Philosophy of Psychoanalysis

Research into the sexual behaviour of children remains in its infancy despite growing awareness that, under certain circumstances, it can at times be harmful to those involved. Of the research undertaken thus far, much has focused on descriptive data (Who did what to whom? What is the age difference between the children involved? How many times did they do it?) Little or no research or theorising has been directed to the questions of 'why it occurred' and 'what it means' to the children involved. This paper examines the cases of two boys whose sexual behaviours with other children were found to be problematic by child protection authorities. By considering the transference-countertransference relationship in the treatment setting with each of these boys, it is argued that an examination of the conscious and unconscious procedures, motives and meanings of such children, expands professional horizons of understanding about the phenomenon of pre-pubescent problem sexual behaviour. This paper concludes that research, particularly through the lens of contemporary psychoanalysis, has much to offer clinicians who assess and provide treatment to children whose sexual behaviours fall outside the 'normal' range.

Table of contents:

Braddock & Lacewing, Introduction.

Part I. Psychoanalysis.
Brearley, What Do Psychoanalysts Do?
Budd, Reading and Misreading.
Rusbridger, Elements of the Oedipus Complex: A Kleinian Account.
Tuckett, Civilization and its Discontents Today.

Part II. Philosophy.
Cottingham, A Triangle of Hostility? Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Religion.
Lacewing, Do Unconscious Emotions Involve Unconscious Feelings?
Harcourt, Guilt, Shame, and the ‘Psychology of Love’.
Braddock, Psychoanalysis as Functionalist Social Science: The Legacy of Freud’s ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’.

III. Perspectives.
Rustin, How Do Psychoanalysts Know What They Know?
Robertson, Freud’s Literary Imagination.
Connors, Force, Figuration, and Repetition in Freud.
Fletcher, Gender, Sexuality and the Theory of Seduction.

Most explanations of child sexual abuse perpetration have been premised on assumptions of the individualist/monological paradigm. Child abuse prevention programs, including treatment for people known to pose a risk of sexual harm to children (sexual offenders), are also based on monological assumptions. Drawing from the case-study of a Catholic Priest who has sexually abused many children, this paper argues that Psychoanalytic Complexity Theory (PCT) offers a high-definition lens through which the phenomenon of child sexual abuse perpetration can be understood. PCT is consistent with more humane and better informed societal values about the human rights, dignity and worth of each unique person - regardless of whether they are the child-victim, perpetrator, guardian or bystander.

I have argued (Carveth, 2013) that, coinciding with the rise of neo-liberalism and the culture of narcissism, psychoanalytic concern with problems of guilt and the superego was displaced in favour of a range of other preoccupations. Today issues of conscience appear to be returning from repression both in society at large and in psychoanalysis, but our theory in this area is deficient in many respects. We have largely identified the superego with the moral and the id with the immoral, thus downplaying the frequent immorality of the superego and the morality of the id. We have implicitly succumbed to a moral relativism oblivious to the existence of a conscience capable of judging both society and the superego it shapes. If we are to live up to our claim to be “the psychology of the innermost mental processes of man in conflict” (Kris, 1938, p. 140), we need to recognize conflict between superego and conscience—and conscience itself as the fourth element of the structural theory of the mind.

RESUMO: O objetivo deste artigo é explicitar as diferenças da noção de eu no que se refere à segunda tópica freudiana e aos primeiros anos de ensino de Lacan. Para tal, abordaremos a formação do psiquismo humano de acordo com o que Freud organiza na segunda tópica, passando por conceitos como inconsciente, pré-consciente e consciente, bem como os princípios de prazer e de realidade. Após isso, abordaremos a constituição do eu imaginário de Lacan e mostraremos de que forma esse eu, por mais que o psicanalista francês afirme ser este como o eu freudiano, distancia-se e diferencia-se do de Freud. Palavras-chave: Eu; Imaginário; Inconsciente.

ABSTRACT : The aim of this article is to clarify the differences in the notion of I in relation to the second Freudian topic and the first years of Lacan's teaching. For this, we will discuss the formation of the human psyche according to what Freud organizes in the second topic, going through concepts such as unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious, as well as the principles of pleasure and reality. After this, we will discuss the constitution of the imaginary I of Lacan and show how this I, even though the french psychoanalyst asserts itto be as the Freudian I, distances itself and differs from that of Freud.

This work aims to present a summary of the ideas contained in the complementary teaching material of the elective class Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, in the form of asynchronous classes recorded by Prof. Marcos José Müller on the article by Merleau-Ponty entitled “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1945), from the point of view of the undergraduate student in Philosophy at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in the ninth term, as a form of semester evaluation of the discipline, as preparatory part of the studies of Merleau-Ponty's reading of metapsychology, dream theory, among other concepts that are the object of his study of Freud's work.

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"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

In his oft-cited discussion of the “culturally constituted behavioral environment,” Irving Hallowell argued that any given cultural ontology must be considered to be “real” insofar as people believe in it; and inasmuch as it exist as an object of belief, it becomes an effective constituent of thought, feeling, and action—in short, ethno-ontologies become basic dynamic elements in the psychic economy of individuals. In this paper, I build on the contributions of Hallowell and others (including George Devereux), sketching the outlines of what I have referred to elsewhere as a “cultural psychodynamic” approach—one that integrates contemporary psychoanalytic insights into the dynamics of human subjectivity with a phenomenological and ethno-ontological approach (such as that advocated by Hallowell). Such an approach emphasizes the ways in which local beliefs, social structure, symbolic resources, and the practices of everyday life serve to structuralize the psychic field, encouraging certain culturally specific psychodynamic configurations while discouraging others. It focuses on the importance of framing epistemologies (e.g., locally distinct ethnotheories of experience, emotion, and self) in giving rise to distinct topographies of self-experience, allowing individuals to sidestep certain conflicts and dilemmas, while simultaneously throwing others into high relief. I argue that a sustained interpretive tacking between these fields lends greater dimensionality to ethnographic analyses: Psychoanalytic ideas help to illuminate dynamic intrapsychic and interpersonal processes of meaning making, while ethnographic data emphasize the powerfully constitutive role of ethnotheories and social practices in conditioning the form, function, and expression of basic psychodynamic processes.

This paper addresses the Freudian phylogenetic hypothesis, i.e., the thesis that the intelligibility of the psychic functioning requires the assumption of the hereditary transmission of memory traces. It aims to seize: 1- the content of this hypothesis, 2- some of the problems produced by it, 3- its meaning regarding the questions aroused by it, 4- its philosophical status. Those elements will allow us, in the second part of the paper, to endeavor a reading of the way Lacan would treat, by his turn, the tension between universality and singularity in fantasy. It will be argued that, for Lacan, contrary to Freud, what is universal in fantasy is not derived from contingency, but it does not come either from metaphysics because it is restricted to the conditions of the relationship between subject and language.

Resumo: No texto "A família" de 1938, Lacan investiga a formação do psiquismo e a concomitante constituição dos objetos da realidade desenvolvendo a noção de estágio do espelho e formatando uma configuração inicial de sua teoria do imaginário na qual a sociologia é apontada como uma espécie de disciplina reguladora da psicologia, capaz de lhe garantir uma necessária objetividade não reducionista. Esse artigo pretende acompanhar as definições de família, imago e complexo e as configurações atribuídas aos complexos de desmame, intrusão e édipo; analisar essa formulação inicial do estágio do espelho e indicar os princípios em jogo na teoria lacaniana desse período. Palavras­chave: Psicanálise – Lacan – Imaginário É possível perceber entre a tese de doutorado de Lacan – Da psicose paranóica em suas relações com a personalidade (1932) – e o texto acerca dos complexos familiares (1938) uma continuidade direta que se traduz em termos das respostas que o segundo trabalho procura dar às questões herdadas do primeiro. Essas questões configuram­se em torno de duas diretrizes paralelas e interdependentes: investigar o "obscuro estágio do narcisismo" e perguntar­se pelo processo de constituição do sujeito considerado como um ser essencialmente social. Isso seria, segundo Ogilvie, uma espécie de resto que a tese de doutorado teria legado às investigações teóricas posteriores do psicanalista: Terminada sua tese, podemos supor que Lacan empreende o cumprimento do programa que traçou para si: elucidar este obscuro narcisismo primário, precisar sua articulação com a situação social que o circunda. (2) (1987/1991, p. 101) Porém, ao lado da continuidade da questão, existe também, de acordo com esse autor, um movimento de distanciamento que se manifesta em dois principais aspectos: 1­ enquanto na tese havia a idéia de desenvolvimento por imitação, o que implicava a conservação de uma exterioridade a ser abolida pela estipulação de um paralelismo entre psíquico e social, no texto sobre a família essa idéia é trocada – com o recurso ao aparato da teoria psicanalítica – por uma teoria da constituição do sujeito que tem a identificação como principal operador conceitual. Isso elimina a necessidade de um confronto entre interior e exterior porquanto significa que o acesso a uma identidade própria só ocorre a partir de uma outra, noutras palavras, o outro é quem assume o papel principal na constituição do mesmo. 2­ se na tese a referência filosófica mais importante era Espinosa, agora ela passa a ser Kojève com sua leitura da Fenomenologia do Espírito. Certamente, as duas mais evidentes inflexões do ensino de Kojève no texto sobre a família e na teoria do imaginário como um todo serão a onipresença da idéia de negatividade e a concepção do desenvolvimento psíquico como um processo dialético que, como tal, envolve inclusões do negativo e operações de superação. A continuidade entre a tese de doutorado e o artigo sobre a família passa necessariamente por um dos raros trabalhos publicados por Lacan nesse intervalo(3). No final de Para além do 'princípio de realidade', artigo publicado em Évolution psychiatrique no ano de 1936, ele se pergunta: (...) através das imagens, objetos do interesse, como se constitui essa realidade em que se concilia universalmente o conhecimento do homem? Através das identificações típicas do sujeito, como se constitui o eu, onde é que ele se reconhece? (1936/1966, p. 92) Promete para um nova contribuição à mesma revista, examinar pesquisas relativas à realidade da imagem e às formas do conhecimento que convergem para "a nova ciência psicológica." Apesar de não ter se concretizado, esse artigo em projeto aponta o direcionamento que Lacan dará a seus estudos com as futuras pesquisas acerca dos complexos familiares e do estágio do espelho. Tudo se passa como se seus trabalhos desse período procurassem responder àquelas questões. Com efeito, muitas das idéias aí desenvolvidas encontram­se esboçadas em Para além do 'princípio de realidade', idéias que, por um lado ainda remetem à tese de doutorado e, por outro, já antecipam o que será trabalhado no texto de 1938. É o caso, por exemplo, da ênfase no conceito freudiano de identificação, da tese da "fecundidade psíquica de toda insuficiência vital", da idéia de que o comportamento individual exprime sempre os traços das relações psíquicas primitivas as quais, por sua

RESUMO: O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar em linhas gerais de que maneira a psicose é diagnosticada e tratada pela psicoterapia institucional. Partiremos da tese de doutorado de Tosquelles, na qual a psicose é pensada como fenômeno existencial comparável à experiência de fim de mundo. Trata-se aqui de salientar a importância da compreensão da experiência do doente e de sua elaboração criativa no desenvolvimento do quadro psicótico. Em seguida, analisaremos de que maneira Oury une a teoria de Tosquelles à psicanálise para desenvolver uma clínica multirreferencial e polifônica. No interior desse quadro teórico e prático, buscaremos traçar a inflexão política que Guattari dará à experiência clínica da psicoterapia institucional. Palavras-chave: esquizofrenia; psicose; instituição; transversalidade; subjetividades.
Abstract: Guattari and institutional psychotherapy. The purpose of this article is to outline how psychosis is diagnosed and treated by institutional psychotherapy. We will begin with Tosquelles' doctoral thesis, in which psychosis is thought as an existential phenomenon comparable to the experience of the end of the world. It is important to emphasize the importance of understanding the patient's experience and his creative elaboration in the development of the psychotic picture. Then, we will analyze how Oury unites the theory of Tosquelles to psychoanalysis to develop a multirreferential and polyphonic clinic. Within this theoretical and practical framework we will trace the political inflection that Guattari will attribute to the experience of self-management proposed by institutional psychotherapy.

Resumo

Em meio a uma discussão sobre a localização cerebral dos fenômenos psicológicos, Freud propõe em 1891, em seu trabalho sobre as afasias, a chamada hipótese do "concomitante dependente". Segundo esta hipótese, atribuída pelo autor ao neurologista John Hughlings Jackson, os estados mentais serão considerados como distintos, não redutíveis e paralelos aos processos cerebrais, não havendo relação causal entre ambos. Entendendo que estes princípios constituem uma resposta possível ao problema mente-corpo, nosso objetivo neste artigo será situar a posição assumida por Freud no interior deste debate filosófico durante a segunda metade do século XIX. Para tal, nosso trabalho será dividido em três partes: em um primeiro momento 1) abordaremos alguns antecedentes deste debate nos dedicando ao estudo da noção de psiquismo durante as primeiras décadas do século XIX. Na sequência, considerando a emergência e a consolidação do paradigma monista e materialista a partir dos anos 1820, 2) discutiremos o surgimento de duas posições distintas, o localizacionismo e o funcionalismo. Por fim, nos aprofundando na segunda destas posições, dita funcionalista, 3) buscaremos demonstrar o vínculo da hipótese freudiana a uma determinada tradição neurológica de língua inglesa, em grande medida orientada pelos trabalhos do filósofo escocês Alexander Bain.

Paravras-chave: História da psicanálise; Problema mente-corpo; Filosofia da mente; Recepção filosófica da psicanálise.

Abstract

In the midst of a discussion on the cerebral location of psychological phenomena, Freud proposes in his work on aphasia (1891) the so-called "dependent concomitant" hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, attributed by the author to the neurologist John Hughlings Jackson, mental states will be considered as distinct, not reducible and parallel to brain processes, with no causal relationship between them. Understanding that these principles constitute a possible response to the mind-body problem, our objective in this article will be to situate the position assumed by Freud within this philosophical debate during the second half of the nineteenth century. To this end, our work will be divided into three parts: first 1) we will approach some antecedents of this debate by focusing on the study of the notion of psychism during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Next, considering the emergence and consolidation of the monist and materialist paradigm from the 1820s, 2) we will discuss the emergence of two distinct positions, localizationism and functionalism. Finally, deepening in the second of these positions, the so-called functionalist, 3) we will seek to demonstrate the link of the Freudian hypothesis to a certain neurological tradition of the English language, largely guided by the works of the Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain.

Keywords: History of psychoanalysis; Mind-body problem; Philosophy of mind; Philosophical reception of psychoanalysis.

In spite of the philosophical and not-philosophical historiography that is aiming to support the thesis of a close link between Nietzsche's works and Freudian psychoanalysis, such a conception seems quite problematic. Historically, a direct and deep Freudian reading of Nietzschean texts appears extremely doubtful, also considering the ethical implications of both authors. The different attitude of Freud and Nietzsche towards the cultural phenomenon of David Strauss and, in particular, his writing The Old and the New Faith, could provide a paradigmatic case to highlight the problematic nature of that relationship. We could find interesting to compare the different approach, Nietzschean and Freudian, to the work of Strauss, paradoxically revealing the incredible similarities and, at the same time, the equally radical differences between these two thinkers. Both Nietzsche and Freud found in Strauss a useful tool to focus their atheism, giving the first impression of a convergent reading. Later, their approaches take completely divergent paths: Nietzsche, from the First Untimely Meditation on, will always interpret a certain way of understanding atheism as a more or less disguised manifestation of ascetic ideals, while Freud, defining the psychoanalysts as 'lay pastors of souls', will go more and more in the direction of a religiosity of science, absolutely comparable to what is described in Genealogy. It could therefore be argued that the First Untimely Meditation can also be interpreted as a criticism ante litteram against Freud, 'untimely' because it comes before the time; while the works of Freud's maturity may be interpreted as a criticism of the ethical Nietzschean perspectivism, starting from the tradition of Enlightenment and Positivism, then representing an 'untimely' position, but in the sense of coming with delay after the time.

This article articulates a psychoanalytic reading of Christos Tsiolkas’s Dead Europe by analysing desire in relation to Melanie Klein’s oral sadistic stage, a desire which, in the author’s grim fairytale with Gothic-laden aesthetics, is metaphorically expressed through vampirism and cannibalism.

Estés, Clarissa Pinkola, Women Who Run With the Wolves. Contracting the Power of the Wild Woman, London, Rider, 1992.

Bluebeard In a single human being there are many other beings, all with their own values, motives, and devices. Some psychological technologies suggest we arrest these beings, count them, name them, force them into harness till they shuffle along like vanquished slaves. But to do this would halt the dance of wildish lights in a woman's eyes; it would halt her heat lightning and arrest all throwing of sparks. Rather than corrupt her natural beauty, our work is to build for all these beings a wildish countryside wherein the artists among them can make, the lovers love, the healers heal. But what shall we do with those inner beings who are quite mad and those who carry out destruction without thought? Even these must be given a place, though one in which they can be contained. One entity in particular, the most deceitful and most powerful fugitive in the psyche, requires our immediate consciousness and containment-and that one is the natural predator. While the cause of much human suffering can be traced to negligent fostering, there is also within the psyche naturally an innate contra naturam aspect, an "against nature" force. The contra naturam aspect opposes the positive: it is against development, against harmony, and against the wild. It is a derisive and murderous antagonist that is born into us, and even with the best parental nurture the intruder's sole assignment is to attempt to turn all crossroads into closed roads. Stalking the Intruder: The Beginning Initiation This predatory potentate 1 shows up time after time in women's dreams. It erupts in the midst of their most soulful and meaningful plans. It severs the woman from her intuitive nature. When its cutting work is done, it leaves the woman deadened in feeling, feeling frail to advance her life; her ideas and dreams lay at her feet drained of animation. Bluebeard is a story of such a matter. In North America, the best known Bluebeard versions are the French and the German. 2 But I prefer my literary version in which the French and the Slavic are mingled, like the one given to me by my Aunt Kathé (pronounced "Katie"), who lived in Csibrak near Dombovar in Hungary. Among our cadre of farmwomen tellers, the Bluebeard tale is begun with an anecdote about someone who knew someone who knew someone who had seen the grisly proof of Bluebeard's demise. And so we begin. = = = THERE IS A HANK OF BEARD which is kept at the convent of the white nuns in the far mountains. How it came to the convent no one knows. Some say it was the nuns who buried what was left of his body, for no one else would touch it. Why the nuns would keep such a relic is unknown, but it is true. My friend's friend has seen it with her own eyes. She says the beard is blue, indigo-colored to be exact It is as blue as the dark ice in the lake, as blue as the shadow of a hole at night. This beard was once worn by one who they say was a failed magician, a giant man with an eye for women, a man known by the name of Bluebeard. 'Twas said he courted three sisters at the same time. But they were frightened of his beard with its odd blue cast, and so they hid when he called. In an effort to convince them of his geniality he invited them on an outing in the forest. He arrived leading horses arrayed in bells and crimson ribbons. He set the sisters and their mother upon the horses and off they cantered into the forest. There they had a most wonderful day riding, and their dogs ran beside and ahead. Later they stopped beneath a giant tree and Bluebeard regaled them with stories and fed them dainty treats. The sisters began to think, "Well, perhaps this man Bluebeard is not so bad after all." They returned home all a-chatter about how interesting the day had been, and did they not have a good time? Yet, the two older sisters' suspicions and fears returned and they vowed not to see Bluebeard again. But the youngest sister thought if a man could be that charming, then perhaps he was not so bad. The more she talked to herself, the less awful he seemed, and also the less blue his beard.

Gestalt Therapy techniques are considered to be powerful tools for the remobilization of human growth and change. I will attempt to show that the power of these techniques lies in the fact that they are effective ways of dealing with our "internalizations". I will first briefly review object relation theory and then discuss gestalt techniques as they pertain to internal objects.

Both ‘repression' and ‘suppression' are said to involve removing mental content from awareness. However, repression is generally said to be unconscious whereas suppression is said to be conscious. The meanings of the terms ‘unconscious' and ‘conscious', though, are open to a variety of interpretations and so the validity of this distinction is uncertain . This paper discusses the relationship between repression and suppression and whether conscious awareness distinguishes these processes. Consciousness and unconscious are discussed in terms of a relational account of cognition where ‘knowing' is understood as a relation between a cognising subject and a cognised object term. On this view, problems arise from confusing consciousness and unconsciousness with properties or qualities of mental processes. Examined in this light, the present analysis reveals that repression can become conscious and that suppression can occur unconsciously. The role of ‘resistance' and the recognition of a series of defenses are discussed.

The Handmaid’s Tale uniquely offers more than just a possibility for critiquing patriarchal society. The show’s neo-realistic form also offers its viewers an engagement with new concepts of subjectivity, morality, and political resistance through the presentation of its main character, Offred, whose identity is both shattered and empowered by her empathic relation to others. In this article, I consider how a circumvention of power for a new form of resistance comes into view for Offred’s dynamic character and for viewers who have critically used its aesthetics in political protests. In the first section of the essay, I analyze how formal aspects in the show’s cinematography represents trauma and defense mechanisms according to Freud’s ego-psychology, which I then contrast with representations of developments in intersubjective psychotherapy. In the second section, I take the show as an aesthetic object to understand how it affects the viewer’s unconscious by opening new moral horizons that challenge and resist patriarchal norms of self-sufficiency and individualism. In the third and final section, I relate the intersubjective context within the show’s narrative to contemporary US politics, showing how hashtag movements like #MeToo and the successful mobilization of the show’s aesthetics, such as the use of handmaid’s robes, have become a potent protest symbol against oppressive ideologies.

For psychoanalysis to qualify as scientific psychology, it needs to generate data that can evidentially support theoretical claims. Its methods, therefore, must at least be capable of correcting for biases produced in the data during the process of generating it; and we must be able to use the data in sound forms of inference and reasoning. Critics of psychoanalysis have claimed that it fails on both counts, and thus whatever warrant its claims have derive from other sources. In this article, I discuss three key objections, and then consider their implications together with recent developments in the generation and testing of psychoanalytic theory. The first and most famous is that of ‘suggestion’; if it sticks, clinical data may be biased in a way that renders all inferences from them unreliable. The second, sometimes confused with the first, questions whether the data are or can be used to provide genuine tests of theoretical hypotheses. The third will require us to consider the question of how psychology can reliably infer motives from behavior. I argue that the clinical method of psychoanalysis is defensible against these objections in relation to the psychodynamic model of mind, but not wider metapsychological and etiological claims. Nevertheless, the claim of psychoanalysis to be a science would be strengthened if awareness of the methodological pitfalls and means to avoid them, and alternative theories and their evidence bases, were more widespread. This may require changes in the education of psychoanalysts.

A revised and corrected version of a paper that critically assesses Lacan's endeavor to show the limits of, and build upon, Kant's ethical philosophy by way of an analysis of Antigone and by attempting to show how Kant's ethical reasoning is formally consistent with the "philosophy" of the Marquis de Sade. The paper concentrates on Lacan's notion of "desire" as he applies it in his account of Antigone. It then undertakes a similar analysis but substitutes for "desire" Kant's analogous concept of an "end that is also a duty."

Could psychoanalysis be a science? There are three ways of reading this question, which will structure our discussion:
1. Is psychoanalysis the kind of investigation or activity that could, logically speaking, be “scientific”? If we can defend a positive answer here, then it makes sense to ask:
2. Is psychoanalysis, in the form in which it has traditionally been practiced, and continues to be practiced, a science? If there are good reasons to doubt its credentials, then we might ask:
3. Is psychoanalysis able to become a science? This is a question about what is needed for the necessary transformation.
I shall argue that psychoanalysis can be a science in the first section, but that the historical debate raised important challenges to its methodology, viz., confirmation bias, suggestion, and unsupportable causal inference. I argue that recent developments meet these challenges, and conclude with some reflections on the interdiscipli- nary nature of psychoanalysis.