The Implications of Merleau-Ponty’s Thought for the Practice of Psychotherapy

Abstract

In his monumental work on Freud, Ricœur argues that Freud’s archaeology needs to be supplemented/counterbalanced/integrated with its own incipient teleology, and he turns to Hegel to find what psychoanalysis has left undeveloped. I am convinced by Ricœur’s critique, but not by his prescription: I agree that Freud’s preoccupation with the past needs to be contextualized within a more comprehensive and integrated understanding of human temporality, but I propose to look in Merleau-Ponty’s thought, rather than Hegel’s, for that context. Both Merleau-Ponty and Hegel understand freedom and reason to be the goals which define human teleology, but Hegel’s absolute reason is incompatible with Merleau-Ponty’s conception of reason as essentially finite. Without pausing to argue the case, here I shall simply opt for finitude and proceed to examine the implications that Merleau-Ponty’s teleology of freedom and reason has for the practice of psychotherapy.