic. Because they do the structuring and the structure reveals something about their unconscious processes and unconscious meanings. So the detritus of everyday life is welcome. The affects, the fantasy, the slips of the tongue, the irrational, the tangents, the missed appointments and the dreams. They're all the stuff of psychoanalytic theory. And they have as much place in psychoanalytic theory as cognitions, rationality, the brain, goals. Do you know what I mean? Sub goals, to-do lists, institutional requirements. You know, it's the other stuff that's in there as well. And one of the things that I think is really crucial is that you have to come to realize that the things that we think of as true, like we just think this is the way they are, this is the way they must be, and we take it as a fact about life, that can actually be totally dependent on our state at that particular moment. In other words, you can have a very dim view of your past and a very gloomy view of your future because you're depressed. It can shape the entire way that you recollect and you imagine. Your state can shape how you perceive the external world. And that's utterly crucial to realize. You can feel like the odd person out because you're not in the right culture for yourself, or you're not in the right subculture, or you're at the wrong uni, or in the wrong course, or something like that. So, in other words, many things that we think of as just true can actually be a result of what I would call, and this will be a thing that you will be so bored with, a motivated knowing. The central assumption of psychoanalysis is that knowing is a relation. When I claim to know something about the external state of affairs, that's a relationship between me as motivated subject and the external state of affairs. And me as curious, excited, interested subject, will see different things from fearful, anxious, depressed subject. So my state, in part, determines what pops out at me, what's perceptually salient from the external world. The other thing that psychoanalysis teaches us is that it's not just the external world that's shaped in this way. I'm not saying we construct external reality. I think it's real and we bump into it. But we pick it out, like we only pick out bits of it, because there's too much going on for us to know everything that's there. But as that is true of the external world, it's also true of our relationship to our own internal world. Have you ever gone on a holiday and you're sitting in this absolutely beautiful scenario and you can't relax? You're beating yourself up. You keep imagining things you should have done or things you should have done better or you're haunted by things. In other words, your relationship to your own internal world is motivated as well. And many people actually go to psychoanalysis because they can't find that sort of peaceful, warm sense of ease of just being who they are. Some people go because they would die if they didn't. But the worried well also go to psychoanalysis just to live more peacefully within that sort of milieu interior, that sort of inner milieu of your own being. So many of the things, what psychoanalysis also teaches, and this is not uniquely psychoanalytic, I have to say, because developmental psychology assumes this as well. The things that we think of as very deeply, personally us, just true of us, often were once interpersonal relationships. Okay, you think about your security in the world. Developmental psychology says that arises from the attachment relationship that you've had. So in other words, the interpersonal security that you felt becomes the sort of inner security that you have. So things that start out as interpersonal relationships can become inner relationships or psychic relationships, object relationships in the psychoanalytic sense. And so, in a sense, that's what it means when I say here that we're permeable to culture. We're permeable to what others think of us. If others really love us and think we're really great, we're likely to sort of develop a sense of self-worth and think we're really great. And that's a simple way of saying it, but it's true. If culture doesn't like the particular body shape that we've got, or the fact that we're sparky and angry and a woman, and that's not okay for a woman in this culture or something, then, you know, that's going to have its effects on you, you know, on how easy you are with your anger, or how easy you are with your fear, if you're a guy and it's not okay to be afraid. So, the fact that we're permeable to culture is one of the assumptions of psychoanalysis, that our sense of self is shaped by the relationships that we have to others and to the external world. And this impacts upon us, not just mentally, but at a bodily level, you know, like how people sort of sucker themselves, like how easy are you when you're really, really hungry and you just scoff, you know? Is there any aspect of you, you know, sort of eating behind your hand, or are you just wolfing in, you know? How do you feel about your neediness? Is it okay? Or is it something that, oh, you're not quite comfy with, you know, that sort of thing, yeah? That's really important. Things like, you know, your personal desires, very similarly. Is it okay to fancy people in the way that you fancy people? Is the genre of people that you fancy okay? Or is there something, you know, not quite accepted about the people that you fancy? Like you're really interested in metrosexual boys or something, you know, whatever, yeah? And your crowd thinks that's a bit naff, or, you know, no, God, he's too emo, or, you know, he straightens his fringe, you can't go out with him. Okay. So all of these things have an effect bodily. Like if you're not quite comfortable with your hunger or with your dependence or your need or your sexuality, it's going to impact you at a bodily level. But does the fact that we're permeable to culture mean that the human organism is just infinitely plastic? Plasticity is a big word at the moment. Have you noticed? Everybody's talking about plasticity, aren't they? You can rewire your brain. I actually think it's pretty cool that we can, and I'm really pleased that we can, because I've probably killed a few brain cells in my time. And so I'm very glad I can rewire them in different ways. But I think there's a bit of a limit to this notion of permeability, because, oh, for a couple of reasons, really. Like, I think there's certainly a biological contribution to who we are. I do think there are inborn differences. And I think anybody who's had more than one child, I have, and I've only had one, but anybody who's had more than one child will tell you they can be so different right from the start. And certainly, I think Freud certainly suggests that. He says, look, we're born wired to survive. We're not born really well wired to survive. Like, we're not born as wired to survive as a giraffe, for instance. Like, if you look at how long it takes a young foal to get on its feet after birth, you know, those bony little legs. You know, it's before it's even quite dry, being out of the mother. And then it's up on its little legs and around the field. You know, I took 16 months to be able to do that, you know, and it was with one little finger for the last three months. So we're not really all that autonomous at birth. We're heavily dependent on others. So, yes, we've got hunger and we've got thirst, and we scream when we get cold or when we're wet. So we want temperature regulation to be part of it. And we've got some basic sexuality from the start. So we've got these drives that we come into the world with. But they're pretty rudimentary. You know, they're not like instincts like a mud wasp has, who's got 24 hours to survive. And the advantage of that is it makes us not just wired for the average expectable environment, which is, you know, evolutionary psychology speak. We can fit ourselves to the particular environment in which we find ourselves. Like if we've got a mother who's a little bit slow to feed us, we learn how to suck our thumbs or fantasize about eating for a little bit longer to pacify our hunger drive because mum's going to get there, but she's just a bit slower than, you know, might be ideal for you. So you've got to adapt to the particular mother that you've got or the particular father. And so what's interesting about the Freudian conception of drives is that he assumes that drives can learn. Yes, they're neuropsychological. Yes, they capture the body and the brain and they flood you with a certain kind of neurotransmitter soup of sorts and change your state massively. I don't know if you've ever experienced it, but if you go shopping when you're hungry, you fill the trolley with stuff. And if you're full, you can't imagine ever being hungry again, so you don't buy enough. So the drives actually are there. They're biological, but they can be modified and they can learn. And that's an assumption. But there are nurture effects as well. Relationships can shape us. We can form an ego, if you like, and I'm going to be talking a lot about what an ego is, by identifying with others. So if there are people that we love, we're going to identify with them. We want to be like them. If there are people who've got power over us, we don't want them to harm us, so we're going to become like them so they don't harm us. And you see, that's part of the byproduct of the fact that we're not born self-sufficient like a giraffe or a foal. Our very survival hinges on those people liking us, liking us enough to meet our needs, because we can't meet our needs alone. We've got this large experiencing brain, but we're absolutely useless. Metorically, I couldn't make myself a sandwich, you know, for many years, no matter how hungry. So in other words, you rely on others to do those things for you. And so you have to be cute enough and goo-goo-ga-ga enough to keep those people interested in you and bonded with you and looking after you. So they have enormous power over you. And you have an enormous fear of rejection because literally it would be life-threatening to be rejected at an early stage. So this permeability, are there critical periods? Are there points after which we can't change? Well, Freud said famously, yes, show me a woman over 30 and I'll show you a cadaver, he says. Charming, eh? In other words, after 30, no more change is possible for women. Hopefully he's wrong, okay? The neuroplasticity movement certainly seems to suggest he probably is. But he really believed that you were kind of fixed after that age and he restricted it to women, which I think is really interesting. But actually, psychoanalysis is amazingly optimistic about personality change. It's possibly the most optimistic theoretical system I've ever come across. But it suggests that change is not always something that you can do alone. that the fulcrum of change, if you like, that the balancing point of change is not within your organism. The point of change is usually between you and another person. In other words, change is relation as well. And that's what transference is. It's the mechanism of change. For instance, if I walk into a new situation and meet a brand new person and I start to treat them as though they're kind of a slightly fear-inducing, powerful other, right? And they haven't done anything. Well, I'm revealing a whole lot about the template of what I've experienced in life, aren't I? And I'm putting it out there, transferentially, into the world. So if you've got the eyes to observe psychoanalytically, you see a lot. You know, you don't have to be like Sherlock with all those little words appearing, you know, muddy shoes, you know, coffee spilt on the napkin over a woman's telephone number so he mustn't really like the woman, you know. But it's a bit like that, I must say. It's just not as spectacular. But you pick things. Like if you've got the chairs set up and the person picks up the chairs and moves it away an extra two feet away from you, you go, okay, all right, good. It's not a problem. It's just data. Yeah? Okay. So psychoanalysis is extremely optimistic about change. But it says that change usually has to occur in relationship to others. Because left to our own devices, we tend to keep repeating our view of the world because we can't step outside of it. It's just the way things seem to us. And it takes someone else to disrupt that usually. Someone very kind, very compassionate, very able to deal with transference. And we also have to change in relation to our culture. Like sometimes it means that we have to say no to culture. Culture says, a good woman is someone who stays even if they're being bashed up. And you have to go, sorry. I don't think so. I don't think that's a good woman. I think that's a really wrong cultural prescription. So sometimes you have to be civically disobedient to live well. So psychoanalysis is not about compliance. It's not about compliance, about fitting in or about adapting. Sometimes it's about really being over your own heels and being quite courageous in that, even if no one else is there to support you in that process. How are we going? Five more minutes then you can have a coffee. So psychoanalysis is definitely not a science of adaption. Have you seen those Milgram case studies at all? Have you seen the experiments? Anybody shown you a film of them at all? Okay, they're very powerful. Because these people have, you know, shocked someone up to 350 volts whom they believe to have a heart condition. because they were trying to teach them paired associate learning like fat, neck, sky, blue. And they went to 350 volts for that? It's like you'd hope you wouldn't do it, but I probably would have done it. Do you know? If there was a man in a white coat telling me that the experiment must go on, I probably would have done it. I hope I would have stopped short of 350 volts, but you just don't know, do you? Okay, and then at the end of it, there's this wee bloke who's got sort of an accent like he's from the Bronx. He says, sir, like he's been in the Navy or something. I'm being a bit Sherlock-y here. And when they're debriefing him, you know, saying, you know, this guy really wasn't being shocked. Oh man, am I pleased to see you, he says. And within about three seconds of him chatting to the experimenter, he goes, yeah, some people would have just carried on no matter what, huh? He reaches for his cigarettes, starts smoking, but he carried on no matter what. But already, you're getting the feeling that some people, that other people would have carried on. It's as if he didn't carry on. I wonder what stories he told when he went home about what he did in the experimental situation. It's the beginning of denial because you've been traumatized. The experiment has traumatized this poor person. He's done something that's utterly shocking to him and he's reeling. And so his memory is weakening of what actually happened and he's telling another account. He's already starting to tell another story and that's what's so interesting about it. Okay, so psychoanalysis is not about compliance. It's got a slightly revolutionary edge because part of its project is looking at why do we need authorities? We need authorities because we're born helpless and dependent and because we're born into a situation where people have the power of life and death over us. But we continue to give a duck a gun in life. We give people power over us who really don't have power over us in many ways. But they get power in very subtle ways. And that's part of what psychoanalysis wants you to become quick to pick up on. It also analyzes why we cling to beliefs and habits that don't serve us but we cling to them as though they define us even if they hurt us. And it tries to get us to analyze why we're sometimes our own worst enemies. Why we're not only a stranger to ourselves sometimes but we seem to undermine our own well-being and sabotage things when it's going very well for us. And that's quite inexplicable sometimes. How on earth can this happen? So that's what I think is so fascinating about it. So psychoanalysis isn't anti-science. I just want to say that. It's the sort of science I'll just sneak back a wee bit there. It's not anti-science. It's the science of case studies. And case studies are kind of the context of discovery. And some of the parameters that are discovered in those case studies like transference or like motivated remembrance find their way into laboratories. They started to find their way in in the 1950s in cognitive science and very recently in mainstream psychology. Some of these notions are now being tested in the laboratory. But you can't take everything into the laboratory. You just can't. There are some things where you really have to recognize that you can't look for norms. You can't look for averages. You can't look for general laws. But there's something law-like for this person, for this particular person. As soon as I ask them what their ideal is for themselves, they're talking about their father in the next breath. Is that true for everyone? No. Okay? If I ask that person, is your father the source of your ideals and you feel inferior to him, they go, oh no. So even self-report doesn't catch it. Damn. But nonetheless, there's that reliable collocation, if you like, of one thing following another. And I've observed it and it's law-like and it's regular and it happens in all sorts of different scenarios. You see what I mean? It's scientific but you've got to broaden in a sense your conception of what science is to be able to include the science of the particular. Because it assumes that something about your unique history has brought you here. And it assumes that you're not just a rational being who knows stuff about the world. You're a wanter. You're not just a knower. You're a wanter. You want stuff. You've got desires as well as beliefs. And our wants and our desires and our motivational state really shape what we come to know. That was the first lecture in the series Philosophy of Psychoanalysis by Associate Professor Doris McIlwain. The theme song was created by Rose Mackenzie-Peterson. The producer was myself, Nina McIlwain. Thanks to Andrew Geeves and John Sutton. Speak soon. The theme song