Re(2): Re(2): psychoanalysis and...CHAT

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Tue May 09 2000 - 06:13:10 PDT


i wrote:
>>Freud's theory was specifically social, in that the ways libido drives
>>manifest
>>are constructed by the social contexts where people live - language,
>>speech,
>>symbols (tools) were all significant structures of the ways
>>these behaviors might manifest -
>>
>
Pedro replied
>
>I disagree Diane, I think it was more biological, based on a hydraulic
>sort
>of model with the id, ego and sup ego (internalized social voices?) going
>at it, in other word, it was not social enough when contrasted, for
>example
>with Adler, his colleague....

it is certainly biologically-based, as Gertrude Stein wrote, "Life is food
and sex: everything else is intellectual." - it is, again, in the ways
these behaviors manifest over time
in a societal context - Freud was specifically critiquing Victorian sexual
morality and its repressive regimes, suggesting that neurosis is an effect
of the ways morality is
enforced, the ways sexuality is controlled, and so on - parenting is the
significant
feature, the primary object-relations with mother/father, and the ways
these produce identifications;
again, with fathers sexualizing their daughters,
mothers romanticizing their sons, gender identity emerges and often
conflicts through socialized norms of
parenting - (and here psychoanalysis has
evolved to the level of understanding primary relations in more expansive
roles, as the primary care-giver, and the importance of this primary
relation in identity formation)
 - Certainly Freud believed that the drives were literally operating on a
cellular basis, but the ways these interact with society, culture,
language, and others,
is more where the analysis is interested -

i wrote
>
>>as well, by these behaviors of the psychic structure's (external)
>>manifestations being socially organized, they were absolutely cultural,
>>and Freud's own exile from
>>Germany was a part of his own interests in collective psychosis, or what
>>I might call ideology -

Pedro prods
>
>Tell us more about this exile, must have missed it....
A rather fascinating book, _Freud in Exile_ (1988, Edward Timms and Naomi
Segal, Eds) - looks at the effects of Freud's fleeing Austria (sorry, not
Germany) during the Nazi occupation - moving to London altered much of
Freud's thinking because of the different cultural norms that operated,
the work of translation from German to English, the effects of access to
the North American psychology movements, and so on - his being an exile
prodded him to think about social contexts more broadly, as inextricable
from cultural contexts, values, morals, regimes, and so on...

i wrote
>
>>anorexia-nervosa has been explicitly connected to relations of girls with
>>their fathers, and the greater emotional and verbal abuse that takes
>place
>>from the father,
>>the greater the likelihood of the girl developing an eating disorder -
>>
>>this points to specific gender issues that Western society condones
>>inadvertently
>>within its denial of a patriarchal structure - so, when attempting to
>>normalize a client
>>in a psychotherapeutic context, is there not a risk of denying the ways
>>cultures
>>structure and define gender norms?
>
>
Pedro writes
>
>
>Precisely Diane, this is where I think CHAT has the most to offer
>(someday) because in understanding mind, it requires consideration of
>not
>only the bio but the socio-genetic in understanding the ontogenesis of
>"disorders" such as the above. From my angle, it seems that chat is the
>most promising/complete world view (as loose as it still is) that would
>look at the social construction of many psychopathologies from those soc.
>influences (see Ratner's work on madness...xmca discussions on adhd, the
>popularity & subsequent demise of tobacco in north america etc)
[thanks for this reference]
>
>Freud would give sex primacy in explaining eating disorders for instance
>(anorexia prevents, defends against /delays having to deal with sexual
>relations, signals regression or attempt to return to the safety of
>childhood when confronting the quintessestial task of adol.....
> and miss a lot of the social learning we see at the macro level and
>disturbed family relations net of sex...
>
...absolutely, the desire to remain a child, as a way to please the
father's desire, as a way to flee the sexual self, and a desire to starve
to death, as a way to escape the emotional torment of
trying to please the father in ways there are sexually abhorrent...
>

Pedro sez -
>I see CHAT as not denying the method(s) inherent in psychoanalysis,
>gestalt
>and other beg-cog theories but as meta theory that is capable of
>integrating those psychologies because of its emphasis on historical
>analysis (dev) and cultural analysis (tool/methods)..simultaneously, not
>to mention the AT part or contribution

- here i want to mention my interest in the historicized body, as opposed
perhaps to the historical body, in that historicized give emphasis to the
body's being made,
or development taking place within the constraints of a dominant
historical regime -
while i agree with the social relations attributed to "mind", there is,
nevertheless,
a body attached, fluids and bloods and semens and mucus and sweat, limbs
that respond (women who walk more quickly at night when some else is
behind them) - bodies that react to interactions, flinching, trembling,
weeping, the classic condition of "shutting down" - when all emotional and
physical sensation is
denied as a self-protective reaction -
there is a quality of the historicized body that i do think is
individuated, not necessarily distinct from the social context, not an
individual in absence of the
social,
but certainly particular to the body's own processes... and here i think
CHAT shows its squeamishness most, in the avoidance of dealing with
bodies, sex, and gender...
>
i wrote:
> while Vygotsky might have read Freud a certain
>>way, as conflicting
>>with Marxist materialism and dialectics, the current uses of
>>psychoanalysis
>>are far more elaborated -
>
Pedro wrote:
>
>I would think so....can you elaborate some on these current users/uses
>please?
>
_Freud in Exile_ (1988) is a good collection, and Julia Kristeva's work, I
find, has found unique interpretations of Freud and Lacan that extend a
considerable amount of psychoanalytic thinking;
I would highly recommend Shoshana Feldman's _Lacan and the Adventures of
Insight_(1992), where she draws explicit interpretations between
education, teachers, students, and schooling through psychoanalytic
understandings;
also, Judith Butler's _The Psychic Life of Power_ (1994?) is a brilliant
study of Freud in-relation with Foucault, and is really, really, quite
brilliant for understanding more complex relations of power and gender
constructs;

finally, Janet Sayers' (1991) _Mothers of psychoanalysis_ details and
elaborates on many of the changes that psychoanalysis has undergone in
this century, through women analysts' contributions (e.g. Melanie Klein,
Helene Deutsch, Anna Freud) -

I might add none of these texts have been published by Simon&Schuster. :)

for the most part, Pedro, it seems we do agree on the most important
issues,
so that is, like, pretty cool.
thanks for the response.
diane
>
>



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