R.

Gustafson 1 Drives and their Representations: The Space of Fiction in Psychoanalytic Theory and Treatment Philosophical Introduction: Freud and the Epoch of Representation In his Envoi, Jacque Derrida, as part of a more general treatment of the philosophical concept of representation, raises a suggestive question about psychoanalysis in particular: in Freuds use of metaphors of representation to describe the drive [Trieb], does psychoanalysis merely repeat the traditional, metaphysical determination of this concept or does Freuds discourse deviate from it? Does the vocabulary of Vorstellung, of the Vorstellungsreprasentant, in its abundance, its complexity, the prolix difficulties of the discourse that carries it, manifest an episode of the epoch of representation, as if Freud were thrashing about confusedly under the implacable constraints of a program and a conceptual heritage? (123) In asking whether or not Freuds discourse is another episode of the epoch of representation, here Derrida situates psychoanalysis in terms of the problematic of representational subjectivity outlined by Heidegger in his essay Die Zeit des Weltbildes. Specifically, when Heidegger speaks of an epoch of representation, he is defining what he takes to be the fundamental metaphysical position of the modern age: the post-Cartesian determination of Being as an objective presence represented by and for a subject. According to Heidegger, while representational positing was certainly a factual occurrence prior to Descartes, the specificity of this modern epoch of representation consists in the fact that for it representation has become the sole model of thinking of the subject [] in its relation to the object (Derrida 111; italics mine). Significantly, here Derrida crosses Freud with Heidegger at what might be called the deconstructive moment of his reading of the latter. For Derrida it is problematic that Heideggers account treats the Cartesian subjectum the ubiquity of this someone who sends himself or gives himself objects (Derrida 133) as himself a representative, an envoy destined by the history [Geschick] of Being to arrive at this epochal destination. Representation, for Heidegger, is thus the

R. Gustafson 2 fate [Schicksale] to which we are driven. The dominance of representational subjectivity, in other words, is for him a pure presentation sent by Being; this epoch, as an ontological envoi [missive], is intolerant of the kind of chance deviations characteristic of what Derrida elsewhere calls writing, the trace, dissemination, etc. It is for this reason that Derrida suggests that the whole schema of Heideggers reading [of the epoch of representation] be contested in principle, historially deconstructed (122), insofar as it constitutively marginalizes the chance of there being a failure to arrive at this epochal destination.1 Returning to the passage with which I began, Derrida can thus be read as suggesting that it is questionable as to whether or not the Freudian concept of representation can be totally contained by Heideggers problematic. It is in this sense that psychoanalysis is related to what Derrida calls an historial deconstruction of Heideggers discourse; if the drive theory, in its recourse to a metaphorics of representation, is not the repetition sans difference of the traditional concept of representation if this peculiar science of psychoanalysis, sent by Freud, fails to arrive at the destination proscribed by the Heideggarian problematic of representation then this would be the basis for a different kind of thinking of the subject: In other words, are so-called modern developments like Freudian psychoanalysis, but we could cite others thinkable only with reference [] to a unifying epochal determination of representation, which they would continue to represent? (Derrida 125; italics mine). While Derrida unfolds the stakes of this question, he does not offer an exhaustive answer to it. The following paper, cued by the philosophical framework outlined in Envoi, is an attempt to develop a finer-grained reading of Freuds concept(s) of representation in his account of the drives

Derridas stance toward Heidegger here, as it is elsewhere, is obviously much more complicated than I have been able to present. For instance, in the very same passage that I have just cited, Derrida says in fact that Heidegger would acknowledge (122) that if there has been representation, it is precisely because the envoi of Being divides itself, defies the legein, frustrates the destination of the envoi. He nevertheless still asserts that the epochal reading Heidegger proposes is problematical from the beginning, at least as a normative reading.

R. Gustafson 3 and their fates,2 as well as its clinical implications. Unfortunately, to do justice to this topic is beyond the scope of a single paper. As such, it is necessary to begin by defining the parameters of the present inquiry. Specifically, here my aim will be to trace the evolution of Freudian representation, as it is determined in the drive theory, from The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) to the meta-psychological papers on The Drives and their Fates, Repression, and The Unconscious (1915).3 In Part I, I begin by demonstrating how, from its inception, the concept of the drive required Freud to speak with metaphors of representation, since it attempts to account for the relation between the body and the mind. This leads Freud in the Three Essays to define the drive, according to what I call his first order concept of drive representation, as a psychical representative [psychischer Reprsentant] of organic forces originating in the body. Ultimately, however, this logic of drive representation was insufficient. Namely, while the Three Essays extended the empirical concept of sexuality by developing a sophisticated set of terms to classify manifest forms of sexual differentiation it lacked a sufficient account of the psychical mechanism by which the drives produce sexual differentiation. Through the problematic of the Triebschicksal, Freud developed what I call a second order concept of drive representation (in primal repression) according to which drives are not only psychical representatives but also themselves representational, capable of producing what Freud calls an ideational representative [Vorstellung-

Throughout the essay, following Laplanches suggestion, outlined in detail in Chapter 1 of Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, I will translate the German Trieb as drive rather than instinct. My adoption of the translation of Triebschicksale as fate of the drive or drive fate, instead of the Standard Editions drive vicissitude, is meant to call attention to the linguistic affinity, mentioned above, between Freud and Heidegger. 3 A more systematic account of Freudian representation would need to consider his revision to the drive theory in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In particular, Freuds statements about the death drive as working silently, functioning less conspicuously than the life drive, etc. would be particularly significant to consider as a moment of nonrepresentability in Freuds concept of drive representation. Freud also makes significant comments in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, which reflect modifications to his logic of drive representation implied by the adoption of the so-called structural model of the psyche in The Ego and the Id. In this vein, a more comprehensive account of drive representation would need to deal with Freuds discussion of anxiety as the affective-energetic (as opposed to ideational) representative of the drives and the relationship between ideational representations and affective attunement more generally.

R. Gustafson 4 Reprsentanz] as well as a third order concept of drive representation (in secondary repression), according to which the repressed ideational copy of a drive is itself capable of re-printing copies of itself, which can in turn produce differentiated copies of themselves ad infinitum, through fusion with associated thoughts or perceptions encountered in the external world. I classify this shift between the Three Essays and the meta-psychological papers as a movement from a restricted to a general concept of drive representation. In Part II, I argue that the clinical correlate of this evolution in Freuds concept of drive representation is his roughly coterminous4 refinement of psychoanalytic technique: the development of the theory of transference. There are many justifications for thinking about these two developments as reciprocal. For instance, in the meta-psychological papers, Freud frequently cites clinical observation and analytic experience in those passages in which he attempts to justify the introduction of his new concept of drive representation. Moreover, the notion of transference developed in the technical papers assumes, or at least anticipates, an understanding of the drives as both representative of somatic forces but also repetitively representational. 5 This leads to my more general claim, that the specificity of psychoanalysis as a science consists in the fact that it occupies what might be called a space of fiction or representation. As we will see, it is in this sense that psychoanalysis is significant to the historial deconstruction, mentioned above, insofar as his
4

Because I am arguing that Freuds technical papers on transference (1912-14) precede, assume, and anticipate the modifications to his concept of drive representation in the meta-psychological papers (1915), I will not be able to provide a synoptic account of transference across Freuds theory. This would involve considering the case of Dora, as well as Freuds discussion of the topic in Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937). A fuller account of this topic would need to consider how the modification and extension of Freuds concept of drive representation in Beyond influenced his understanding of the technique of transference. Here my aim is simply to establish rigorously the reciprocal relations between drive representation and transference in terms of the foundations of Freuds theory. 5 Beyond the reasons mentioned above, which are internal to Freuds discourse, there are another set of reasons for considering the concept of representation in psychoanalysis in relation to specifically the technique of transference, which relate to the Freud-Heidegger connection outlined by Derrida. This would involve considering Heideggers remarks on the technical determination of modern science, not only in Die Zeit des Weltbildes, but also in the essay often translated as The Question Concerning Technology [Die Frage Nach der Technik] or more, literally, The Question Concerning Technique in relation to the concept of technique at play in Freuds Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psychoanalysis [Weitere Ratschlge zur Technik der Psychoanalyse]. While I cannot directly develop this connection in this paper, I think that some of the basic steps toward making such a comparison, at least from Freuds end, are spelled out in the second section below.

R. Gustafson 5 general concept of drive representation leads Freud, even as he makes recourse to it, to suspend the traditional opposition between (real) presentation and (fictive) re-presentation implied by the metaphysical interpretation of this concept. I. The Concept(s) of Representation in Freuds Theory of the Drives The Restricted Concept of Drive Representation in The Three Essays In his Editors Note to The Drives and their Fates, James Strachey comments upon what he argues is an apparent contradiction in Freuds use of the language of representation in his account of the drives. Namely, whereas in this text, as well as in his previous major treatment of the drives (The Three Essays), Freud describes the drive as a psychical representative [psychischer Reprsentant] of organic forces originating in the body, beginning with the two meta-psychological papers which follow this one (Repression and The Unconscious), Freud speaks of psychical representatives of the drive [Triebreprsentanz]. In other words, while in his earlier works, the drive is figured as a representative, in Freuds later works the drive is figured as representational, registered in the psyche by virtue of an idea [Vorstellung] standing for it. Peculiarly, after adumbrating this terminological shift, Strachey concludes with the following: It may be, however, that the contradiction is more apparent than real, and that its solution lies precisely in the ambiguity of the concept itself a frontier-concept between the physical and the mental (111; italics mine). Now, while Strachey is in a certain sense correct insofar as, in both accounts, somatic forces undergo representational modification in order to be registered psychically by treating the two concepts of drive representation as oppositional, he is led to propose a solution to the contradiction between them which effectively effaces their differences, saying that these are more apparent than real. In other words, although Strachey invokes the ambiguity of the concept [of the drive] itself, he ultimately reduces this ambiguity,

R. Gustafson 6 flattening out the differences between Freuds language of representation in the Three Essays and the meta-psychological papers.6 However, if we consider first of all why the concept of the drive is ambiguous, this will incline us against Stracheys solution. In this vein, it is worth noting that Freud himself, in the Preface to the Fourth Edition of the Three Essays written during the month of May 1920, as he completed the final revisions to Beyond the Pleasure Principle had already addressed this issue. There, Freud, reflecting on the favorable reception of what he called the purely psychological theses (133) of psychoanalytic theory, wrote the following about his theory of the drives: That part of [psychoanalytic] theory, however, which lies on the frontiers [angrenzende] of biology and the foundations of which are contained in this little work is still faced with undiminished contradiction (italics mine). Freuds use of the territorial metaphor (frontier) to describe the epistemic region (or, more precisely, the lack of a proper region) occupied by the concept of the drive is particularly significant. For it is precisely this component of psychoanalytic theory that which is between the purely psychological and the purely biological which faces undiminished contradiction. In other words, even as Freud retrospectively references the foundations of the drive theory to be found in the Three Essays, it is to call attention to the fact that this concept faces undiminished contradiction because it lacks any substantial foundation in a determinate epistemic region. The order of the drive qua concept is thus neither purely psychological nor purely biological, but rather is of the relation between these domains. As we will see in this section, it is this irreducible crossing or transference [bertragung] between mind (psychology) and body (biology), characteristic of the phenomenon of the drive,
6

The reason that Strachey finds specifically a contradiction here is that he reads Freud as locating the concept of the drive on the psychical side of the mind-body frontier in the first case and on the somatic side in the second case. I do not think, though, that there are any passages in Repression or The Unconscious that would suggest that because Freud in these instances speaks of the drives as psychically representational that he therefore no longer thinks of the drive as also a psychical representative. The second view, as I have already described above, and as we will see in more detail below, does not so much contradict as it supplements the first account of drive representation, insofar as it allows Freud to account for the psychical mechanism by which the drives can be productive of sexual differentiation.

R. Gustafson 7 which necessitated Freuds recourse to a metaphorics of representation to conceptualize it. This is what we find in Freuds first published definition of the drive, in the fifth section (Component Drives and Erotogenic Zones) of the first essay of The Three Essays: By a drive is provisionally to be understood the psychical representative of an endosomatic, continuously flowing source of stimulation, as contrasted with a stimulus, which is set up by single excitations coming from without (168; italics mine). There are a few basic features to note here about what I would call Freuds first order concept of drive representation. Most basically, the concept of representation here provides Freud with a language for speaking about a relation i.e.: between biological forces (from the body) and their psychical manifestation (in the mind). According to this logic, the drive is a force located in the psychical order, which functions as a delegate of forces originating in the somatic order. Secondly, the logic of representation here is conditioned by another relation i.e.: between internal and external. Namely, Freud makes a distinction here between an endsomatic, continuously flowing source of stimulation and a mere stimulus; the former, since it is internal (and thus unavoidable) places a constant demand on the mind for discharge, whereas the latter, since it is external (and thus avoidable) makes only an inconstant demand for discharge. While this rather tidy concept of drive representation certainly does lay the basic foundations for Freuds theory, it nevertheless suffers from a complication and explanatory insufficiency, which is expressed in the sentences that follow the definition: The concept of the drive is thus one of those lying on the frontier between the mental and the physical. The simplest and likeliest assumption as to the nature of drives would seem to be that in itself a drive is without quality, and, so far as mental life is concerned, is only to be regarded as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work (168; italics mine). Peculiarly, in this passage, immediately after he comes to this conclusion about the fundamental metaphoricity or relationality of the concept of the

R. Gustafson 8 drive in language that the 1920 preface to this text, during its talk of undiminished contradiction, repeats Freud steps back, as it were, and tries to concretize the concept by speaking of the true nature of the drives and of what the drive in itself is. In what I would call the restricted economy of drive representation in the Three Essays, Freud, referring to the simplest and likeliest assumption, says that drives qua representations are only quantitatively differential; defining the relation of representation here solely in terms of a strict correspondence with a determinate quantity of biological force (the drive is only to be regarded as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work), so far as mental life is concerned the drive in itself lacks quality. This restricted concept of drive representation, however, leaves unanswered the question of the mechanism by which sexual drives even if they are themselves without quality can produce the kind of qualitative differences in sexual aims, objects, etc. categorized in the Three Essays. In other words, despite the rich collocation of empirical evidence gathered in the Three Essays, which supports the thesis that the drives would be productive of qualitative psychical differences, Freuds restricted logic of drive representation here (i.e.: of a one-to-one correspondence between an organ as the simple origin, and the drive as its qualitatively nondifferentiated, energic manifestation) cannot provide an adequate theoretical account of the mechanism by which drives produce this diversity. The General Concept of Drive Representation in the Meta-Psychological Papers It is only through an account of the fates of drives, which Freud defines as modes of defense against the drives (124), that he will be able to develop a better account of the psychically differentiated formations of sexually-based mental illnesses. In this vein, the particular drive fate of repression, which Freud will for some time privilege as the primary mode of defense, is particularly significant, as this leads him to revise his concept of drive representation. It will be through this

R. Gustafson 9 modification of the logic of representation at play in the drive theory that Freud will be able to account for the differences in the appearance or representation of the drives as psychical structures. Freud begins the paper on Repression by saying that the possibility of repression a concept, he mentions, which could not have been formulated before the time of psychoanalytic studies (146) is not easy to deduce. Repression, which Freud defines most basically as the type of drive fate in which a drive impulse may [] meet with resistances which seek to make it inoperative, by definition poses a problem, given the close connection between the theory of the drives and the dominance of the pleasure principle. Specifically, given that for Freud, according to the pleasure principle, the psychical apparatus tends to discharge the unbound energy or pressure produced by a drive in order to reduce tension in the mind, and given the fact that the satisfaction of a drive tends to lower such tension, it seems problematic in the first place for a drive to ever be rendered inoperative. As Freud puts it, a necessary condition of its [repression] happening must clearly be that the drives attainment of its aim should produce un-pleasure instead of pleasure (146); however, we cannot well imagine such a contingency, since there are no such drives: satisfaction of a drive is always pleasurable. The basic explanatory problem for the concept of repression, then, is to account for how the satisfaction of a drive, despite being the diminishment of drive pressure (and thus seemingly pleasurable), could produce the un-pleasure requisite to triggering the repression of the drive. Freud begins his response to this problem by citing clinical experience, as we meet with it in psychoanalytic practice (147), saying that we learn there of many instances in which the satisfaction of a drive which is under repression would be quite possible, and further, that in every instance such a satisfaction would be pleasurable in itself, but that very often this satisfaction is irreconcilable with what Freud calls rather vaguely at this point in his theory other claims and intensions.7 It

Freud will specify these other claims and intensions later on, in particular with his account of the super-ego.

R. Gustafson 10 is because of this conflict that a satisfaction of a drive, while producing pleasure in one place might also cause un-pleasure in another. Thus, Freud deduces, for repressions to occur, the force of un-pleasure owing to the attainment of a drive (in one place) must quantitatively exceed the pleasure of its attainment (in another). Nevertheless, this explanation, as Freud well knew, was insufficient for a number of reasons. Most saliently, Freuds explanation of how a drives attainment would be deflected by repression already assumed that repression had occurred; his explanation of a case in which the satisfaction of a drive, as pleasurable, would still lead to un-pleasure, already assumed that the drive was under repression (147). In order to sort out this difficulty, Freud will go on to make a distinction between primary and secondary repression, and it is at this point that the previous language of representation which he employed to describe the drives undergoes a remarkable revision. Speaking of a few characteristics of repression that have been observed clinically (148),8 Freud says that we have reason to assume that there is a primal repression, in which the psychical ideational (representative) of the drive [der psychischen (Vorstellungs-) Reprsentanz des Triebes] is denied entry into consciousness. While the term Vorstellung or idea had certainly appeared previously in Freuds discourse, this moment in the paper on Repression, so far as I know, is the first time in which it appears in conjunction with the theory of the drives. 9 While the language of Reprsentanz and thus a certain logic of representation had from the beginning been related to the concept of the drive, the difference here is that for the first time Freud also speaks of the drive as representational.

I underscore these recurring appeals to clinical practice and analytic experience here to foreground my argument in the next section: that the development of the clinical technique of the transference is concomitant with the revision of Freuds concept of drive representation. 9 The term does not occur in either The Three Essays or The Drives and their Fates, Freuds two most synoptic accounts of the drive theory at this point. The absence of the language of Vorstellung in The Drives and their Fates seems particularly significant. In other words, of all the mechanisms of defense dealt with in that paper, it is only the fate of repression privileged by Freud which makes recourse to the language of representation.

R. Gustafson 11 Freuds innovation here is the subtle stipulation that primary repression does not involve the denial of the drive itself from consciousness, but that what is repressed is instead the ideational representative of the drive.10 As Freud puts it, with this a fixation is established; the representative in question persists unaltered from then onwards and the drive remains attached to it (148). In other words, in the effort to account for the phenomenon of the mechanism of repression, Freud is led to supplement his first order concept of drive representation according to which the drive is a psychical representative of somatic stimulus tension by developing a second order concept of representation of the drives as capable of producing ideational copies of themselves. Now, because Freud understands this primal repression as incomplete repression demands a persistent expenditure of force, and if this were to cease the success of the repression would be jeopardized, so that a fresh act of repression would be necessary (151) the diversion of the ideational representative of the drive, rather than restricting its presentation absolutely, instead leads to the production of what Freud calls mental derivatives of the repressed representative [psychische Abkmmlinge der verdrngten Reprasentanz]. This introduces a third order concept of representation into Freuds theory of the drives. That is, the drive is defined as a psychical representative of organic forces (1st order), which itself produces ideational representatives (2nd order), which when repressed produce or dissimulate copies of themselves (3rd order) what Strachey translates as derivatives [Abkmmlinge], but which also can be translated more literally as descendants or offspring. What is significant about this third order of drive representation is that the derivative also admits of undergoing fusion with such trains of thought as, originating elsewhere, have come into
10

As Freud puts it in the paper on The Unconscious: A drive can never become an object of consciousnessonly the idea [Vorstellung] that represents the drive can. Even in the unconscious, moreover, a drive cannot be represented otherwise than by an idea [Vorstellung]. If the drive did not attach itself to an idea or manifest itself as an affective state, we could know nothing about it. When we nevertheless speak of an unconscious drive impulse or of a repressed drive impulse, the looseness of phraseology is a harmless one. We can only mean a drive impulse the ideational representative of which is unconscious, for nothing else comes into consideration (177).

R. Gustafson 12 associative connection with it (148). On this point Freud emphasizes that it is a mistake to emphasize only the repulsion which operates from the direction of the conscious upon what is to be repressed; quite as important is the attraction exercised by what was primally repressed upon everything with which it can establish a connection. In other words, the process of secondary repression, or what Freud calls after-pressure, admits of an infinite possibility of representational differentiation; every time a copy of the drives ideational representation undergoes repression, the force of the drive dictates that it should associate with memories, perceptions of the external world, etc. to produce a new copy. It is in this sense that in the paper on Repression we find a fulmination of the tidy logic of representation of the Three Essays. If previously Freud could speak of a simple correspondence between organs and the representative drives of organs to account for drive differentiation, here he introduces several new layers of explanatory strata to account for an almost exponential proliferation of psychical differentiation of drive expression. It is through a constant conflict between the repetitive and representational force of the drives (as productive of tension) and the force of repression (as an attempt at fixation) that leads to psychical differentiation. If I have spoken of first, second, and third order logics of representation, however, this might also be somewhat misleading, given the fact that for Freud the drive seems to present an infinite reserve of force for the production of ideational simulacra. Despite the force of repression, he says, this does not hinder the drive representative [Triebreprsentanz] from continuing to exist in the unconscious, from organizing itself further, putting out [zu bilden] derivatives [Abkmmlinge] and establishing connections (149). There is thus a kind of infinite capacity on the part of the drives for the production of bilden: copies, fictions, delegates, offspring, images of fantasy, etc. Moreover, it is precisely because of this understanding of the drives as fictional (representational) and fictionalizing (representing) that something like psychoanalytic therapeutic

R. Gustafson 13 technique is possible. Insisting on the impossibility of the capacity of repression to withhold from conscious all the derivatives of what was primally repressed (149), Freud stipulates that if these derivatives have become sufficiently removed from the repressed representative [that is: if the representation of the representation the offspring of the ideational offspring of the drive is sufficiently differentiated], whether owing to the adoption or distortion [Entstellungen i.e.: the Entstellungen of the repressed (Vorstellungs-) Reprsentanz] or by reason of the number of intermediate links, they have free access to the conscious. In other words, it is precisely in proportion to their distance [Entfernung] and dis-figurement [Entstellungen] differentiation relative to what was originally repressed [ursprnglich Verdrngten] that the derivations of the drive representative can gain access to consciousness and be subject to the work of psychoanalysis. As Freud specifies, the work of analysis gets underway when the patients produce such derivatives of the repressed, as, in consequence from which we reconstitute a conscious translation of the repressed representatives. It is to this connection between analytic technique and drive representation that I now turn. II. Certified Copies: Transference and Freudian Representation Although Freuds first paper, in what forms a trilogy of technical papers on transference, The Dynamics of Transference (1912), was written prior to his formalization of the concept of repression, there we already see indications of the relationship between the concept of drive representation and this therapeutic technique. This is particularly evident in Freuds discussion of what he calls the stereotype plate [Klischee] literally, a formed plate or block in the framing of this paper. There Freud speaks of the specific method (99), developed by every person over the course of their lives, determining the conduct of his erotic life that is, the preconditions for his falling in love which he lays down and the drives he satisfies and the aims he sets himself in the course of it. It is this method that produces what might be described as a

R. Gustafson 14 stereotype plate (or several such), which is constantly repeated constantly reprinted afresh in the course of a persons life [] and which is certainly not entirely insusceptible to change in the face of recent experiences (100). Although Freud does not employ the language of Vorstellung yet, his description of the production of the Klischee bears several structural similarities to the concept of drive representation that we noted in the paper on Repression. Most importantly, the production of the Klischee is understood to be constitutively repetitive and susceptible to differentiation. Despite the fact that this word has the sense of a stereotype and thus of a kind of fixed or identical image, Freuds parenthetical, a stereotype plate (or several such), already indicates that the Klischee is precisely not identical with itself. Moreover, the metaphors of the press and printing constantly repeated [regelmig wiederholt] constantly reprinted afresh [neu abgedruckt] further suggests that at its origin the Klischee is precisely not a clich, that when it comes to the mental representation of sexual desire (to the production of an imago, to use another term employed in the essay), there is no certified copy no proper original production subject to reproduction but rather an incessant printing-reprinting that is always already underway. As the essay progresses, the sense in which this paper anticipates the mechanisms of drive representation developed in the paper on Repression heightens, as Freud proceeds to differentiate between two types of libidinal impulses: the portion which undergoes the full process of psychical development (100) by reaching consciousness, and another type that has been held up in the course of development and has been kept away from consciousness and from reality. This latter portion of libido, which Freud says is prevented from further expansion except in phantasy remains in the unconscious. This portion of phantasmatic libido, which has undergone what Freud will call repression (although he has not yet fully articulated this vocabulary), can be considered the repressed ideational representative of the drive and its derivatives. Retroactively mapping the

R. Gustafson 15 representational schema of Repression on this proto-theory of repression seems particularly justified, moreover, given the fact that it is precisely at this moment in The Dynamics of Transference that the language of representation or Vorstellung appears. Here Freud speaks of the libidinal anticipatory ideas [Erwartungsvorstellungen] produced by the unconscious phantasmatic libido, which come into play, at least in the case of the neurotic, for every new person whom he meets (100). In other words, the Erwartungsvorstellungen here can be understood roughly along the same lines of the Abkmmlinge of the repressed VorstellungsReprsentanz, as those deflected images of desire reprinted, resuscitated and differentiated by fresh perceptions. It is because of this repetitively representational character of the drives, then, that something like the technique of transference is possible, insofar as the figure of the analyst and the scene of analysis can trigger a repetition but also a differentiation of fixated libidinal impulses. This complex structure of repetition and differentiation is particularly significant, moreover, to Freuds understanding of the transference as a form of resistance. Specifically, Freud understands the presence of transference in the session as provoking a resistance a block in the treatment because the transference idea has both the appearance of affiliation with the repressed ideational structure while also being sufficiently different from it to warrant its partial or disfigured entry into the analytic situation: We infer from this experience that the transference-idea has penetrated into consciousness in front of any other possible associations because it satisfies the resistance (103). To extend the metaphor of filiation implicit in Freuds concept of the Abkmmlinge or descendent of the repressed, the transference idea would be a kind of bastard offspring of the repressed material which bears the sign of its parentage even as it dissimulates it. It is precisely when the unconscious ideational complex is about to be revealed that the transference, as a kind of artificial version of this complex, is sent.

R. Gustafson 16 If this relationship between the repetitive character of the drives and the possibility of the transference is implicit in The Dynamics of the Transference, then in Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through (1914) Freud makes this connection explicit when he says that the transference is itself only a piece of repetition (151). Moreover, in this essay he also further develops the relationship between the specifically representational character of the drives and the transference, insofar as throughout the essay he speaks of the scene of the transference, at least implicitly, as a kind of fiction. However, what is peculiar about Freuds language here, as well as in Observations on Transference-Love (1914), is the inconsistency with which he speaks of the transference as real or unreal. For instance, while at times Freud understands the transference as a case of the repetitive representation of the drives in the classical sense of a re-presentation or reproduction (mimesis) of an originally repressed [ursprnglich Verdrngten] ideational copy of the drive, at other moments it is precisely the notion of a real origin (in opposition with an apparent, repetitive, reproductive copy) which comes undone. This is most apparent in a particularly rich passage in Repeating, Remembering, and Working-Through, in which Freud speaks of the scene of the transference in its relation to the repetitive representation of the drives, via the metaphor of a playground: We admit it [repetition] into the transference as a playground in which it is allowed almost complete freedom and in which it is expected to display to us everything in the way of pathogenic drives that is hidden in the patients mind [] we regularly succeed in giving all the symptoms of the illness a new transference meaning and in replacing his ordinary neurosis by a transference-neurosis, of which he can be cured [] The transference thus creates an intermediate region between illness and real life through which the transition from the one to the other is made. The new condition has taken over all the features of the illness; but it represents an artificial illness [] It is a piece of real experience, but one which has been made possible by especially favourable conditions, and it is of a provisional nature (154; italics mine). In accordance with the metaphor of the playground here, the transference can best be understood as the production of a kind of artificial space an intermediate region between illness and real life in which drives comes to presence, repetitively representing themselves and their pathogenic

R. Gustafson 17 representations; the artifice of the transference, its capacity for conjuring up a piece of real life (152), is the condition for the possibility of pathogenic drive representations presenting themselves. Significantly, although Freud calls this manifestation of the drive a piece of real experience, his account of the technique of the transference implies that this so-called real piece of experience undergoes a further representational differentiation or fictionalization. In accordance with the condition for the appearance of the repressed that we saw in the paper on Repression (that the offspring of the repressed ideational representation undergo sufficient differentiation vis--vis the repressed), it is precisely because the drives play, because they appear differently do not come to presence purely, but instead as a kind of uncanny double that they may appear. In other words, it is because of the difference between the representation of the drive in the transference and its previous representations, which have undergone repression, that something like a therapeutic intervention is possible. However, the language with which Freud speaks of the transference his statement that the transference represents an artificial illness [stellt eine artefizielle Krankheit] and that the region of the scene of transference is one between illness and real life deserves further consideration. For one, the concept of an artificial illness is more complex then might first appear, since for Freud an illness itself is already in a sense artificial. This is to say that the re-production of the illness as artificial is the reproduction of a reproduction, much in the sense that the derivatives of the repressed were understood in the paper on Repression as a copy of a copy of a copy, etc. In saying that the transference is neither purely real, nor purely a distortion (an illness), Freud suggests that psychoanalytic therapy consists in working on a fictional or reproduction of the illness, but in such a way that the category fiction drifts from its location in the classical dyadic structure that would oppose it to reality or the real. That is, the space of the transference, though artificial,

R. Gustafson 18 implies a suspension of the very opposition between the real and artificial, between a pure or original presentation and a distorted and derivative representation. This instability in the opposition between truth and fiction, presentation and representation of the drive, is further apparent in Freuds Observations on Transference-Love. Significantly, Freud begins this paper by reviewing two possible options at the disposal of the doctor in handling the transference-love, only to settle on an intermediate choice (much like the intermediate region above) between them. Specifically, either (1) the analyst may impose the standards of social morality (163) and seek to attempt to make her give up her desire and to surmount the animal side of herself, or (2) the analyst may lie and tell the patient that he feels the same way, while at the same time [] avoiding any physical implementation of his fondness. While Freud seems to not take the first option too seriously, his justification for rejecting the second option takes a peculiar turn: My objection to this expedient is that psychoanalytic treatment is founded on truthfulness. In this fact lies a great part of its educative effect and its ethical value. It is dangerous to depart from this foundation (164; italics mine). When Freud speaks here of his insistence on the truthfulness of psychoanalysis, he is referring to the fact that the return of the love of the doctor for the patients love would be a return of untrue or non-genuine love. This accords largely with his interpretation of the transference-idea as an artificial illness; the love for the doctor is not actually for the doctor, but is instead a reproduction of a love for someone else. However, after making this case against these two ways of handling the transference-love on the grounds that both deviate from the truth Freud makes the peculiar statement that the course the analyst must pursue is neither of these; it is one for which there is no model in real life (166; italics mine). In other words, the proper handling of the transference love will, to some extent, depart from the real or the true, will involve working with

R. Gustafson 19 the kind of artificial illness mentioned earlier with the complication that the technique employed to produce this artificial copy will not mimic any original real experience as a model. In this vein, Freud goes on to say that the technique of the analyst involves treating the transference love as something unreal (italics mine), but by withholding any response to it. By doing this, the patients preconditions for loving, all the phantasies springing from her sexual desire, all the detailed characteristics of the state of her being in love (166) in other words, what Freud calls the Klischee in Dynamics of Transference, or the drive playing in the jungle gym in Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through will, as he puts it, come to light. That is, it is precisely by taking measures which have no model in real life, by fabricating the artificial space of the transference, by treating the feelings of the patient as fictional and unreal, that Freud will say that the pathogenic representations of the drives will come to present themselves truly, as, to return to the language of Remembering, a piece of real experience (154). However, this stable opposition between truth and fiction comes undone for Freud once again when he considers the two arguments which an analyst can present to the patient in order to convince her that the transference love is not real, and thus a fictional representation. While the first argument (that the transference love is a resistance) poses no problems, the second argument against what Freud calls the genuineness of this love (167; italics mine) that it exhibits not a single new feature arising from the present situation, but is entirely composed of repetitions and copies of earlier reactions [] (167; italics mine) raises a few problems. While this argument satisfies Freud temporarily, later on in the essay he returns to it with suspicion, saying: I should now like, however, to examine these arguments with a critical eye and to raise the question whether, in putting them forward to the patient, we are really telling the truth, or whether we are not resorting in our desperation to concealments and misrepresentations. In other words: can we truly say that the state of being in love which becomes manifest in analytic treatment is not a real one?(168; italics

R. Gustafson 20 mine). The reason that Freud would be led to question this distinction between the artificial copies which comprise the untrue transference love and the supposedly genuine copy they reproduce, is precisely the fact that, according to his general concept of drive representation, there are always already only copies, as opposed to pure originals, when it comes to love or sexual desire. Saying that, I think we have told the patient the truth (168), Freud says that nevertheless he has not told the whole truth, because love always consists of new editions of old traits repetitions, reproductions, representations of the Klischee and, moreover that there is no such state which does not reproduce [wiederholt] infantile prototypes [Vorbilder]. In other words, there are no original bilden or original presentations that the repetitive representation of the transference would represent, but rather a general state of fiction.11 This leads Freud to conclude, stunningly, with the following: Let us sum up, therefore. We have no right to dispute that the state of being in love which makes its appearance in the course of analytic treatment has the character of a genuine love (168). That is, it is the concept of a genuine love a real manifestation or presentation of the drive that is called into question here. Freud brackets the distinction between genuine and real, presentation and representation, even as he makes recourse to this opposition. Returning to the philosophical question with which I began, Derrida to some extent already began to formulate this peculiar manner in which Freud simultaneously repeats while also

11

Apropos footnote 5, on the question of the transference as a kind of technique of fiction, it would also be worth it to consider Freuds fascination with the technique of storytelling in Das Unheimliche. Throughout that essay, the technique of fiction and the technique of analysis (as well as the figure of the analyst and that of the storyteller) seem to be implicitly analogized. Of particular interest would be Freuds statement that fiction has a greater reserve of potential for producing uncanny effects, insofar as it has the power to suspend the distinction between the imaginary and the real. In this passage for instance, the opposition between fiction and real life seems to map roughly onto that between real experience and transference that we have observed above: The uncanny as it is depicted in literature, in stories and imaginative productions, merits in truth a separate discussion. Above all, it is a much more fertile province than the uncanny in real life, for it contains the whole of the latter and something more besides, something that cannot be found in real life [] the realm of phantasy depends for its effect on the fact that its content is not submitted to reality-testing. The somewhat paradoxical result is that in the first place a great deal that is not uncanny in fiction would be so if it happened in real life; and in the second place that there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than there are in real life. The imaginative writer has this license among many others, that he can select his world of representation [Darstellungswelt] so that it either coincides with the realities we are familiar with or departs from them in what particulars he pleases [] (248).

R. Gustafson 21 differentiating the traditional metaphysical concept of representation, during his engagement with the entry for Idea [Vorstellung] in Laplanche and Pontaliss The Language of Psychoanalysis. The latter, who note that this word is part of the traditional vocabulary of German philosophy (Laplanche and Pontalis 200), conclude that while Freud does not set out immediately to change its meaning, he does in fact use it in an original way. As Derrida notes, however, this distinction between meaning and use is precisely where the problem lies (125). Freud, given his (almost) consistent indifference to so-called philosophical Weltanschauungen, would certainly not intend to develop a rigorous revision of the concept of Vorstellung qua philosophical concept. However, Derrida does want to suggest that it is precisely in Freuds chance use of this philosophical vocabulary that we find an incitement (125) to think altogether differently what he calls the diffraction of fields: the partitioning of the world by the representational subjectum into the solidity of substantially distinct epistemic regions. To conclude, if Freud understands the concept of drive representation here to be, not a representation of an original copy, but rather of there always already being re-production if the distinction between a piece of real experience and an artificial illness collapses, leaving us with this in-between that Freud calls an intermediate region straddling this opposition then it would seem that Freuds concept of representation is precisely not simply a symptomatic repetition of the classical metaphysical determination of this concept. What we can observe by examining closely Freuds use of the concept of representation in the case of the drives, is that it certainly does repeat, but also simultaneously suspends, the partitioning of experience into the oppositions of representational subjectivity in several respects: in terms of the relation between the mind and the body, between psychology and biology, the apparent and the real, presentation and representation.

R. Gustafson 22 Works Cited Derrida, Jacques. "Envoi." Trans. Peter Caws and Mary Ann Caws. Psyche: Inventions of the Other. Ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg. Vol. 1. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. 94-129. Print. Freud, Sigmund. "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes." Ed. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIV. 109-40. Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. Web. Freud, Sigmund. "Observations on Transference-Love." Ed. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XII. 157-71. Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. Web. Freud, Sigmund. "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through." Ed. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XII. 145-56. Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. Web. Freud, Sigmund. "Repression." Ed. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIV. 141-58. Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. Web. Freud, Sigmund. "The Dynamics of Transference." Ed. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XII. 97-108. Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. Web.

R. Gustafson 23 Freud, Sigmund. "The Unconscious." Ed. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIV. 159-215. Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. Web. Laplanche, Jean, and J.-B. Pontalis. The Language of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Donald NicholsonSmith. New York: W.W. Norton, 1967. Print. Laplanche, Jean. Life and Death in Psychoanalysis. Trans. Jeffrey Mehlman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. Print.