Abstract
The idea of psychoanalysis as a hermeneutical practice is attributed to Imre Hermann, who, in Die Psychoanalyse als Methode (1934), argues in favour of the merging of the concept of meaning onto the concept of cause and the centrality of the exegetical method onto the positivist method embraced by Freud (which is essentially because of John Stuart Mill’s classic eliminative inductivist model; see Grünbaum 1984). Hermann legitimatises it through the idea of causal psychic occurrences and through the notion of the deterministic and pervasive nature of this causalism. However, the rise of the hermeneutical perspective in the debate, as both an epistemic stance and a theoretical–clinical praxis, dates only to the second half of the 1960s. In fact, the contributions of Ricoeur, Lorenzer, and Habermas came about during these years.
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- 1.
It is perhaps useful to remember that Freud translated into German a volume of essays by Mill, for the Complete Works edited by Theodor Gomperz. He certainly knew the model proposed by the English philosopher, integrating it into his naturalism, where idealistic morphology and vitalism, evolutionism and determinism converged. See Assoun 1981.
- 2.
The first group pertains to those sciences oriented toward the identification and description of laws governing facts (science of laws). They are natural sciences based on a judgement of facts, and, according to Rickert, characterised by a generalising methodological approach. The second group pertains to those sciences that address singularity, as in individual, historically determined objects (historical sciences). They are the cultural sciences related to a judgement of values, and are distinct from the first because of their individualising approach (see Windelband 1907). Regarding the distinctive couple generalising/individualising, see Rickert 1902, 236 f.
- 3.
“Rational understanding always leads to a statement that the psychic content was simply a rational connection, understandable without the help of any psychology. Empathic understanding, on the other hand, always leads directly into the psychic connection itself. Rational understanding is merely an aid to psychology, empathic understanding brings us to psychology itself” (Jaspers 1997, 304).
- 4.
To Jaspers’ interpretation we can connect Jean Hyppolite’s psychoanalytical interpretation. In France, around the mid-1950s, Jean Hyppolite noted a striking contrast between Freud’s positivist language and the character of his discovery; thus, he too began promoting psychoanalysis as hermeneutics.
- 5.
It is a perspective today that balances between abandoning and overcoming interpretation, yet it remains dialectically anchored to the hermeneutical perspective. As Jacques-Alain Miller says, Lacan’s era is over: the interpretation era is behind us (see Miller 1996). Some analysts are trying to leave the interpretative paradigm behind (see Pancheri 1998; Benvenuto 1988). Jean Laplanche’s case is famous: borrowing from Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionist paradigm, he tries to profile an anti-hermeneutical methodology, with its free-dissociation technique, for deconstructive psychoanalysis (Laplanche 1995, 1997).
- 6.
“The scientific self-misunderstanding of psychoanalysis (das szientistische Selbstmißverständnis der Psychoanalyse) inaugurated by Freud himself, as the physiologist that he originally was […]” (Habermas 1972, 214). In the essay he says, “Freud did not take methodological cognizance of the characteristic that distinguishes psychoanalysis from both the empirical-analytic and exclusively hermeneutic sciences. Instead, he attributed it to the peculiarity of analytic technique” (189).
- 7.
- 8.
This approach connects Klein and Schafer to the two other important dissidents: Holt and Gill. In reference to the dismissal of metapsychology and the critical hermeneutic interpretation, see Holt 1989, 324–344.
- 9.
The conference proceedings are published under the direction of Sidney Hook (1959).
- 10.
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Busacchi, V. (2016). Introduction: Methodenstreit and Psychoanalysis as Hermeneutics. In: Habermas and Ricoeur’s Depth Hermeneutics. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39010-9_1
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