Does it Appear to ‘Resemble’ Reality? on the Ethics of Psychoanalytic Writing

Abstract

This paper explores the intricate nexus of writing and psychoanalysis by addressing a key question: In what and how many directions should analytic writing be ethical? The author structures the argument across three axes. First, in an introduction, writing’s role as a psychoanalytic invariant is emphasized. Then, an exploration ensues, delving into writing as praxis, navigating complex technical choices, from micro- to macro-perspectives in clinical vignettes, their autobiographical essence, their relevance as models for theory, self-revelation, etc. Lastly, a succinct epilogue considers the relationship between aesthetics and ethics in psychoanalytic writing.

Keywords:

• Writing
• clinical vignette
• self-disclosure
• ethics
• field theory
• Bion
• autobiography

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 “[W]riting is fundamentally linking…”

2 Cf. Freud, S. (1926, p. 256): “In psycho-analysis there has existed from the very first an inseparable bond between cure and research….Our analytic procedure is the only one in which this precious conjunction is assured.”

3 Cf. Civitarese, G. (2022a, p. 52): “scream: offer Self-disclosure (rarely and with caution), play the Greek Chorus, pay attention to Reveries, map the Emotion, make sure not to miss transformations in hAllucinosis (the Italian word is “allucinosi”), reformulate with a Metaphor or a simile what the patient has just said, etc.”

4 All Bion quotes in this paragraph and the following paragraph are from: Bion WR (1967). Second Thoughts: Selected Papers on Psycho-Analysis. London: Heinemann.

5 Significantly, the title of the Italian edition translates as “How not to be postmodern.”

6 The word eidetisch (eidetic) comes from Gr. εἰδητικός, the root of εἴδησις “knowledge,” from the root εἰδ- “to see.” With this expression, Husserl indicates the second movement of epoché or transcendental reduction. After the exercise of observing an object as if for the first time, the subject actively uses the imagination to represent it according to a multiplicity of perspectives and thus to grasp its essence—Bion (1965) would say the invariant.

7 For an analysis of the narrative rhetoric used by Freud in Dora’s case, and more generally on the topic of writing in psychoanalysis, see Civitarese (2010, 2016, 2017, 2022b).

8 Freud prepared the ground for the modern critical theory of Adorno, Foucault, Derrida, and others. It would therefore be absurd not to examine psychoanalysis itself in the light of this philosophical and intellectual approach; for example, at the level of theory or institutional life, to try to identify the ideological seeds that paradoxically lurk in its radically demystifying attitude.

9 For the concept of horizon, cf. Moran e Cohen (2012).

10 Cf. Barthes (2002, p. 155): “Obviousness…’disarroganced’…by means of an analytic operation: interpretation: to admit interpretation would lessen the arrogance → this is a liberal view of interpretation ≠ Nietzschean view: ‘All subjugation, all domination amounts to a new interpretation’…→. In radical terms: no solution to arrogance other than the suspension of interpretation, of meaning.”

11 Ibid., p. 157: “But Nietzsche is obviously the one who best dismantled {a démonté} (in both senses of the term) the concept (On Truth and Falsity): ‘Every idea originates through equating the unequal’, → thus concept: a force that reduces the diverse, the becoming that is the sensible, the aisthèsis.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giuseppe Civitarese

Giuseppe Civitarese is a member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI) and the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA).