J Relig Health (2008) 47:398414 DOI 10.

1007/s10943-008-9180-3 ORIGINAL PAPER

Pathologies of Desire and Duty: Freud, Ricoeur, and Castoriadis on Transforming Religious Culture
William H. Wahl

Published online: 3 June 2008 Government Employee 2008

Abstract This article emphasizes an underappreciated aspect of Freuds critique of religion taken up in the writings of Ricoeur and Castoriadis: the degree to which pathologies of desire and duty imbue our relation to shared cultural forms, i.e., narratives, ideals, and values. Both thinkers nd in Freuds anti-religious polemic a valuable attempt to address the intransigence, fanaticism, and violence that can result from an unreected afrmation of Tradition. Alongside developing a respect and acceptance of other cultures, they argue for the need to establish a critical relation to sacredmeaning structures, one that mirrors interpretive strategies within the psychoanalytic process. Ricoeur and Castoriadis critique Freuds accentuation of neurosis while extending his thinking into personal-philosophical and social-political contexts. Keywords Freud Ricoeur Castoriadis Ethics Religion Psychoanalysis Intransigence Culture

As a critique of western religious precepts, many regard The Future of an Illusion as a severely reductive, even tendentious workparticularly those for whom religion remains an important opponent of cruelty and human ignobility. In anticipation, Freud takes up some of these potential accusations by means of a dialectical structure, through his interlocutor. Yet, at times, the rhetorical zeal in these passages leads Freud into generalizations that can easily be misconstrued if disconnected from his main intentions; such as when he lays the entirety of these precepts upon the Procrustean bed of infantile wishfullment or compares religious instruction for children to a constricting bandage that deforms natural curiosity (p. 47). Although these undoubtedly broad assertions can cause offense, as readers, we too become overly reductive if we take them as a sign of Freuds actual view of religion. For how do we then explain his appreciation of its civilizing inuence, its efforts to attenuate the compulsiveness of human sexual and aggressive
W. H. Wahl (&) Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada e-mail: wm.wahl@utoronto.ca

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tendencies? What can we make of the coincidental aims he sees between psychoanalysis and religion: cultivating the love of man and the decrease of suffering? Or, in what sense is Freuds admitted antipathy towards religion only a temporary one and not irreconcilable (p. 54)? I can see no justication for characterizing these declarations as some sort of compensatory bone-throwing to the opposition or as disingenuous. Given that the psychoanalytic cure strives to make each side of a conict conscious, rather than grant supremacy to one side, Freud cannot possibly deny the value of restraining sexuality and aggression along collective lines.1 His opposition to religion has no meaningful connection with what it has wrought in terms of its aims. When we look at the full scope of Freuds assessment, we can see that what he directs his antipathies towards are the means by which religion instils and supports these cultural ambitions. Consequently, we must contextualize the acuteness of his opposition to religious precepts within an intention to confront the psychological dishonesty of coercive, metaphysically justied idealsrather than simply take it as an attempt to reject its doctrines. In fact, we understand Freuds position rightly through his efforts to cultivate a less compulsive relation towards religious, moral, and cultural values. This cultivation necessitates that we do more than simply nd a new set of idols for a psychoanalytic faithful.2 The shift Freud proposes must be different in kind, precisely in relation to our psychological investment in private and public ideals. Indeed, given the discord and potential violence that an unreective allegiance to inherited cultural values can foster, the strength of Freuds antipathy towards religious illusions is perhaps not forceful enough. His focus on the wishful aspect of its precepts, and the doctrines called upon to support them, targets the way we go about the civilizing process. Freuds questions as to the viability of existing forms of religion for the future must be taken in the context of this overarching objective: to instil greater autonomy and exibility towards the humanitarian aims religion has historically pursued. On this front, not only can we afrm that psychoanalysis and religion desire the same things, we can also see that the psychoanalytic contribution to the aims of religion is substantial. To appreciate the signicance of the problem Freud addressesand, with the unapologetic fanaticism that is so rampant in our own day, its continuing relevancewe need only note its extension in such thinkers as Ricoeur and Castoriadis. Although both nd deciencies in Freuds considerations, they strongly support these same objectives. Appreciating Freuds contribution to fostering this new relation requires that we rst distinguish ideals as such from the emotional attachment that often governs their elevated status. The frequent pathologies of duty Freud saw in his neurotic patients demonstrate the degree to which our ties to cultural values are replete with compulsions and xations. The manner in which psychoanalysis actually contributes to religious ideals, therefore, requires that we bear in mind both the qualitative differences in the nature of these attachments and the means by which we might support these cultural objectives. In Freuds view, traditional religions seek to full their moral aspirations through directives linked to parental love that, consequently, coexist with anxiety-inducing threats of its possible removal. Although this method of taming childhood wishes and impulses may meet with some success, religion tends to ignore the fact that its programme also cultivates an often excessive or facile obedience. The presence of such urgency, whether applied to beliefs or prescriptive ideals, betrays for Freud a motivation beyond conscious intentions. The
1 2

See Introductory Lectures, S.E., 16, p. 433.

Here, the psychological substance of Logos and Ananke must be appreciated. They imply the new relation Freud wishes to establish, as I will outline in what follows.

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imperviousness of such perspectives to argumentation, the sensitivity that surrounds even the possibility of their revision, further indicates the residues of emotional conict. One follows them not because of the strength of the reasons advanced in their favour. As Freud sees it, they are supported out of an unconscious ambivalence to authoritative others, out of a lingering desire to win our parents admiration, out of an archaic fear of their disapproval and subsequent loss of their love and protection. In short, he sees in the qualitative character of this relation to ideals, that is, the all or nothing mode of adherence, a clear correspondence with latent Oedipal dynamics. Freuds objections to religious morality, therefore, are not so much about what it seeks as they are about xated modes of attachment to these objectives, modes that arise largely through the coercive methods by which they are instilled and enforced. From this perspective, his attempt to ground historical religious morality in rational explanations must be understood as an attempt to bridge the gulf between religion and psychoanalysis in terms of the relation to ethical objectives.3 In fact, signicant therapeutic justications exist for thinking that Freud believed xations and compulsions towards moral prescriptions can and should be altered. DiCenso (1999) emphasizes this often disregarded aspect of the psychoanalytic engagement with religious ideals, noting that Freuds invitation to follow the gods Ananke and Logos assumes that the transformation of this relation to cultural forms is possible. DiCenso argues that, within this view exists a supposition that our development is not so much limited by immutable innate predispositions, as it is by outmoded cultural structures and their formative inuences (p. 35). In other words, Freuds suspicions about religion are meant as a challenge to its overly restrictive cultural horizon in relation to the individuals capacity for freedom of inquiry. Whether or not one can attribute the reduced spontaneity that accompanies childhood development solely to the conditioning of religious morality, as Freud contends, it is nevertheless clear that he well understands the effects of cultural forces as they concern psychological maturation. For these are familiar to the psychoanalytic process itself, especially insofar as advocating an unquestioning loyalty to religious values comes at a cost to the emotional well-being of the individual. On Freuds part, at least, this therapeutic connection enables us to see his admission of coincidental aims between psychoanalysis and religion as a constructive effort to resolve the roots of divisive social conict. With these formative issues in mind, I would now like to shift to the suggestions of Ricoeur and Castoriadis, both of whom extend Freuds views on cultural ideals while seeking the possibility of a less compulsive relation to them through the adoption of a reective attitude. As we shall see, in general, these thinkers share Freuds reticence towards the threatening, coercive methods of traditional religious teachingsindeed, often supporting and even furthering his hermeneutics of suspicion. Yet, each nds Freuds tendency to dismiss the importance of meaningfulness somewhat impetuous if not insincere. For these reasons, although pressing the implications of Freuds iconoclasm, they nd it necessary in different ways to supplement its original application. Ricoeur engages Freud from a background in phenomenology and hermeneutics. Freud and Philosophy, his most sustained investigation, argues for the epistemological uniqueness of psychoanalysis while seeking to outline its proper conceptual home. Central to Ricoeurs study is the signicance of interpretation to this conception; more particularly, he maintains that interpretative criteria within the psychoanalytic setting (not fully
3

In saying this I do not wish to give the impression that this meeting of minds could be easily realized. No doubt, the more open relation to desire that psychoanalysis proposes would continue to raise objections from the religious side.

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recognized in Freuds theories) serve as the conditions out of which its facts become known. Some critics within science and philosophy have taken this position as an absolute hermeneutics that fails to acknowledge the scientic or systematic side of Freuds thought.4 Yet Ricoeur actually goes to great lengths to show that this is not the case, that in fact we damage Freuds conception by a completely interpretive point of view. He sees the inventiveness of psychoanalysis as arising precisely from its combination of the real and the ideal. We conceive psychoanalysis best, he contends, as a mixed discourse, with neither clear distinctions between cause and intention nor between drive and meaning (1970, p. 65). The worth and originality of this work, he argues, arises out of the unique epistemological eld it puts before usan irreducible amalgam Ricoeur emphasizes with the phrase a semantics of desire. To eliminate either aspect would be to lose the essence of what psychoanalysis alone is able to disclose. Ricoeur thus questions the justication of seeking respectability for Freudian ideas by an impetuous conformity to the methods of either academic psychology or observational science. Most signicant for the purposes of this paper is that this inclusion of both desire and meaning must also take account of the social world, that is, how cultural values and moral or ethical ideals impinge upon and give shape to our drives as they are introjected to form the superego. One of the most important ways Ricoeur shows the need to address our relation to these values is by distinguishing morality from ethics. On the one hand, like Freud, he aligns morality with culturally enforced prescriptions for behaviour, prescriptions that promote the value of social cohesion, yet without a great deal of consideration for the desires and capabilities of the individual. On the other hand, he sees ethics as a capacity for reective engagement with these same ideals, thus personalizing them in relation to ones own desire to be. Here, Ricoeur ties ethical reection directly to psychological development. While retaining the importance of ideals, reection necessitates a mitigation of their authoritative status. One must interrogate their basis rather than acquiesce to their eternal wisdom out of anxiety, fear or narcissistic satisfaction. As I have argued, the dissension Freud shows towards religion as a social institution is to some extent offset by a reciprocal appreciation for the signicant role cultural forms play in individual development. This appreciation in turn underscores the interpersonal side of ego formation within psychoanalysis, which is not often at the forefront of Freuds writings. Perhaps it is his own efforts to identify the universal aspects of psychological formation that obscures what is undoubtedly one of Freuds central tenets: that, to develop, the ego requires interaction with others. Ricoeur (1970) emphasizes this intersubjective aspect of the psychoanalytic perspective, noting its presence in the situations Freud speaks of despite the tendency of his model towards solipsism (p. 61). In fact, in Ricoeurs estimation, Freud never describes instincts outside of an intersubjective context; if desire were not located within an interhuman situation, there would be no such thing as repression, censorship, or wish-fulllment through fantasies; that the other and others are primarily bearers of prohibitions is simply another way of saying that desire encounters another desire an opposed desire. (p. 387) Although we must recognize the narcissistic needs of other family members in such opposed desires, to the extent that these are translations of the broader collective voice, a greater portion of the prohibitions a child must negotiate are developmental tasks whose source lies outside the immediate family. These may be thought of as pre-existing cultural
4

A good overview of these debates and misreadings can be found in Margaret Chernack Beaudoin (1992).

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desires or demands mediated through the conicts of familial interactions. In the classic Oedipal drama, for instance, the interdiction of parental authority carries within it a prescription that requires children to defer impulsive desires for the benet of the social order. Although this formative enactment involves a transpositional participation by the parents, it clearly enforces a wider mandate. Since such deferrals coincide with parental attachments on the one hand, and the potential loss of their protection on the other, it is clear how the relation to cultural imperatives can be burdened with unconscious impulses. In fact, because many of the crucial negotiations with opposing desires occur when children are as yet incapable of reasoning their way through the demands of the Other, they must simply adopt these codes as a way to relieve the conict. More importantly, as in many traditional religious societies, any questioning of these interdictions, once a childs intelligence has grown capable of further reection, is discouraged if not outlawed by religious and political power structures. Given the historical and contemporary dominance of such modes of acculturation, is it any wonder that accepting collective values uncritically is so often at the centre of global conicts? The intensity of their status as unimpeachable truths is only matched by the hypersensitivity even to the possibility of rational questions concerning their value or improvement. In response, Ricoeur underlines the current state of the individuals encounter with the demands of culture as a pathology of duty. Entangled as it is with the development of the superego, it is often only counterbalanced by a corresponding pathology of desire (1970, p. 185).5 Yet, signicantly, in addressing the psychological well-being of the individual, he follows Freuds contention that what is most often in need of attenuation is the duty side of the struggle.6 While this need to attenuate duty may be rooted in an a priori judgment, we must admit that questioning it within religious beliefs and practices remains well within the psychoanalytic purview. Indeed, Ricoeur (1970) holds that Freuds own attitude towards religion is not enough to prejudice the path of his forays into civilization. Despite his own selfacknowledged status as a godless Jew, given Freuds claims that the relation of desire and fear with religious ideas is something latent, Ricoeur contends that he succeeds in keeping its deciphering process within an economics of desire. In his view, the Freudian enterprise is consequently both legitimate and necessary; in conducting it psychoanalysis does not act as a variety of rationalism but fullls its proper function. The question remains open for every man whether the destruction of idols is without remainder (p. 235). Ricoeur thus sees the value of Freuds iconoclasm, perceiving something original and fruitful in the connections psychoanalysis draws between meaning and desire. But we must also acknowledge the extent to which his agreement with the hermeneutics of suspicion carries with it certain reservations. He endorses this perspective mainly insofar as it supplies resources for his own related yet more far-reaching task: transforming our relation to meaninga project that is only advanced by the freedom to call any foundational standpoint into question. For, in Ricoeurs view, besides the need to alter the compulsiveness of the relation to cultural forms is a need to go beyond the careless acceptance of tradition more generally. In the wake of hermeneutic suspicion is the need to constitute meaning through an ongoing self-interrogation. Ricoeur thus envisions a shift from the
5

Ricoeur (1970) expands on this complementarity in more detail, noting that while the Oedipal task centres upon sexuality, the cultural demand requires the control of aggressive impulses (p. 307). Worth repeating here is Freuds intention never to give victory to one side or the other. As far as he is concerned, the increase in ego strength and exibility resulting from the psychoanalytic process does not remove conict. Rather, lifting repressions actually creates conscious conict (when one side is unconscious, symptoms exist instead) by altering the terms upon which the two sides are fought, i.e., a struggle on the same psychological footing. See, e.g., Introductory Lectures, S.E., 16, p. 433.

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rst faith of the simple soul, i.e., a faith accepted at face value, to a second, more rational faith which, in contrast, is hard-won and rooted in unremitting reection (p. 28). It is in pursuit of such development that existing ego xations to prescribed symbolic forms must necessarily be displaced. The status of the philosophical ego and its possible alteration are therefore crucial elements to Ricoeurs engagement with Freud. Seeking dispossession of the false Cogito and an expansion of consciousness, Ricoeur enters the Freudian project through its dense metapsychology while characterizing these theoretical writings as an adventure of reection (1970, p. 439). Whether or not Freud himself conceived his metapsychology in this way, it is undeniable that the psychoanalytic process shares some of this perspective as it attempts to liberate the ego from its restricting unconscious attachments. By the gradual lifting of the resistances that shield libidinal xations from consciousness, the patients relations to the world can become, if not more rational, at least less compulsive. If we also consider the painful nature of this process, Freud would no doubt agree with Ricoeur that, while the pleasure principle represents an actual mode of functioning, the reality principle expresses an aim or task to be achieved (p. 267). Given that the attainment of this more realistic perspective requires a confrontation with unconscious desires, however, the nature of Logos and Ananke that Freud champions in The Future of an Illusion cannot be understood as an identication with Stoic principles. On the contrary, the resignation to reality, in Ricoeurs view, is a work of correction applied to the very core of the libido, to the heart of narcissism. Consequently, the scientic world view must be incorporated into a history of desire (1970, p. 332). This reform of narcissism is experienced both as a loss and a threat since to accept the reality principle is to wound ones narcissistic ideals. The ego therefore tends to resist such advancement, often moving instead towards self-protective enclosure, preferring to remain within its own wishfulness. Seeking manoeuvres against these ego defenses, Ricoeur (1970) emphasizes the signicant changes to the egos status that occur in the transition to Freuds second topographical model (pp. 11920). As a result of Freuds revised perspective, which declares the unconscious as a psychological domain in its own right, objects now become recipients of instinctual aims while the egos position is reduced by becoming one among many such potential objectsthereby subordinated to instinctual aims within more systemic interactions. In effect, the ego here moves from being the best-known aspect of the psychic universe to the least known. Hence Ricoeur characterizes this shift as an epoche in reverse; that is, in contrast to Husserls phenomenological bracketing, which is intended as a reduction to consciousness, the Freudian epoche is a reduction of consciousness (i.e., a decentering) (pp. 1212). Freuds epoche is antiphenomenological in its radical opposition to the assumptions of a Husserlian transcendental ego. At the same time, Ricoeur insists that Freuds dislocation of the ego cannot be reduced to mere economics. Given Freuds admission that the drives must be represented in a manner that makes them accessible to consciousness to be knownthus becoming manifest within the world of meaninginstinct must present itself in a way that allows interrogation and dialogue. Ricoeur therefore contends that Freuds own theory clearly demonstrates that force cannot exist without meaning (p. 144). Indeed, the often opaque manifestations found in dreams, parapraxes, and symptoms make the need for interpretation almost inescapable. The egos relation to such remote forms of meaning is what allows it, perhaps for the rst time, to become a problem to itself. No longer simply disclosed by an assumed transparency stemming from the natural attitude, the symbolic representations of unconscious desire necessitate a reexive attitude for the uncovering of meaningfulness to occur. Yet, precisely because a single adjustment of this kind cannot prevent the self-enclosing tendency of the ego from recurring, Ricoeur (1970) cautions us against the inclination to

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end reection by concretizing the unconscious as a source of transpersonal meaning. When the place of meaning is displaced from consciousness towards the unconscious, he argues, this place cannot be reied as a region of the world. . . . the rst taskthe displacementcannot be separated from the second taskthe recapture of meaning in interpretation (pp. 4234). To forget the importance of interpretation is not only to neglect the potential alteration of the ego, it is also to make the unconscious into a false idol. The need for certitude that this closure reects is the same compliant relation to meaning Ricoeur calls a rst faith. In contrast to this is the hermeneutic richness made available to an ego that remains free in its effort to exist, in its desire to be (p. 46). The attainment of this more open-ended relation to meaning, however, would seem an even more difcult task than the attenuation of narcissism sought by psychoanalysis insofar as this unsettling of certitude is ongoing. Indeed, Ricoeur sees in this certitude a false Cogito [that] interposes itself between us and reality; it blocks our relation to the world, it prevents us from letting reality be as it is. If there is, as I believe, a fundamental Cogito, it is rst necessary to abandon the position of this screen-cogito, of this resistance-cogito, in order to reach the Cogito that founds in proportion as it lets be. (p. 278, n.33) This fundamental Cogito, as a continuous openness to discovery, directs us to the nature of Ricoeurs intended transformation in the relation to meaning. But in calling the natural attitude into question, he also intends to mirror Freuds innovative hermeneutic perspective back to philosophy. Justifying the parallel in this case between the tasks of the false Cogito and the narcissism of the Freudian ego, he challenges the assumptions that have hitherto been characterized as reective philosophy in Descartes and Kant. Regarding Descartes, Ricoeur (1970) acknowledges the truth of the Cogito as undeniable. Yet, as a mere apperception, he sees little that can be attributed to it. Since apperception cannot be equated with any meaningful self-knowledge, what could it possibly signify (p. 44)? In terms of the reexive meaning Ricoeur advocates, such a foundation is utterly sterile. Moreover, when this, a mere intuition of consciousness, becomes the basis of ethics, our ethics in turn become devoid of lived experience. Similarly, Ricoeur nds that Kants practical philosophy is subordinated to the assumptions of pure reason from his critical philosophy. Ethical reection in this case is reduced to an epistemological framework, outside the temporality and alienation of lived, social experience. As such, Kants categorical imperative is a pseudo-religious command that invites loyalty and compliance rather than more substantive engagement. Since it provides an a priori account of all possible conditions, nothing is left for the meaning made available by means of an ongoing interrogation. In these restrictions, Ricoeur nds the philosophical perspectives represented by Descartes and Kant inadequate for ethical life. One might say that the dominance of the ego, the certitude of its place on the basis of mere apperception, precludes the possibility of an ethical relation to others. In its place, he suggests that reection is not so much a justication of science and duty as a reappropriation of our effort to exist; . . . we have to recover the act of existing. . . . Appropriation signies that the initial situation from which reection proceeds is forgetfulness. I am lost, led astray among objects and separated from the center of my existence, just as I am separated from others and as an enemy is separated from all men. (p. 45) Placing a transparent ego at the basis of their philosophies, both Descartes and Kant foreclose the reective distance required for what Ricoeur offers as a more inclusive ethical existence. In contrast to the morality of ego-dominant perspectives, an ethics of

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reection is inseparable from an ongoing interpretive relation to the world. Because it is far from being immediate to consciousness, it requires an effort to recapture the [true] Ego of the Ego Cogito in the mirror of its objects. . . . A reective philosophy [thus] is the contrary of a philosophy of the immediate (p. 43). The recovery of a true Ego as a process emerges from interrogating presumptions of proximity too easily won. Thus, with a view to displacing the limitations of nave philosophical belief, Ricoeurs sense of reection adopts the dispossession of the ego as announced in Freuds second topography. In his dismantling of Cartesian and Kantian positions, whose foundations he reveals as screens and resistances to the meaning-potential in the world, Ricoeur induces the same wounding of these philosophical gratications of certitude as does Freud with respect to the illusions of the ego. The desire for conclusive truths, whether in Descartes, Kant, or in narcissism, promotes a reliance upon the given that is inadequate to the possibilities of meaning within existence. It should not come as a complete surprise, then, to see Freuds suspicions towards the ego mirrored in his own ethical views. Indeed, his opposition to the love command would appear to be born of a similar discomfort with a priori reductions of moral life.7 In this regard, DiCenso (1999) observes that a close analysis of these arguments shows that what Freud is attacking are not ethical ideals as such, but overly abstracted, reied ideals disconnected from the realities of human collective existence (p. 35). The psychoanalytic process, in its recovery of early memory over and against compulsive obedience, seeks to break through affect-laden relations with respect to ideals by reestablishing a connection with their origins in the history of the patient. In this regard, Ricoeur recalls Freuds observation that the superego, as the psychological enforcer of such imperatives, often makes excessive demands on the ego, demands which nevertheless cannot effectively change the ego (1930, p. 279). This conclusion has considerable implications with respect to the efcacy and psychological cost of instituting transcendently authorized cultural and ethical directives. As well intentioned as religious morals may be our relation to them becomes psychologically skewed to a large extent because they are instituted by means of coercion. Considering the prominence of this mode of acculturation, is it hardly surprising to nd in Freud frequent mention of such relations; nor that he nds it a key part of analytic practice, for therapeutic purposes, to oppose the superego, and [to] endeavour to lower its demands (1930, p. 143). Ricoeurs (1970) description of the psychoanalytic method by which this challenge to the superego occurs is also highly instructive. The task entails that the ego attend to the real world to draw libido to itself. Although this intends to counter the narcissistic tendency of the ego to adhere to ideals out of compulsion, it describes the end of an extended process wherein the analyst must rst serve as the representative of the reality principle in esh and in act (p. 279). Central to this interaction is an ethical detachment on the part of the analyst. This might be thought of as a second Freudian epoche wherein a complete relinquishment of moral prescription and value judgments occurs. Through the patients regard for the analysts education to reality, the neutrality shown by the analyst is turned back upon the inner world so that the reality principle can gain control of the process of becoming conscious (p. 280). That is to say, the familiar compulsive responses of the conscience are intentionally held in check so that the patient can begin to nd his or her
7

We can also take Freuds well-known engagement with the Christian love command in Civilisation and its Discontents as a critique of our relation to such forms. His difculty with this command, when seen as representing the relation to conscience, is motivated not only by its actual requirements but also by its imperviousness to argumentation.

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own responses through reection. Contrary to a forfeiture of ethics, for Ricoeur, this process allows for a clearing of truthfulness, in which the lies of the ideals and idols are brought to light and their occult role in the strategy of desire is unmasked.8 This truthfulness is undoubtedly not the whole of ethics, but at least it is the threshold (p. 280). As this description of the psychoanalytic tempering of the superego makes clear, the psychological history of the patient plays a prominent role in the relation to ethical imperatives. But Ricoeurs examination of this therapeutic strategy is not undertaken only to emphasize the unconscious inuence upon the relation to such ideals. More importantly, it is done to show the manner by which the relation to wider cultural forms, such as we nd in religion, can be altered. Accordingly, we must examine more closely Freuds intentions regarding the notion of an education to reality, as expressed by the gods Ananke and Logos. A signicant aspect of the psychoanalytic rupturing of the attachment to ideals is that suggestion is renounced in favour of promoting the patients own reective capacities. This encouragement occurs by means of a neutral, supportive attitude on the part of the analyst, as mediated through the transference. By withholding the authoritative directives and prescriptive solutions typical of the religious installation of values, the analyst promotes a revised relation to the patients desire. In this way, xations to ideals are gradually replaced by a less compulsive relation. If all goes well, the subject gradually develops the ability to make ethical decisions on the basis of his or her own judgment.9 DiCenso (1999) underlines this often overlooked ethical element in the psychoanalytic process, recognizing a shift to a more reective mode of ethical consciousness in Freuds model of development, a transition from irrational to rational morality (p. 35). This intended progression also implies an increased creativity and responsibility on the part of the patient. The weight of this demand for a more autonomous relation to values undoubtedly lies behind the various resistances that emerge as part of the transference. But the continuing non-judgmental support or Eros of the analyst is just as vital for its possibility. Therefore, once we turn to the world beyond the consulting room, where this neutral Eros is no longer prominent, the eternal struggle between Eros and Thanatos comes to the fore. Without the analysts resources to help transform the relation to cultural forms, the collective resistance against a more rational ethic is much more likely to falter. Since it must rely primarily on the valuation of the intellect, which has lost much of its persuasive force in our mass-media driven world, the entanglement with an obedient relation to ideals seems unlikely to be overcome anytime soon.10 Ricoeur, however, seeks to overcome this impasse by invoking the notion of evil as the basis for the relation to a mythopoetic core of the imagination. His study of evil shows it as a phenomenon never expressed in the language of rational knowledge, nor as something
8

Ricoeur (1970) translates Freuds denition of conscience as the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us. The stress, however, is upon the fact that this rejection has no need to appeal to anything else for support, that it is quite certain of itself (p. 204, n.46). Regarding the ethical aspects of psychoanalysis, Ricoeur (1970) notes that the analyst, more than anyone, knows that man is always in an ethical situation; he presupposes this fact at every step; what he says about the Oedipus complex forcefully attests to the moral destiny of man (p. 280).

10 Freuds (1921) Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego suggests that the positive inuence of a psychoanalyst can be embodied in great leaders. The difference in this regard between our own time and Freuds can perhaps account for his optimism regarding the inuence of the intellect in relation to the forces of Eros and Thanatos. Near the end of The Future of An Illusion, he writes: We may insist as often as we like that mans intellect is powerless in comparison with his instinctual life, and we may be right in this. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds (1927, p. 53).

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that this knowledge can ever determine. Yet, since evil is also the ground from which human reection begins,11 he proposes a dialectic of symbolic forms that moves from a rst faith to a rational faith, which he calls a double illumination of a demystifying interpretation that denounces its archaism and a restorative interpretation that places the birth of evil in the mind or spirit itself (1970, p. 547). Although there is optimism here with respect to the psychological maturation required for such a taskafter all, as we have seen, culturally speaking, the analyst is unavailable to inuence the disinclination to confront ourselvesthere is little doubt that Ricoeurs dialectic expresses the dening religious and ethical attitude necessary for more civilized human relations. Unfortunately, in the all or nothing attitude that refuses to reect upon ones own inherited values, evil is too easily projected onto the other. Despite carrying the potential for ethical reection, thus far, it appears that evil has been an inadequate basis for repairing idolatrous relations to cultural forms. Ricoeurs emphasis on the world of symbolic value and reection, therefore, presents a view of subjectivity that may assume too much, both with respect to the inuences of culture on the individual and with respect to the social roles within which the individual must live and support his or her existence. What good can such reection do, for example, when rst faith social or religious structures predominate and use their power to actively discourage or reproach independent thinking? Although the importance of ethical intersubjectivity is clear, Ricoeurs dialectic does not attend sufciently to the kind of social structure necessary for its existence. Thus, an additional consideration emerges with respect to the social conditions that could support and encourage the reection Ricoeur proposes. In relation to this wider issue, I nd Castoriadis thought particularly noteworthy. Castoriadis (19221997) may still be best known academically as a political thinker with Leftist leanings.12 Yet, his critical position towards Marx and Marxist-inspired philosophers shows that his support of Socialism is neither simple nor straightforward. In fact, the ideal of freedom over and against all forms of totalitarianism or banal conformism is what primarily drives Castoriadis thinking. The early part of his life under the Metaxas fascists in Greece no doubt left an indelible mark in terms of his rejection of social repression. But Castoriadis last quarter century as a practicing psychoanalyst in Paris allowed him to observe how independence enters into its therapeutic aims. The principal concept in Castoriadis later writings that binds these two sides together is autonomy, an idea that echoes Freuds cultural writings by cutting across individual and social lines. At the individual level, autonomy is taken as a psychological achievement: recognizing ones desires while accepting its limitations within a particular social context. In other words, autonomy differs from the sort of narcissistic individualism that would afrm the freedom to act on ones desires. In contrast, it entails a revised relation to desire through knowledge and acceptance, which, of course, also places an ethical dimension squarely within its scope. Importantly, this ethical aspect is not just the internalization of socially sanctioned moral codes. As previously mentioned, internalization is tantamount to an undeveloped or pathological superego structure dominated by repression (or suppression) where little if any understanding of desire exists. Castoriadis ethic of individual autonomy is a self-generated one that may or may not conform to that of others. Why this passion for moral
11 Cf. Freuds idea that sees all thinking as arising out of privation, as for example, in The Interpretation of Dreams, where he tells us that thought is after all nothing but a substitute for a hallucinatory wish; and it is self-evident that dreams must be wish-fullments, since nothing but a wish can set our mental apparatus at work (p. 567). 12 From the late forties to the mid-sixties Castoriadis (1975) was founder and co-editor (with Claude Lefort) of the revolutionary French political journal Socialisme ou Barbarie. The Imaginary Institution of Society contains his most signicant political writings.

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conformity, he wonders, once we restrict desire according to its infringement on others? Such unexamined orthodoxy brings into focus the need for autonomy at the political level. For if one exists within overly oppressive and authoritarian social structures, a more autonomous relation to desire in the individual has little opportunity for expression. Although psychoanalysis cannot compel people to take up this political contest, one can clearly see the reinforcing relation between these two sides. While there are parallels between Ricoeurs ethical reection and Castoriadis autonomy, Castoriadis draws our attention to the subject as citizen, the individual who participates in the social reality of which he or she is a part. His version of reection includes an autonomous creative will that also works to ensure the necessary social structures within which it can ourish. In this way, Castoriadis counters the possibility that attending to superego pathology at an individual level alone would reinforce, through neglect, oppressive political structures. As we might expect, supplementing Ricoeurs two-stage dialectic (destructionreection) entails giving more attention on the value of pre-existing cultural norms. Here, Castoriadis nds great signicance in the imagination (which he sees as the capacity to envision what does not yet exist). Since he sees the creative imagination as a considerable, though untheorized, element in Freuds writings, Castoriadis draws our attention to the social political dimension by proposing signicant transformations to his work. Although not a complete departure from Freud (insofar as Freud actually wished for the demise of traditional religious structures), his focus on the imagination clearly foregrounds the relation to meaning. More precisely, it proposes that three crucial alterations to Freuds model are in order: an assertion as to the primacy of meaning, a reconguration of the nature of the unconscious, and a broader conception of institutional religiosity. To support the call for these deviations, Castoriadis turns to the world of psychosis. With the assistance of Piera Aulagnier, he points to something more in psychotic phantasy than mere manifestations of undecorated psychic activity. As Aulagniers work suggests, a creation process exists in psychosis which, while it may begin as nonsensical to both its subject and others, always contains a point at which it becomes something meaningful for its subject (Castoriadis 1997, p. 198). Regardless of whether or not this meaning extends to others, this process nonetheless reveals a project of reinterpretive construction that exceeds biological functionality. Indeed, both this sort of defunctionalized representational pleasure and even immense unpleasure give way before the imperative need to make sense, according to Castoriadis; such meaning making being understood as the instauration of a certain sort of representational coherency (p. 199). Apart from any correspondence or lack thereof in relation to the meaning society has constructed, before all else, he argues, the subject has to create a certain meaning for himself (p. 201). Castoriadis further describes this as a three-tiered process founded upon a fundamental image or pictogram built up from the infants relation to the primary caregiver. Whether this pictogram is based on reality or phantasy is indeterminable. Yet it provides the ground for all subsequent meaning the individual constructs. It is through this image that the infant places itself most formatively in relation to the social world (p. 206). If, for example, it is based on the introjection of parental hatred or hostility, the infant will have severe dysfunction in its relation to the human world. Upon this starting point the subject next makes meaning through phantasmatic production (p. 201). In other words, the very character of a persons phantasies of meaning is constructed on the basis of this initial pictogram. Only in the third stage is the thought and sense so necessary for the ego added to these rst two elements. As we might imagine, the second phantasy element as well as later meaning can be short-circuited by a severely negative pictogram. The main point of this process for my current purposes, however, is to show how the need to have a

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meaning precedes the particular form that that meaning takes. And, since the consistency of thought required by the ego is dependent on the nature of two prior processes, rational coherence and inner consistency cannot be the basis for what we deem to be real. This is demonstrated by the fact that the psychotic can have a highly consistent picture of reality, coherent on its own terms. From this, Castoriadis concludes that underlying all forms of meaning is a more primary creative ux, a radically unstable matrix out of which all meanings emerge. When we apply this beyond individual meaning, we can say that, just as the created meaning of the psychotic is rooted here, so too is the institution of society . . . arbitrary (p. 201). The validity of one meaning over another is largely a matter of bringing soundness and compliance together. The psychotics meaning is only suspect on the basis of its disagreement with a wider consent. That of the social imaginary, on the other hand, remains unquestioned simply by virtue of this same consent. Apart from this, it can make no ultimate claim on reality. Although these discoveries have further obvious consequences for the social world, they initially suggest to Castoriadis that Freuds conception of the unconscious is inadequate (p. 179). In light of this evidence in psychosis, he nds the refusal to thematize the creative imagination, and to see its rudimentary signicance for existential orientation, no longer acceptable. Because the primacy of meaning making precedes the pleasure principle, the importance of its source as part of a prior imaginary must be taken into account. Accordingly, Castoriadis modies the unconscious, taking all signication as functionally equivalentthat is, as a by-product of the human relation to a groundless, uncontainable Chaos. Under this revised conception, all particular theoretical forms become secondary or derivative of the invariable and prior need for coherence. At the same time, since this coherence is part of each individuals history, the Abyss or Chaos does not imply transcendence, merely that there is an unfathomable underside to everything, and this underside is not passive, simply resistant, yielding or not yielding ground, to our efforts at understanding and mastery. It is perpetual source, ever imminent alteration, origin which is not relegated outside time, but rather is constantly present in and through time. It is literally temporality [understood as a] time that is creation/destruction, time as alterity/ alteration. (1997, p. 322) Thus, the notion of a uid phantasmatic source gives rise to a dynamic unconscious that seeks both structure and process. Time as creative ux becomes the means by which particular versions of truth are recognized in relation to relevance, while the passage of time generates the distance necessary for reection on claims of reality. In effect, Castoriadis is arguing that the creation and destruction of social imaginary forms is what allows us to see the limitations of each particular version of reality; and consequently, that this reality is both relative and vital. While, as we might expect, the movement beyond the Freudian boundaries also entails an adjustment of the Oedipal dilemma along linguistic lines (thus showing the inuence of Lacan), ultimately, Castoriadis wishes to go beyond models of the Freudian or Lacanian type. In so doing, he puts forward a radical new means for thinking not only about the unconscious, but also about individual and social reality. Yet this radical transformation of individual and social conceptions will in turn require new ideas of development. From the outset the individual, according to Castoriadis, will have to progress in a quite different manner. Through such development, the individual will have to become capable on its own of entertaining another relationship with knowledge, a

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relationship for which there is no analogy in previous history. It is not simply a question of developing the individuals faculties and capacities. Much more profoundly, it is a matter of the individuals relation to authority, since knowledge is the rst sublimation of the desire for power and therefore of ones relationship to the institution and everything that the institution represents as xed and nal point of reference. All this is obviously inconceivable without an upheaval not only in existing institutions but even in what we intend by institution. (1997, p. xvii) Although these statements have a political context, the distinction between social imaginary signications and their relation to the individual is evident. Indeed, to insist upon maintaining a personal-social division would be to lose sight of a crucial aspect of Castoriadis thought: that in the process of meaning making, the instauration of signications follows the same path, whether in the individual or in institutions of civilization. From this identity, since the same phantasies provide the basis for personal and collective meaning, social forms also have their basis in what he calls the Abyss.13 This does not mean, of course, that such forms can be reduced to mere phantasy. On the contrary, in Castoriadis view, social imaginary signications constitute the most psychologically signicant aspect of human reality: its social dimensions.14 For as in the individual, the creation of reality is born of psychological necessity. In other words, all forms of signication contain a fundamental element of defense vis-a-vis the requisite ux in its underside, the Abyss. As a result, each social imaginary that is instituted reects a necessary combination of creation and closure, or imagination and reality. Simply creating a social form substantial enough to survive means that its constitution must close off this Groundlessness to a certain extent.15 Thus, Castoriadis sees the closure of particular institutions as simultaneously necessary and problematic. And yet, the ability to transform this closureeither through direct interrogation or the eventual passage to time and the dawning of a new perspectiveultimately requires that these institutions be understood as having a contingent, that is, an imaginary ground. In an effort to convey this paradox, Castoriadis refers to such structures as neither necessary nor contingent (1997), p. 330. The groundless Abyss or Chaos at the core of Castoriadis conception of the psyche creates an immutable psychological necessity for signication, which has a bearing on religious ideals. For it gives rise to the compensatory need to attribute reality or being to signication as such. Concerning the complex nature of this human relation, which requires both expression and dissimulation, he argues that the presentation/occultation of the Chaos by means of social signication can, in its essence, be carried out in one way only: the Chaos itself, as such, has to be taken into signication has to be signicationand also, and in this way, it has to confer a signication on the emergence and on the being of signication as such. Now this is precisely what the institution of society always tries to afrm. It posits, in effect, that being is signication and that social signication belongs to being. Such is the
13 Castoriadis sees the Abyss as a verbal, actively resisting, chaotic, source of creativity that the act of creation itself brings about. No transcendence is implied. See Castoriadis (1997), p. 322. 14 The only reality . . . is social reality, notes Castoriadis. When one speaks of the reality principle in psychoanalysis, it is not physical reality, since even a psychotic does not doubt that he will be killed if he should throw himself from the roof of a skyscraper. The reality he does not want to know about . . . is social reality, lial relationships, ones relationship to objects of desire (1997), p. 191. 15 This Groundless underside is, however, to be distinguished from psychotic phantasy or hallucination. Castoriadis characterizes the nature of psychosis as analogous to totalized closure or heteronomy since it subsumes alterity within pre-existing themes.

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meaning of the religious core of the institution of all known societies . . . (1997, p. 316) For institutional reality to function, societies must cover over the contingent character of meaning by conferring being upon it and, at the same time, their own social meaning upon being. Yet, while these same practices are taken to dene the role of religion,16 they also provide the basis for critique. Here, the failure to see the psychological ground of religious truths becomes signicant, since this leads to efforts at totalization, the widespread closure that more accurately reects Castoriadis cautionary position regarding these religious impulses. In his analysis of this totalization, Castoriadis (1997) argues that in order for a particular religious signication to become effective, that is, for the collective to support its claims, it must necessarily bind together the origins of the world with those of the society (p. 318). From this perspective, what determines whether such ideals become problematic is attributing transcendent (therefore immutable) legitimacy to what are, more accurately, imaginary human creations. Also worth mentioning here is the broad sense of the term religious that Castoriadis employs. While Western monotheistic religions have been among the greatest conspirators against revealing the constructed nature of transcendent realms, by no means does he restrict his critique of totalizing tendencies to these traditions. The adhesive holding these bonds in place is not limited to mainstream religious cultures. Equally effective for this task are rational doctrines as expressed in the laws of nature or the laws of history. Thus, in a manner comparable to orthodox religions, many philosophical positions emphasizing the universality of reason have also entailed the covering back over of alterity and of its source (p. 213). Similarly, modern science may become attached to its worldview such that what exists beyond its particular way of seeing and describing the world may be discounted as either non-existent or of limited merit. In short, Castoriadis does not simply oppose religion in the strict sense, but rather that which seeks to arrest the constantly changing nature of signications that nonetheless hold society together within an imaginary matrix. The broad scope of this intention with respect to the sacred is made clear not only in his consideration of the primary importance of meaning. It is often stated in more direct terms, such as when he contends that a believers cathexis in her Jehovah, her Christ, her Allah, an NSDAP members cathexis in the Fuhrer, a CPSU members cathexis in the General Secretary, or a scientists cathexis in the hereditary character of intelligence (leading him to doctor observational data) is not labile (p. 165). Which is to say, that whenever truth attempts to substitute itself above the ongoing creative/destructive movement of the imagination therein denying the radical imaginary by putting in its place a particular imaginary creation it can be considered sacred, or heteronomous. For Castoriadis, all signication ultimately arises, and must be seen to arise, from the same imaginary source (p. 326).17 To admit this Chaos, however, is to face up to the realization that there is nothing beyond the human domain, nothing at least which could be characterized as Being. In a
16 Interestingly, although Jung had a different view of psychotic phantasy material, he made this same case for separation between phantasy as a meaning or reality function and its independence from the pleasure principle to Freud directly in Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, part 2 (c.1912). Cf. Symbols of Transformation, pp. 134ff. Freuds rejection of this idea at that time could not have been more unequivocal. 17 Such a way of stating it emphasizes the autonomous relation to signication. In more logical terms, Castoriadis (1997) notes that, in order for something to have signication, it has to be situated on the near side of absolute necessity as well as beyond absolute contingency. . . . This amounts to saying that social signication . . . is elsewhere. It is at the same time metanecessary and metacontingent (p. 315). In effect, Castoriadis is arguing that closing off the ux of possible meanings is required, but the ground of such closed forms is and must ultimately remain contingent.

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way that is reminiscent of Ricoeurs warning against reifying the unconscious, Castoriadis argues that to give this source a transcendental existence is psychologically regressive. It is to enter into a wishful relation to other-worldliness that suggests the presence of an Oedipal-based idolatry. In speaking of the emotional basis for such an attribution towards the Abyss, he notes how the so-called need for religion corresponds to the refusal on the part of human beings to recognize absolute alterity, the limit of all established signication. . . . from its origins and always, religion responds to human beings incapacity to accept what has been poorly named transcendence; that is to say, they cannot stand up straight and confront the Abyss. (1997, p. 324) Such a confrontation with the Abyss requires facing ones own mortality and alienation that the protective signications of religious symbols can never resolve. Thus, Castoriadis extends his critique beyond religion and into the human relation with an unspeakable, unstable imaginary that precedes and gives rise to meaning. In this relation, signication is the only means by which we can respond to this Chaos, yet this existential ux makes all meaning potentially religious or sacred. Eternalized signications remain a defensive reaction for Castoriadis, although the assurances of less impulsive, rational intelligence remain impermanent, revisable constructions. This implies that valuation is never absolute, that it is ultimately of secondary importance behind the underlying processes out of which meaning begins. The essential element, therefore, is that ones relation to these forms remains tractable. This attitude effectively requires that the need for social forms is kept distinct from the particular forms this need may manifest. On the other side, one must acknowledge the inescapable anxiety that underlies every signication. Although the maturation required for such tasks echoes the Freudian project of questioning our relation to social structures, Castoriadis uses his reconception of the psyche and the identity between individual and social worlds to pursue a more far-reaching correction. To some degree, Castoriadis will follow Freuds thoughts regarding the religious indoctrination of children: Thus by the time the childs intellect awakens, the doctrines of religion have already become unassailable (Freud, 1927, p. 48). As noted above, this line of argumentation already assumes that the relation to such structures is open to alteration. But Castoriadis sees the conditioning inuences of the social environment in broader terms. Unlike Freud, he does not restrict this conditioning to the orthodoxy of the religious domain. In describing the scope of his position, Castoriadis (1997) observes that every newborn baby in society has imposed upon it, via its socialization, a language. Now, a language is not only a language; it is a world. The newborn infant also has imposed upon it various forms of conduct and behaviour, feelings and repulsion, and so on (p. 84). Following Lacan, these statements underline the prior point that the Oedipal drama is shaped by particular cultural restrictions which, to a greater or lesser extent, are mediated through parental relationships. Thus, the condition of a given social structure, that is, whether it encourages or cuts short cross-examination, can affect the Oedipus complex. Since the introjection of these forms (the socialization process) is ongoing, the political world has both social and psychological import.18 The internalization of these institutions
18 Castoriadis (1997) notes that the power of institutions cannot rely solely on coercion. It also requires at least a minimum amount of voluntary compliance. The fact that such institutions are internalized by the individual throughout his life underlines the magnitude of this challenge, while admitting that the ego can only be disentangled from Oedipal dynamics to a certain extent (p. 134). Yet, as Castoriadis also notes, nobody ever guaranteed us that we are entitled to a conict-free inner life (p. 128).

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means that the possibility of creating individuals capable of questioning them goes handin-hand with the nature and tness of normative structures. For such interrogations are also dependent upon the state of these organizations. The foregrounding of the psychological difculties involved in the relation to institutions, while obviously important, can also serve to deect this equally signicant social dimension. Castoriadis therefore suggests a politics of autonomy whereby cultural forms are assembled that, when internalized, are able to enlarge rather than limit the capacity for interrogation. These forms would include such elements as a predominance of equal rights, of human rights, and the promotion of effective participation in all forms of power, among other things (p. 134). While the relative dearth of such conditions historically is shown by Castoriadis contention that they have only been approximated twicein the Golden Age of the Athenian polis and in Western liberal democraciesthe potential for the attenuation of both psychological and social oppression justies its promotion over dictatorial political and religious forms. Being respectful of other cultures does not necessitate that we passively acquiesce to their coercive elements. In this way, Castoriadis issues a challenge towards all sacred institutions that seek to dissimulate their imaginary ground. Since the nature of totalizing closure mirrors the certainty with which the authoritative conscience oppresses the ego, Castoriadis sees the psychological and social domains as intimately interconnected. As a result, the inner and outer worlds are perpetually intertwined in his thought. Yet, this analogy in turn becomes more than mere analogy. Rather, it becomes descriptive of the ubiquitous expressions of the mechanical for-itself that resides not only in each of the psychoanalytic Instances or agencies, but also in a variety of cultural and political processes. In attempting to convey the entanglements of these relations in psychoanalysis, Castoriadis points out that the encounter with existing institutions is the encounter with the concrete Ego of the patient. This Ego19 is largely a social fabrication; it is designed to function in a given social setting and to preserve, continue, and reproduce this settingthat is, the institutions that created it (p. 131). Insofar as Castoriadis psychoanalytic objectives aim to correct this state of affairsthat is, to depotentiate the magico-religious attachments between ego and superego within this individual-social relationhe is anticipated by Freuds critique of religion. But to the degree that Castoriadis wishes to emphasize the signicance of objective relations to social institutions, the Freudian emphasis on neurosis must be complemented by considerations of the individual in a social world. Overcoming the sacred within the social imaginary requires both the political freedom and the individual autonomy necessary to question every law that society creates. References
Beaudoin, M. C. (1992). Ricoeurs contribution to psychoanalysis: A critique of his critics. The American Imago, 49(1), 3562. Castoriadis, C. (1975). The Imaginary Institution of Society (trans: Blamey, K.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press and Oxford: Polity Press. Castoriadis, C. (1997). World in Fragments: Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination (trans & Ed: Curtis,D.A.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. DiCenso, J. J. (1999). The Other Freud: Religion, Culture and Psychoanalysis. Routledge: London & New York. Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition, 4.
19 The capitalization of Ego appears to be for the purpose of emphasizing its analogous composition with social institutions and their corresponding resistances to interrogation.

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Freud, S. (19151917). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. Standard Edition, 1516. Freud, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. Standard Edition, 18. Freud, S. (1927). The future of an illusion. Standard Edition, 21. Freud, S. (19531974). Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols, (trans & Ed: Strachey, J.). London: Hogarth Press. Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (trans: Savage, D.). New Haven & London: Yale University Press (1977).

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