Truth, anxiety and the contribution of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology to psychoanalytic conceptualization and practice

ABSTRACT

The present paper is an attempt to explore the actual and potential convergences and divergences of the ontological-existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Freud’s analytic thinking as well as later developments in psychoanalysis. The first part of the paper compares and contrasts Freud’s and Heidegger’s thinking on issues of truth and anxiety, which are central to their respective doctrines and highly relevant to working with difficult patients. It is shown that both Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Heidegger’s ontological philosophy stress the process of opening up to the anxiety-evoking truth and the individual’s responsibility to uncover the truth as a source of freedom. The second part of the paper examines the impact of Heidegger’s thought on the psychoanalytic understanding of individuals with severe character pathology, on the spectrum from malignant narcissism, through perverse organizations, to psychosis. In this context, the authors discuss the notion of ‘anxieties of being,’ a shift towards a more ontological psychoanalysis and the phenomenologisation of psychoanalytic language. Viewing people as interpretive creatures, the authors believe that Heidegger’s hermeneutic outlook may enable psychoanalysts to approach their patients in a more open and accepting manner.

KEYWORDS:

• Freud
• Heidegger
• philosophy
• existentialism
• truth

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Shira Dushy-Barr for her assistance in editing the article.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. We are grateful to Shira Dushy-Barr for her assistance in editing this article.

2. While we believe his thinking holds substantial value for psychoanalytic thought and practice, we approach Heidegger’s writings with a feeling of abhorrence given his involvement in the Nazi regime.

3. Another prominent thinker who sought to integrate Freudian and Heideggerian thinking is Hans Loewald, a key psychoanalytic theoretician who was a student of Heidegger. Interestingly, Heidegger’s influence on his thinking was manifest in a more relational approach.

4. One potential solution to this contradiction is the distinction between Freud’s meta-psychological theories, which are grounded in scientific principles, and his clinical technique, which is designed for psychoanalytic treatment (Boss, 1963).

5. While this is usually translated as ‘truth’, Heidegger chose to adopt the literal translation of non-concealment.

6. Heidegger offers the allegory of the flashlight: when a person in a dark room points the flashlight at one particular corner, the rest of the room remains obscured. Thus, any act of uncovering or illumination inevitably covers and eclipses at the same time.

7. It is so tempting for our minds to construe Dasein as a thing, an object, but Heidegger’s language and grammar constantly remind us that we must think of it as an ongoing process, which cannot be reduced to aconfined entity or moment.

8. Later theoreticians such as Winnicott, the later Bion, Kohut, and Alvarez offer a more compassionate approach than Freud’s and believe that a certain degree of inauthenticity is part of being human.

9. Stimmung, variably translated as ‘state of mind’, ‘mood’ and ‘existential’, refers to one’s mode of adjustment to the world (e.g., boredom, care, and joy).

10. Oscar Wilde explains that ‘most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation’ (1897, p. 30). This resonates Heidegger’s notion of how easy and tempting it is to fall prey to the ‘they’ instead of being ‘oneself’.

11. We thank Sharon Hass for bringing this to our attention.

12. This is true to other phenomenologists as well.

13. Due to limitations of scope, we cannot address the recent contributions of Bergstein (2019, 2018), Symington (2018), Zaltz (2018), Ferro (2019) and Civitarese (2019) to these approaches.

14. A Kafkaesque quote of Laing’s patient, James, makes such experiences tangible: ‘Reality recedes from me. Everything I touch, everything I think, everyone I meet, becomes unreal as soon as I approach’ (Laing, 1960, p. 146).

15. This resonates the thinking of Winnicott (1960) on suicide in the context of the true and false self:

The False Self has as its main concern a search for conditions which will make it possible for the True Self to come into its own. If conditions cannot be found then there must be reorganized a new defence against exploitation of the True Self, and if there be doubt then the clinical result is suicide. Suicide in this context is the destruction of the total self in avoidance of annihilation of the True Self. (p. 143)

This poignant description is ample reason for comparing and contrasting Winnicott’s notion of the true and false self with Heideggerian notions of authenticity and inauthenticity – an undertaking which is beyond the scope of the present paper.

16. This contribution is especially pertinent seeing as Freud tended to overlook the impact of death and death anxiety on the human psyche. In fact, it was Melanie Klein who rescued Freud’s death instinct from its exclusive identification as a biological instinct to reach homeostasis and an inorganic state. Klein was clear about the existence of a fear of death and her view of life as led under the constant shadow of death.

17. This is taken from the play, Of Philosophers and Madmen, which combines quotes from Heidegger’s writings to create a fictional dialogue between him and Freud.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Batya Shoshani

Dr. Batya Shoshani. Ph.D, training and supervising psychoanalyst, and professor of clinical social work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (retired). Founding member and past chair of the training committee at The Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

Naama Shoshani-Breda

Naama Shoshani-Breda, MA in Philosophy, Science, and Digital Culture, Tel-Aviv University, magna cum laude. She is currently in the process of starting Ph.D in philosophy.

Michael Shoshani

Dr. Michael Shoshani. Psy.D, senior clinical psychologist and training and supervising psychoanalyst. Founding chair and a faculty member of The Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis.