Empirical psychoanalysis cannot explain why the subject recognizes the truth of its interpretations

Evidence

Precisely because the goal of the inquiry must be to discover a choice and not a state, the investigator must recall on every occasion that his object is not a datum buried in the darkness of the unconscious but a free, conscious determination—which is not even resident in consciousness, but which is one with this consciousness itself. … But nothing in his principles or in his initial postulates permits him to understand or to utilize this testimony. Where could he get any such right? If the complex is really unconscious—that is, if there is a barrier separating the sign from the thing signified—how could the subject recognize it? Does the unconscious complex recognize itself? But haven’t we been told that it lacks understanding? And if of necessity we granted to it the faculty of understanding the signs, would this not be to make of it by the same token a conscious unconscious? What is understanding if not to be conscious of what is understood? — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1344

Categorization

• DEFINE: Contrasts the Freudian unconscious as a barrier-separated datum with Sartre’s ‘free, conscious determination’ one with consciousness itself — an ontological distinction central to the book.
• XREF: Directly anticipates Beauvoir’s critique of psychoanalytic determinism and her account of ambiguity in The Second Sex. — connects to: Psychoanalysis disputes distract from its core epistemic value — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 418; The censor alone can recognize what it represses and resist the analyst’s approach; Psychoanalytic truth remains alien because the patient cannot derive it from his own situation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 282 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Psychoanalytic insight works only if the subject was already conscious of his drives #complicates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1345
• Methodological critique can disprove a proof but never disprove a theory #corroborates (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 642
• Postcolonial psychoanalytic theory is normative and detached from empirical reality #complicates (0.80)
• Something intrinsic to psychoanalytic method generates misrecognition about race #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1264