Ghostly Psychoanalysis

Abstract

There is a lot in psychoanalysis that falls under the heading of ‘haunting’. Perhaps it even makes sense to think of its whole project that way — as a practice of exorcism. In a famous formulation, Freud (1909: 123) writes, ‘In an ana lysis… a thing which has not been understood inevitably reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the mystery has been solved and the spell broken.’ What troubles us now is laid at the feet of a ghost; that ghost must be identified, appeased and put to rest. This is not just a matter of naming it but also of understanding it in a very particular and comprehensive way, offering it something that acknowledges it and that makes reparation for the damage done to it. There are rituals attached to this: free association, interpretation, working through. During analysis, the ghost grows in substance and certainty precisely in order that it can be later dissolved. This might be a loving process in which something lost is recognised and mourned. Or it could be a traumatic experience in which something we never knew we had comes back to plague us, a repetitive and destructive inheritance that holds tight with its talons and can only be released with violence and pain. It may be a ghost from individual history, something we have done or has been done to us. It may also be a transgenerational one, haunting us because of events that took place in earlier times.