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PlatformaSCCA ISSN 1580-738X

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Izdal SCCA, Zavod za sodobno umetnost-Ljubljana, 2002
Published by SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts-Ljubljana, 2002

Bogdan Lešnik
Fragments on Theory and Ideology, and Especially on Poor Thought (A psychoanalytical reading)

I
In the relation between theory and ideology, a crucial asymmetry will be immediately noticed: theory is always already in the ideological field, whereas ideology is not always the object of theoretical reflection. Though in another (yet related) sense, theory always reflects ideology, producing thoughts that 'make sense' from the point of view of concrete production relations (even theory needs to be produced).
II
Freud's method of free associations has shown that, however a thought may be trivial (neurosis is petty), stupid (neurosis stupefies), or in any other way unacceptable (neurosis is exclusive), it will inevitably lead to the same material from the archives of unconscious fantasies, childhood memories, repressed ideas, suppressed feelings and emotions, inhibited acts, etc. Upon this material - like a detective, 'from the rubbish-heap, as it were, of our observations' ('Michelangelo's Moses', SE 13, p. 222), that is, from what we are used to neglecting - Freud reconstructs the relations the thought reproduces. This can be done because it restores them, so that earlier relations can be inferred from their later repetitions: 'the second relation is a repetition of the first one on a fresh stage' (cf. the incomplete translation in 'Dostoevsky and Parricide', SE 21, p. 186). What comes to his aid is that precisely because they recur, many situations are typical and predictable.
III
The thesis that thought (which includes, of course, thought-strings and sequences) restores primary relations proceeds from clinical observation, which teaches us that intellectual work is never free (the term 'free association' does not describe the status of what comes to mind, but the method) and remains permanently attached to the primitive, infantile material to which it is bound to give voice. It is here that the thought has its first sources.
IV
In Freud's use, the terms primary, primitive, infantile all refer to the same thing - to the situation in early childhood, until about the fourth year, and by this detour they describe something concurrent. The word 'infantile' does it by its connotation; a child's behaviour is taken as childish in later life. Like 'primitive', it describes something supposed to have been overcome, while 'primary' refers to the formation or (what is practically a synonym) the division of the ego, and describes the conditions for an infantile wish to be fulfilled.
V
Freud soon discovers something surprising. The thoughts that do not match intellectual criteria, regardless of whether they are false statements or delusional assumptions, cannot be distinguished from the most successful samples at least in one point: there is nothing arbitrary about them. Even in its worst slips, the thought correctly (consequently and following the rules) represents (vertreten) its primitive, infantile sources. What may only be incorrect is its rational content. The thought can be erroneous, weak, pointless, etc.; it even must be, for what it has done correctly in the first step will necessarily obstruct intellectual work. (For obvious reasons, Freud's term korrekt is here translated as 'correct' and not as 'rational' - as in SE - which, while not exactly mistaken, obliterates the prevailing connotation of 'proper, appropriate' in the German word.)
VI
If the thought correctly restores primary relations, then this will necessarily thwart its rational content. Yet the rational thought is the only stage where it is possible, euphemistically speaking, to appreciate correctness.
VII
Analytical experience shows that there are relations we would never consider - we would not consider them in order to keep them apart (cf. 'Dostoevsky and Parricide', SE 21, p. 182, n. 1). Some may be guessed (erraten) on this basis. This is not to say that Freud was making guesses (apart from the usual setting of hypotheses), but that he found the solution to a riddle (Rätsel), i.e., that he got an idea about the relation.
VIII
'One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature,' wrote Leonardo, for 'great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little, you will be able to love it but little or not at all.' Freud's comment: 'The value of these remarks of Leonardo's is not to be looked for in their conveying an important psychological fact; for what they assert is obviously false, and Leonardo must have known this as well as we do.' ('Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood', SE 11, pp. 73 sq.)
IX
Leonardo's remarks fail as statements, but they are firmly fixed to his life story. Freud resumes: instead of loving (or hating) and creating, Leonardo made research. The researcher in him subordinated and finally disabled all Leonardo's other activities, including his art. The source of his inclination to research was sexual research in childhood. Initially useful to him (he actually made important discoveries), it later inhibited him, so that he altogether ceased to work. So, even though what he states is not true, he nonetheless tells us what he cannot escape. He sets a rule about love (p. 74), as if it were a question of scientific ethic.
X
The statement that today, a century later, Freud's psychoanalysis - as a product of its time - may be regarded as antiquated and need not be taken seriously, fails as a scientific thought but clearly reveals its infantile sources. It is obviously false, and the author must know it as well as we do. What we have here is only a pastiche of the scientific method, betraying (verraten) what the author cannot escape: simple envy. Leonardo is difficult to imagine becoming obsolete (at least in the time that counts, cf. On Transience, SE 14, p. 306); together with Michelangelo, with whom he once competed in painting, he is just as alive, if not more, than in his time. But it is precisely such (resistant) cases that invoke envy. Even Freud is already a classic, whereas where we stand is still rather uncertain. Moreover, rejection is economical, because it effectively replaces studying the source.
XI
It is perhaps here that one can begin searching for the answer to the question why, in certain circumstances, intelligent people will act (think, write) 'as though they were feeble-minded; and anyone who is not too conceited may see this happening in himself as often as he pleases'. ('Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva', SE 9, p. 71.)
XII
Tradition attributes to Leonardo considerable, if not complete, ignorance of the matters of physical love. But he undoubtedly knew the feelings of love. He lived with his pupils, with the last one until his death. He lived abstinently - taken 'that the assertions of his contemporaries were not grossly erroneous', adds Freud (p. 101), who entertains some doubt between the lines. The picture is that Leonardo wholly sublimated his sexuality into - artistic work, indeed, but primarily the work of research. Now this can hardly entail that sublimation is in general responsible for artistic and scientific work, as Freud knew very well that sexual abstinence is rather an exception than a rule, even in severe neurotic inhibition, and much more so amongst artists.
XIII
Still, despite Freud's own hesitations, Leonardo has stuck well as an example of sublimation, so the question is what other aims this may serve. It may nourish the fantasy of another, as yet un-experienced pleasure, thus concealing sexual content. Or the thought that with Leonardo it appeared to be so may have been translated into a moral rule, according to which one ought to (or at least could, with sufficient effort) sublimate. This translation is obviously incorrect, but it carries out the child's wish to be 'big' (cf. 'Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming', SE 9, p. 146, and 'Leonardo', p. 126) and assists repression at the same time.
XIV
Freud gives an interesting assessment of Leonardo's notes: they are 'to a striking degree devoid of any element of wit' (p. 127). Does this indicate that wit, too, is sacrificed to sexual abstinence? (Is absence of wit a form of feeble-mindedness?)
XV
Despite the signs of obsessive neurosis, Leonardo cannot be considered a neurotic, at least not initially. It is true that his intellectual development is no less based on repression, but due to its specific vicissitudes his sexual 'instinct can operate freely in the service of intellectual interest'. Yet it is not completely free. 'Sexual repression is still taken into account by the instinct, in that it avoids any concern with sexual themes.' (P. 80.) Such avoidance is considered correct scientific practice. This is not to say that the scientist does not take sexuality as his object (he has, after all, drawn the anatomy of the coitus), but he does it by depriving the object precisely of 'sexuality', its ability to arouse sexual excitement. It is still the object of the sexual instinct, but something else has changed: thinking itself has become sexualised. 'Investigation of the object' replaces sexual activity, while 'the feeling of having made a discovery' replaces sexual satisfaction. (Ibid.) The effect of the whole process on the object may be called mortification.
XVI
The artist does the very opposite; he enables lifeless objects to excite. They become 'objects' by being repossessed by the libido. Such excitement may attach itself to a variety of activities, reinforcing them, or it may be that some component of the sexual instinct finds in an activity a convenient aim (ibid.). Of course, the artistic effect cannot be reduced to sexual arousal; we shall remember that our response to the objects produced by the artist is frequently of quite another sort. They more often move us (cf. the incomplete translation on p. 107: 'have a powerful effect') than arouse us sexually, even when the latter does not exactly mean erection, and sometimes both - an opportunity for a range of combinations. The artist puts to work something that evokes a loss, a death in the ego (the state of being moved is supported by grief), or perhaps more accurately, something that amounts to avoiding death.
XVII
On the one hand, science contributes to artistic endeavours, as it opens up new paths by offering new insights. Such is the case with Leonardo, but even this case is ambiguous, since the scientist in his case suppressed the artist (p. 77). On the other hand, there is the 'case of Norbert Hanold', the hero of Jensen's Gradiva, in whom scientific research was nothing but a symptom of suppressed love. The hero crumbled, as it were, his love-object into his field of research. The author presented all this psychologically so correctly, says Freud, that science (which Norbert Hanold in the end feels to be like 'an old, dried-up, tedious aunt'; 'Gradiva', p. 65) could learn from him: 'it is science that cannot hold its own before the achievement of the author' (p. 53).
XVIII
Freud discusses works of 'the most various worth' (p. 9), potboiler novels as well as classical tragedies, and his treatment of Leonardo has a counterpart in his treatment of a comic cartoon in the Interpretation of Dreams. Everywhere he finds the same references to primary sources. One exception is Michelangelo's Moses. This paper is a masterly, though somewhat displaced example of Freud's Zurückführung, the tracing of the motives that have led to the situation as it is. There are no usual suspects here, no parents, no childhood, no sexuality, and yet we get a full drama of suspense about the marble statue. From Moses' posture, Freud derived the events that led Moses (in the author's conception) to assume it. Perhaps it is true that the efforts to extract what the artist meant contain something futile and impossible (cf. 'Moses', pp. 235 sq.), but Freud's description is no less appealing than previous descriptions by 'art experts' - contradictory descriptions that Freud masterfully employs for his own reconstruction -, on the contrary, it is better, more exciting, and more ingenious. 'It is not difficult to guess', to use one of Freud's favourite phrases, what primary relations he himself restored here. It was only proper for him to publish the paper anonymously.
XIX
Althusser was an attentive reader of Freud. One could list many tallying examples of how Freud thought (auffassen) acts (as symptoms and as aims), (unconscious) work, (habitual, regular) practices. What is ideology for Althusser may easily be compared with neurosis: the same fundamental self-submission, the same self-evident onset, the same aim - reproduction. The constant recurrence of the same ('The Uncanny', SE 17, p. 234 and passim), the compulsion to repeat, and the rationalisation of inhibition that culminates in the illusion of Free Will (cf. p. 236) are virtual descriptions of ideological mechanisms. Of course, Freud did not think ideology as Althusser did, but, as this author would say, he described it.
XX
In the following passage, Freud appears to speak merely about Weltanschauung. Actually, he introduces 'world-view' to point out something else, a practical decision (choice) that determines all further acting. 'We can safely say that Dostoevsky never got free from the feelings of guilt arising from his intention of murdering his father. They also determined his attitude in the two other spheres in which the father-relation is a decisive factor, his attitude towards the authority of the State and towards belief in God. In the first of these he ended up with complete submission to his Little Father, the Tsar Here penitence gained the upper hand. In the religious sphere he retained more freedom: according to apparently trustworthy reports he wavered, up to the last moment of his life, between faith and atheism In writing this we are laying ourselves open to the charge of having abandoned the impartiality of analysis and of subjecting Dostoevsky to judgements that can only be justified from the partisan standpoint of a particular Weltanschauung. A conservative would take the side of the Grand Inquisitor and would judge Dostoevsky differently. The objection is just; and one can only say in extenuation that Dostoevsky's decision has every appearance of having been determined by an intellectual inhibition due to his neurosis.' ('Dostoevsky', pp. 187 sq.)
XXI
In sum: the conservative choice is the consequence of an intellectual inhibition derived from parricidal fantasies.
XXII
By his last choice, Dostoevsky joins the practices of enslaving people, 'a position which lesser minds have reached with smaller efforts', says Freud mordantly. The choice is regressive; Dostoevsky yielded to his bad conscience, to his ancient feelings of guilt, surrendered to 'traditional values' and became a reactionary (pp. 177 sq.).
XXIII
Freud counted Dostoevsky amongst the people who crave punishment (p. 186). These he had identified before as 'criminals from a sense of guilt' ('Some Character Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work', SE 14, pp. 332 sqq.). What is at work here is the chain fantasy -> sense of guilt -> act. The subject commits a forbidden act because of a sense of guilt, which arises from the unconscious (repressed) wishful fantasy of an already committed ('arch-') crime. The sense of guilt is not the consequence of a criminal act, but requires the act so that the sense of guilt may attach to something. The act relieves the unbearably indefinite pressure of bad conscience, because it fixes, localises, limits it to itself. The inference drawn by the conscious thought that the feeling of guilt is attached to the act itself is again incorrect, but it is an opportunity for the correct, albeit unconscious, restoration of primary (Oedipal) relations.
XXIV
Now it would seem that thought, apart from intellectual work, also carries out another work, similar to dream-work (Traumarbeit), which unavoidably hinders intellectual work, if the latter strives for the rational thought. We say 'another work' because it was identified subsequently, which is understandable, as it is carried out unconsciously and can only be observed during analysis, but all seems to point to the primary process, just as in dream-work. Like dream-work, regressive restoration of primary relations is not characteristic for any particular pathology. Quite the opposite: it appears to be the fundamental, albeit unconscious, 'theme' (Motiv in Freud, cf. 'The Uncanny', pp. 231 sq.) of every thought. Freud finds it in cases of 'feeble-mindedness' just as in achievements of excellence. How can that be?
XXV
The matter becomes clearer if we abandon the idea of two works, one of which demolishes what the other one has build. If Freud observed that dream-work is nothing but thinking, then we must observe that thinking is nothing but restoration of primary relations. The thought, in order to emerge at all, must first find support in the primary relations (which, indeed, are always at hand) it will restore, and it is precisely in their restoration that the thought is formed. What seemed initially a disturber of thought is now its necessary condition. Thus the thought piles up contradictions it cannot catch up with even to register, much less resolve. They may be resolved in analysis by reference to primary relations - by observing that the contradictions of thought are those of the primary relations it restores.
XXVI
Reference: Sigmund Freud, Spisi o umetnosti [Writings on Literature and Art], Založba /*cf., Ljubljana, 2001. Bibliographical references in the text specify the corresponding volumes and locations in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (SE).

Bogdan Lešnik: psychologist and sociologist of culture, co-ordinator of the Anthropology of the Everyday Life programme at the Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (ISH) - Ljubljana Graduate School of Humanities, Editor of the magazine Socialno delo, President of the SCCA-Ljubljana Board, Vice-Chair of Psychoanalytic Society of Slovenia.