Psychoanalytic truth remains alien because the patient cannot derive it from his own situation
Evidence
The subject has the same relation to these phenomena as the deceived to the behavior of the deceiver. He establishes them in their reality and must interpret them. There is a truth in the activities of the deceiver; if the deceived could reattach them to the situation where the deceiver establishes himself and to his project of the lie, they would become integral parts of truth, by virtue of being lying conduct. Similarly there is a truth in the symbolic acts; it is what the psychoanalyst discovers when he reattaches them to the historical situation of the patient, to the unconscious complexes which they express, to the blocking of the censor. Thus the subject deceives himself about the meaning of his conduct, he apprehends it in its concrete existence but not in its truth, simply because he cannot derive it from an original situation and from a psychic constitution which remain alien to him. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 282
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: This is the crux of Sartre’s objection: psychoanalysis restores truth but at the cost of making it alien — the subject’s own conduct is interpreted by another, so freedom and self-knowledge are never unified.
- XREF: connects to: Psychoanalysis disputes distract from its core epistemic value — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 418; Empirical psychoanalysis cannot explain why the subject recognizes the truth of its interpretations — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1344; Psychoanalytic insight works only if the subject was already conscious of his drives — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1345 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Empirical psychoanalysis cannot explain why the subject recognizes the truth of its interpretations
#corroborates(0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1344 - Existing consciousness cannot veto insights that expose its own self-contradiction
#complicates(0.80) - Truth depends on patient lingering with the particular rather than violent short cuts
#expands(0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 87 - Psychoanalytic insight works only if the subject was already conscious of his drives
#contradicts(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1345