Reframing the Masters of Suspicion by Andrew Dole

Author:Andrew Dole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

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Classic Suspicion: Freud

Anyone who, like myself, awakens the most wicked demons that dwell untamed in the human breast in order to do battle with them must be prepared to suffer some damage in the course of that struggle.

—Sigmund Freud1

I see Freud’s contribution to the tradition of suspicion as consisting of three broad components: a set of claims about the workings of individual psychologies, a set of principles for extending these claims to groups rather than individuals, and a distinctive strategy for responding to criticism. In the first section of this chapter I will offer an overview of the first of these components. Borrowing a distinction from David Sachs, I will first discuss Freud’s claims regarding psychological processes: specifically, his postulation of distinct “zones” or “agencies” in the unconscious mind, and the functions that he assigned to these agencies.2 Turning then to the materials of unconscious thought, I will describe the specific drives, desires, or intentions—or, importantly, the functional equivalent of these—that influence the operation of these agencies in the manner Freud claimed; and I will discuss his postulation of specific kinds of experiences whose later repercussions include specific behaviors. In the second section I will describe the principles that Freud used in applying his psychoanalytic doctrines to groups of persons, including nations, cultures, or groups defined by religious identities. What results from Freud’s deployment of these principles is a set of strategies for explaining large-scale social phenomena as the results of the same sorts of factors that explain individual behaviors, including pathological ones. After discussing these two components I will be in a position to say how my category of suspicious explanation applies to Freud, so I will discuss the dynamics of hiddenness and ethical charge in his theories as I will have described them. I will then take this material into a discussion of Freud’s practice of responding to criticisms of his theories by applying those very theories to his critics. It seems to me that this strategy, which I will call the recursive ad hominem defense, is at least as important for the history of psychoanalysis as are Freud’s formal theoretical claims, and more important than these for the broader tradition of suspicion.

Before diving into the first topic, I want to locate myself in relation to the “Freud wars” that raged for much of the 1990s. By 2007 Adam Phillips could declare the Freud wars over, and (perhaps with tongue in cheek) describe their outcome as a complete destruction of the credibility of both Freud and psychoanalysis.3 I want to be as clear as possible regarding my relationship to this judgment. The question of whether Freud or his theories are intellectually respectable is of no importance for my project, and the one who reads what I say in this chapter as part of a case against Freud or psychoanalysis will miss what I take to be my purpose (when there are Freudians about, modesty about the reliability of introspection is good manners). The issue is a sensitive one

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