8)*701(B2
By Dominique Scarfone
Psychoanalysis is not an experimental type of science, yet it is based on careful observation of psychic facts carried in the course of clinical practice. Psychoanalytic hypotheses are then empirically tested through the collaborative work of the analyst-patient team. The main difference with experimental research is probably that each analytic “team” is unique and intimately involved in the processes at study (observation is not independent of the observer), therefore not really allowing for reproducible results stricto sensu : what works with one analytic dyad does not necessarily so with another; secondly, the nature and duration of psychoanalytic treatment impedes the constitution of cohorts large enough for specific hypotheses to be prospectively tested. Moreover, confidentiality is not an external constraint but an intrinsic condition for the deployment of analytically usable material, which also limits reproducibility. In spite of these limitations, there is no dearth of psychoanalytic theories and concepts, resulting in the often deplored “Babel” in the psychoanalytic domain. Jean Laplanche, for one, suggested that the contemporary psychoanalytic conceptual field resembles the Ptolemaic astronomical system, where for every new observation a new “epicycle” is added to our theoretical model, rather than examining the eventual need for a “Copernican revolution” added to our discipline. Laplanche (1987) went as far as proposing his own version of a Copernican turn in psychoanalysis, but we shall not discuss his proposal here. We will, instead, examine the method that he followed in his struggle in our midst against the spirit of Ptolemy, and which inspires the sort of conceptual research that I try to carry with my graduate students. !"#$"%&'()*+,(-'./+.0+&.%&(#-1"$+2(*("2&'+ Laplanche’s research started with the delimitation of the psychoanalytic domain of study. For him it consists of four main fields of research : 1-Psychoanalytic treatment proper; 2- Extra-muros (a.k.a. “applied”) psychoanalysis; 3- History (mainly the history of psychoanalysis); 4- psychoanalytic theory . The fourth element in this list is the one concerned with conceptual research proper. In retrospect, it is surprising that before Laplanche very few theoreticians of psychoanalysis, if any, had considered the possibility of applying the psychoanalytic method of investigation to Freud’s theory itself. Laplanche based his work in this field on the Freudian notion that the unconscious is a force affecting human thinking and discourse, eventually interfering with the establishment of adequate knowledge. Now, if this is true of any human thought, feeling and discourse, then it applies just as well to Freud’s theory. It is not, however, a matter of psychoanalyzing Freud the man, but to consider theory itself as subjected to phenomena not unlike slips, negation, denial, rationalizing, reaction formation etc. 3'(+2($4"54$4-6+"**1,#-4.% ! One important premise is that Laplanche’s method rests on the assumption that Freud’s thinking is reliable . That is: not that Freud was always right, but that he was relentlessly on the trail of the unconscious, tracking its various effects and manifestations. Such consistency in his effort made it so, according to Laplanche, that when Freud went astray in one part of his theorizing, this was somehow compensated with new thinking in another part. Both the parts may of course present problems, but the phenomenon as a whole is a good indicator of where lies the deeper problem in need of further research and reflection.
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