fugue

In order to confer clarity and distinction to the
world of musical experience, the maestro began by
tempering the sonorous system and ended up by
leaving the fugue of his own name incomplete
(B. A. C. H.)

Two realities

Dan: 'It is as if I always owe what I feel... I don't know... it's something like water...' Hardly had Dan finished his association that it started raining heavily. It was at that moment that I thought about the 'acausal coincidence principle' and about the concept of synchronicity, used by Carl Jung to conceive the continuity of reality. The external world is a continuation of the internal world, the latter being able to determine the former (hence the psychic nature of the universe), their gliding into each other being possible and indicated by moments that escape any linear-causal perception. Synchronicity is a concept used by Jung in his attempt to deconstruct, without transgressions, the axiomatic disjunction that Freud referred to. In Instincts And Their Vicissitudes (1915) Freud specified the source of the two 'realities': 'It is from the efficiency of muscular activity that the perceptive substance of the being gained support, so as to separate the interior from the exterior'. Motricity, capacity of controlling the stimuli, external reality, drive, 'complicated, enchained actions [in the context of the lack of drive control, similar to external stimuli], that modify the exterior world to such an extent that it gives satisfaction to the interior source', internal reality. Internal reality vs. external reality is one of the axiomatic disjunctions of psychoanalysis, along with other disjunctions such as subject-object, narcissic-objective etc. The subject's constitutive limit, the Ego can test the external reality and can also distinguish it from drive, thanks to its different manners of approaching reality: external, which can suffer direct alterations due to motricity and internal, which necessitates another type of rapport, successive modifications so as to obtain gratification. An entire genetic perspective evolves from the relation between the two 'realities', starting from the game of Freud's grandson, 'the child with the reel', who used to make his mother 'reappear' until he (partially) purged the perception of external reality from the representatives of internal reality.
The internal reality seems ever capable of infiltrating the external reality, sometimes producing true eruptions of 'subjectivity' that can annul the clear, well-defined 'objectivity' of the reality; well-defined by consensus, by intersubjective perception.

Doubt as a method

Assuming the consensual reference points of the external reality enables us to define our own limits, which indicates the evolution of the Ego. Long before having been studied by psychoanalysis as a narcissic problem, the issue of recapturing and regaining one's own limits had become an essential exploratory space for both cultural anthropology and philosophy of science. Among the founders of scientific method is René Descartes, the thinker who sought to found his philosophy and knowledge on an incontestable 'truth' which may determine the reconstruction of knowledge and sciences on a basis of absolute validity. His methodic doubt questions any belief that cannot constitute itself as a self-obvious truth: 'Dubito, ergo cogito; cogito, ergo sum'.
We can be sure that we exist only by virtue of experimenting the fact that we think. We are a mind, a 'something' that thinks, a 'something' that can be sure of its own existence only as a 'thinking' experience. In a Cartesian perspective, there is a great influence of the observer upon what is being observed and upon conclusions. That is why only an observer who is isolated from his own subjectivity becomes a reliable observer. After having been built on the principle of methodic doubt, the Cartesian mind becomes an objective entity placed among the various other objects of the world.
Present-day science is the result of the detachment from the internal reality, especially from that drive-based, mind blowing one, which can disorder the objective reference points, condemning the composition of the external world to chaos (except for the consequences of the experiments in quantum mechanics).
Actually, it is the Cartesian phenomenon that Freud speaks about in his sources: the drive, the primary process are always susceptible to invade the external reality thanks to the pleasure principle. The reality principle needs to be 'strengthened' at epistemologic level and, at the same time, a fundamental imperative of science needs to be created. Science makes its irreversible way towards the third: from the individual to the third, towards having the reality tested by an increased number of observers, searching for the law, the ultimate, fundamental reference point in defining the objective reality. The reason why Freud attempted to found his theory within the field of natural sciences - neurophysiology, physics, biology- is somehow self-understood. Founding psychoanalysis, ab initio, within its particular boundaries - namely those of subjectivity would implicitly have led to annuling its scientific character.

Cartesian mind in Freudian texts

Therefore, there are reference points of an objective Freudian epistemology that stem from the obvious imperative of a pioneer who needs to place his new future science within the 'recommended', 'consensual' framework. Freud made his debut by means of paradigmatic 'borrowings' from natural sciences but, while consolidating his metapsychology, he understood that he couldn't avoid the unique space of reference for psychoanalysis: the internal reality.
We can retrieve elements of 'systemic' representations specific to natural sciences in the model of the closed system, grounded on the second law of thermodynamics. Freud uses this model in Totem and taboo (1911-13) and, seven years later, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), once with the representation of the organism 'in the shape of an undifferentiated sphere of excitable substance'¹. The true map of the psychic topics, together with some dynamic indications appears in The Ego and the Id (1923)² and is also reproduced in New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933)³.
In Totem and taboo, the horde is conceived as a closed system in which the exchange of individuals with other hordes is impossible. To the benefit of speculative exploration, Freud proposes a radical 'cut', shaping the 'world of the original horde' as unique and, consequently closed to any exchange. The model of an open organisation would have had as a result the supposition that there are many other hordes, with implicit phenomena of territoriality, exchange and migration. In an 'open' version of the model, the migration of the frustrated individuals could have changed the relation with the Father. The anthropoid excluded by the dominant male could thus have left the group and the 'exogamy' would have been installed without any sacrifice. It is as if 'something' would have kept the horde within its own boundaries - the correspondence between the 'primitive' and the neurotic represents the subject matter of the book. Interpreted in an archaic key, instituting the limits - even if only as a draft initially - implies the dualism subjectobject, but the original horde is situated within a non-dual space, specific to the indistinct primordial unity. The horde remains a closed system only until the totemic interdictions are imposed. 'The system of the primitive horde' opens up concurrently with the formation of the object. The study makes reference to the original moment of psychogenesis, instituting both time and space. The exterior and interior, the opening or closing becomes meaningful only after the parricide, when the desired object is formed due to lack and interdiction. The exterior of the horde and the possibility of exchanging individuals gain a psychic meaning once the system is opened, only after the 'cultural' structuring of the psychic coordinates, subsequent to the parricide.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle: being subjected to the continuous influx of external stimuli, the sphere of excitable psychic substance [the psychic organism] gains a para-excitable surface of protection, but remains totally unprotected when faced with discomforting internal stimulations. The organism is thus forced to use its defence mechanisms, the only ones at its disposal and treat the internal excitations as if they were external. The para-excitable surface of protection would thus isolate the 'psychic organism' from the medium in order to ensure its homeostasis.

Psychonalysis as science re-subjectivization

In order to mark the existence of preoedipian anthropoids, the scenario of the primitive horde makes its first appearance in illo tempore: 'One day...' Eight years after the publication of his work (1923) Freud was to refer to the ideas advanced in Totem and taboo as to the 'scientific myth of the primitive horde father'⁴. Freud withdrew from publication the text General overview on transference neuroses, in which he enlarged upon the scenario from Totem and taboo by correlating the original parricide with the genesis of different psychopathological entities. The reason why the text was not published was to be found in its speculative nature⁵, a solid indication that there is indeed strictness in 'scientific mythology', especially through its background - the 'cut' of reality (till shaping a closed system). Freud always had in mind the extent to which he could afford to resubjectivate science without being accused of 'mythologisation'. Despite his caution, the partisans of 'objective' epistemology still reproached his 'mythologisation'. The risk of regaining the internal reality in scientific approach and its effects can be seen in the reactions to Beyond the Pleasure Principle: 'a waiver from psychoanalytical logics'⁶, 'a discourse that only sporadically and superficially abides the imperatives of logics'⁷, 'an irrational hiatus'⁸ or 'an almost associative discourse'⁹.
Therefore, here there are moments of Freudian reflections, when, despite cautiously using paradigmatic elements specific to natural sciences, Freud is accused of a massive mythologisant subjectivization of psychoanalysis. Actually, the entire Freudian creative approach was deemed as signally subjective, based on the experience of subjectivity. In Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937), Freud places us at the very essence of his creative approach: 'If we wonder by what methods and means a result [theoretical approach] is obtained, it's not an easy task to find an answer. We can only say: «There is nothing left for us but go to the witch! - the Metapsychology witch »'.¹⁰
To this extent, in his Psychoanalysis of fire, G. Bachelard presents the entire stake of fire-like drive within the field of science. Freud touched the tangent points of the Cartesian circle and restored reversibility to the (generally advocated) project of science de-subjectivization: psychoanalysis put forward the paradigm of science re-subjectivization, an unique approach until the present-day undertaking of the quantum physics, which reconsiders the role of the observer-experimentalist.

The Freudian theory as defence

In Worlds of Experience, authors R. Stolorow, G. Atwood, D. Orange¹¹, Freud's capacity of having re-subjectivated psychoanalysis comes up for discussion, in a radical manner, as concerns the fundamentals and a new 'variant' of psychanalysis which may open the door to the field of subjective experience, more precisely to intersubjective experience is also advanced in the above-mentioned study.
The common ground found in explaining the divergences of intersubjectivism from the 'classical' psychoanalytic paradigm is rather unsatisfactory: namely what social history indicates as re(sources) of a scientific field - in case of psychoanalysis, the evolution of the sociocultural context from the Viennese society to the globalized one. Even if such a perspective is partially relevant, the differences between intersubjectivism axioms and the fundamentals of intrapsychic approach are consistent enough to point to other sources as well.
Stolorow advances the phrase 'Cartesian mind' and considers that in its original form, psychoanalysis might have been imbued with many more elements specific to the Cartesian attitude. At an inquiry into the life of the thinker, the authors reveal that Descartes was a depressed, paranoid person, due to his unfortunate family background, marked by early stage losses (his mother's death when he was no more than a year and a month old, the death of his grandmother from his mother's side - the maternal substitute, at the age of fourteen). He was a person who sought for personal security within a self closed to any relationship. Descartes was deeply marked by his losses and felt that only through reason was he able to overcome his suffering and mourning. His detachment from intense feelings became necessary so as not to be at the discretion of the transitory events of the exterior world, generated by involvements into relationships. Since he considered that happiness was to be found strictly in mental satisfaction, Descartes consolidated his comfort in his own thinking, safe from the inherent vulnerability of the intersubjective human experience.
The arguments presented have a certain consistence and successfully sketch another psychoanalytic biography. The major interrogation refers to the extent to which, in psychoanalysis, the focal points of Cartesian epistemology had defensive resource that Freud failed to elaborate upon.
To conclude: the resources of a paradigm that de-subjectivates experience and directs it towards the cognitive space are obviously defensive. Strictness, norm, law are Superego's features. Different types of logics (symbolic, classical or speculative) are nothing but expressions of Superego's functioning, according to Imre Hermann's view¹². In its expression of excellency, the Superego leads the individual to the most 'civilized' manner of existence, isolated from drive. The emotional drive chaos cannot penetrate the worlds of logics, the latter being the most 'objective' manner of relating to the object - an object re-framed according to the ideal. The logical perspective is always above criticism as it is built by means of criticism. The individual is placed in the logical formula only as an element of a multitude. The detachment from the sensible is simultaneous with the detachment from the sensual, from the desire that animates the individual and confers consistence to its unicity.
Storolow considers that 'Descartes's ghost' subjects the knowing subject (the observer) to 'isolating self-confinement'. It is necessary that the observer is isolated in his relation with the object, so as to situate itself within the objective epistemology in which the subject - the observing Ego - is radically separated from the external world, so as not to distort it.
In Freudian theory there is no Cartesian isolation between the subject and the object that are archaically interconnected due to the primacy of drive. The genesis of the two poles of the fundamental binomial is concomitant - consequently, once with his study of psychoanalysis, Freud discovered the common 'experimential field' leading to the constituency of the subject. Psychogenesis understood in terms of psychoanalysis is as intersubjective as possible; it is especially centred on the 'entities' in interaction.
R. Stolorow considers that the 'isolated Cartesian mind' is the hypostasis of the internal essence of a person who exists in a particular state of being disconnected from everything that maintains life. It is a myth, capable of generating epistemology, producing philosophical themes related to isolation, monadic subject but also psychoanalytic themes regarding intrapsychic processes: namely, representing the subject as an 'impersonal machine' of processing drive energy.

Clinical interrogations

Psychoanalysis constituted itself gradually, by considering some relational phenomena, princeps example: transference. The difficulties of founding and managing the phenomenon of (counter)transference as an important element in clinical work led to representing the psychoanalyst in a manner of a 'surgical' neutrality. Even this hypostasis is far from the monadic encapsulation invoked by authors. What could possibly be the stake of the density of the relational subject's limits that may drive him to 'become' monadic or encapsulated? The following case sketch is a good reason of discussing the issue of the relation between the Cartesian mind and the 'worlds of experience'. Being at the beginning, almost thirty sessions, on a twice a week basis, the case does not yet enable me to shape 'clear and distinct' ideas; instead, I can confine myself to projecting some investigational tracks and having many doubts regarding the theoretical appetence.
After three years of Jungian therapy, Dan interrupted therapy and started another, the second, in which he developed a negative transference. He started looking for another therapist with the purpose of interrupting the second therapy as well. After ten months of seeing him (as the third therapist), Dan cautiously told me that he was in the process of another therapy which he intended to stop so as to remain only with this therapy, which he considered to be positive. Dan was revolted whenever he reached the topic of relationship: 'There is no relationship with the therapist. It is only my reality in relation to him. What relationship should I be talking about?... How can I be asked to be authentic when the therapist is phony, phony, phony?' What I felt from Dan's side was a permanent pressure to answer his questions about the psychoanalytical technique or about the courses he knew I was teaching - to react and answer authentically, often without being able to explore the sources of his questions. His need for a 'double therapy', the need for the space necessary for the elaboration and disjunction of his transference made me submit to his requests, as if the fury generated by my 'non-answer' (fury that was present in the negative transference developed in the 'second' therapy) would have been impossible to contain and the purpose of the 'secondary therapy' would have been that of gratification and preserving a hic et nunc space.
How can the matter of authenticity be understood in the context of 'double therapy'? On one hand, the psychoanalyst who sustains the (negative) transference by lack of substitutive gratifications, on the other the therapist who allows the direct and immediate discharge. This triangulation made me think about my position: in essence, should it be what R. Stolorow named Cartesian, defensive mind, or more probably, a world of psychoanalytical experience for the therapist involved?
For Stolorow, the 'world' is the conceptual crossroad of intersubjective theory and psychoanalysis is understood as an intersubjective science, centred on the 'game' between the different organisations of both the observer's and the observee's subjective worlds. The analyst's security no longer comes from his isolation, but from his relying on an emotional context that allows tolerance and exploration. The key of intersubjectivism is the tendency to open the relationship to new meanings.
Where is the limit between tolerance, exploration, authenticity and especially in their relation with the analyst's 'security'? Seen in terms of security, tolerance can be understood as acting in. By my defensive incapacity of allowing Dan to vent his fury, I did nothing but assure him that I could 'bear up' only a positive transference - that of his uncle (on his father's side) - the only person he loved. I feel pressed to be authentic, to communicate him some of my personal views, as if this were the only way in which Dan felt that he existed. The patient feels that I allow myself to be 'used' by him, and that, in this perspective, I assume a passive posture totally different from the other therapist.
R. Stolorow continues: the psychoanalyst is formed to develop himself and not to create emotional, sensitive resonance with the worlds of experience, to such an extent that in a specific relational context these worlds should become more intelligible and flexible for their inhabitants.
What is the manner in which the analyst increases emotional resonance? Had I not answered his (authenticity) claims, would the triangular picture have taken the current hues, necessary to let itself be 'observed' as such? Would I have been thinking about Dan's need to leave the therapists as if he were in a provisional space in which there is an unique relational reference point - his uncle - the third therapist. What I particularly felt as 'distinct' in countertransference was the effect of projective counteridentification: I was forced to behave authentically, even if this posture blocked the exploration of different associative threads.

From clear ideas to incertitude

For R. Stolorow, a world of experience is complex in a relational, chaotic, systemic and emergent way; it can't be related to linear logics. Intersubjectivism implies the transition from clear and distinct ideas to complexity and non-linearity (the understanding of nonlinear systems). By means of his theory, Freud attempted to glide from the nonlinear space of the primary processes to the territory of linear logics, by virtue of the analytical framework enabling the emergence of clear and distinct ideas, objective and oriented towards the third, supporting the reference points of an objective reality which may allow the Ego to test and have a good disjunction of realities (internal and external).
In therapeutic triangulation I took upon myself the role of a third who may sustain Dan's Ego, through external reality indices, in his elaboration of the negative transference; hic et nunc (the escape in reality) vs. the transferential then, difficult to elaborate. The issue of temporality is obvious: from Stolorow's perspective, the concept of transference refers to the hypostasis of the isolated, atemporal individual. The past invades the present like a matrix, while the experience of the past is always interpreted in the light of what is to happen later on in the future. That is the reason why, in Stolorow's view, there is no perspective of a permanent reorganisation of experience. The unilinear old-new disjunction can obscure the complexity of the temporal experience and can lead to a dead end and to therapy stagnation (as an elusion of the complex temporality of experience). It is as if through the triangular transferential context, Dan had me relate differently to the valences of transferential temporality. To what effect: to avoid re-entering time or to facilitate it?
On the other hand, 'separating' transferences became necessary in Dan's psychonalysis; considering its particularity, the positive transference necessitated a different frame of reference.
Do I place myself in the hypostasis of the encapsulated analyst or in that of the tolerant analyst who breaks new ground in the world of intersubjective experience?
In psychoanalysis, the antinomy subject-object resides in the relation between the internal and external realities. The antinomy subject-object is obvious in case presentations in which terms of interaction are used, as between fundamentally separated monades. Maybe the difficulty of finding answers and the stagnation in interrogations are, in Dan's case, consubstantial with the complexity and intersubjective nonlinearity that R. Stolorow mentioned.
Natural sciences built their approach on models that evolved in the direction of complexity, emergence and eventually nonlinear systems. The pathway from newtonian physics to quantum physics is similar to that from Cartesian approach to the experiential one. Freud had the models of classical physics at his disposal. However, apart from thermodynamics, he was the first to use definitions of non-linearity in shaping the specific of the primary processes: the lack of negation, transgressing the principle of identity, the included third, the absence of space-time. The 'field' of the primary processes is similar to the quantic field and the collapse of the wave is analogical to 'binding' the energy in the order of secondary processes. The effect of secondary processes is similar to the collapse of the wave in the shape of a particle, while the field of primary processes is essentially analogical to the non-linearity of the wave.
It is as if the intersubjectivism would be an invitation to focusing on the primary processes which constitute the non-linear intersubjective 'field', while the need for Cartesian clarity would 'fractionize' the total experience of admitting something of primary importance by turning it into secondary importance and the result - in the shape of accurate ideas - would falsify the complexity of the process by inadequate cut.
R. Stolorow considers that, at transferential level, one of the effects of the analyst's Cartesian attitude is invalidation: the patients may feel themselves as unreal, split etc. The patients are understood by virtue of concepts like projection, identification, resistance, acting out which all serve as the analyst's defence from his/her intersubjective involvement in the 'patient's pathology'. Dan complained about the 'deserted, superficial world from the other therapy' and he felt that he somehow found some 'profound' reference points in the 'third' therapy.
The entire epistemic discussion can be transferred into defensive coordinates and both the (intrapsychic and intersubjective) 'versants' can be susceptible to undertaking this function. From an intrapsychic perspective, my interventions, my acting-ins are defensive and they are the sign of a projective counteridentification.
From an intersubjective perspective, my willingness 'to let myself be carried away by the patient's worlds of relational experience' triggers my need for clarity and distinction, thus fractionizing the natural course of relational process by representations (with defensive function) about the case. The need for clarity can be observed in relation to the analytical technique, with analysability and interpretation. The Cartesian anxiety needs to be 'psychoanalytically' tempered by clear and absolute fundamentals in any case presentations but, it is precisely this defensive manner of 'observing' relational phenomena that damages the coordinates of the process. Freud mentioned the 'natural process' triggered in the analytical therapy and that it needs to be supported. Stolorow probably refers to the fact that one of the attitudes that obstructs the process - the permanent attempt to observe the process (with defensive valences) alters its natural course. We cannot but remark the analogy with classical experiments in quantum mechanics: by observing the reality, the observer changes it. The same way, by observing the analytical process, in the sense of generating clear ideas about the case, the relational reality changes due to the implicit predictions related to the theoretical approach.
It is as if while the society made its transition from the industrial to the postindustrial period and a corresponding evolution of the binomial normal-pathologic could be remarked, there has arisen the need for developments or technical amendments as it was the case with intersubjectivism. To the extent in which 'neurosis' glided to 'borderline' and has become the most frequent case to occupy the analysts' couches, the risk of 'res cogitas' attitude, of building the internal world on reason, has become consistent, as a preferred defence when coping with the transference forms that are difficult to sustain. The evolution of the manner in which transference is considered and the technical consequences related require reconsidering the consistency of the disjunction subject-object, of the binomial internal-external reality similar to the Cartesian preoccupations related to res cogitas and res extensa. It is as if res cogitas that generically 'conquered' epistemology should be replaced by a (secondary cognitive) holistic experience of the internal reality. The indication was launched by Freud (a privilege contextually forbidden to pioneers) but not in the radical manner of the intersubjectivists. Freud invited each psychoanalyst to 'allow' himself/herself to feel the patient, to tolerate incertitude (the lack of Cartesian clarity), to listen. If I continue to listen to Dan, I will be able to sustain his need for authenticity and my countertransferential valences and then I will be able to understand them.
The intersubjective framework can be perceived from within the Cartesian framework; the reverse is also possible - the Cartesian framework discussed from intersubjective positions. In a well-delineated vision, the background message of the intersubjective approach favours fundamental Freudian indications, while the radical disputes debating the idea of defence can implicitly be built on such valence. The worlds of experience - the intersubjectivists' reference space - are pluridetermined; yet, so are the worlds of theory.

[1]S. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
[2]Idem, The Ego and the Id.
[3]Idem, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis.
[4]S. Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
[5]V. Marinov, Figures du crime chez Dostoievski, PUF, Paris, 1990.
[6]R. Dadoum, Freud, Pierre Belfond, Paris, 1982.
[7]J. Laplanche, New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, Cambridge, MA/Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1989.
[8]G. Rosolato, La portée du désir, PUF, Paris, 1998.
[9]E. Jones, La vie et l'oeuvre de Sigmund Freud, III, Les dernières années 1919-1939 and J.-B., Pontalis, Entre le rêve et la douleur, Editions Gallimard, 1977.
[10]S. Freud, Analysis Terminable and Interminable.
[11]R. Stolorow, G. Atwood, D. Orange, Worlds of Experience, Basic Books, N.Y, 2002.
[12]I., Hermann, Psychanalyse et logique, Paris, Ed. Denoël, 1978.

REFERENCES:

FREUD S.,
-- Totem and taboo;
-- Instincts and their Vicissitudes;
-- Beyond the Pleasure Principle;
-- The Ego and the Id;
-- New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis;
-- Analysis Terminable and Interminable.
HERMANN I., Psychanalyse et logique, Paris, Ed. Denoël, 1978.
STOLOROW R., ATWOOD G., ORANGE D., Worlds of Experience, Basic Books, N.Y, 2002.