Also reviewed: Robert D Stolorow, George E. Atwood, Donna M. Orange,  Worlds Of Experience: Interweaving Philosophical And Clinical Dimensions In Psychoanalysis New York: Basic Books, 2002.

 

The authors, Stolorow, Atwood, and Orange, form something of a psychoanalytic alliance studying the various aspects of inter-subjectivity, particularly the destructive effects of traumatic experience on human development. As a tight-knit group, they share membership in the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity. All three authors seem to collectively claim the invention of relational psychoanalysis, which places contemporary psychoanalysis squarely within the domains of affect, context and inter-subjectivity. They have also co-authored a number of books, and seem to share a mutual interest in the application of philosophical concepts to psychoanalysis, which is one of the major themes in the books reviewed here.

          Whether relational psychoanalysis is beneficial to their patients is probably best left to their patients and colleagues. Rather, what is central to this review is whether the framework they build for their philosophical connections is sound, and whether their applied psychoanalysis in the cases of Descartes and Freud is adequate to explain either their dismissal or acceptance of these figures? The answer to both questions is an emphatic no, and this “no” is based on a number of egregious errors, misreadings, and oversights that appear in both texts regarding these two questions. 

The Straw Men

Descartes

          Both Worlds of Experience and World, Affectivity and Trauma begin with fundamental suppositions regarding the kinds of philosophical errors that have led to their proposed corrective and, ultimately to the solution to these errors. For them, Rene Descartes seems to be the original villain who bifurcated the world of experience into two incommensurable domains. In their view, mind and body or the world of mental experience and physical objects was, at least within the Cartesian tradition, forever severed. Descartes simply created a fundamental schism that had a profoundly negative affect on the sciences and particularly on the development of psychology–an affect that lasted well into the modern era. Moreover, Descartes’ thinking seemed to severely limit the possibility of inter-subjective relations, which, in turn, created a trend toward this same bifurcation in psychology. The main and most famous practitioner of this trend was apparently Sigmund Freud, who, following Descartes, appeared to further seal the subject in an isolated mind largely incapable of interacting with the world.  This trend lasted into the early part of the 20^th century, at which point, Edmund Husserl’s invention of phenomenology and phenomenological investigation began the demise of the isolated Cartesian subject. Later, by expanding on these Husserlian insights, his student, Martin Heidegger, dealt the final blow to the Cartesian bifurcation and Freud’s isolated subject. Heidegger was, according to their reckoning, Descartes’ foremost critic. In both books, he serves as the originator of existential inter-subjectivity, and he is also the subject of a kind of psychobiography, one pertaining mainly to his relationship with Hannah Arendt and his political alliance with the Nazi Party.

       Relational psychoanalysis, on one level, is dependent on correcting what the authors consider the abovementioned colossal mistake by Descartes. In brief, all the authors, more or less, claim that both philosophy and psychology subsequent to Descartes’ error are to a large extent based on this mistake. Descartes, in his obsession with clarity and certainty, locked all human extensions into the surrounding world within the narrow confines of the mind. Physical objects and thus other subjects stood up against the isolated subject– a subject created, it appears, by the Cartesian rupture.  The authors characterize this schism in extraordinary simple terms:  “The Cartesian mind, almost immediately after being ‘discovered’ through the method of systematic doubt, begins to undergo a reification, that is, a conversion into an objective entity that takes its place among other objects.” (Stolorowet al., 2002, p. 4)  Following this, the authors go on to state, “Although Descartes told us that the mind lacks extension in space possessed by material things, he nevertheless called it a ‘thinking thing’…” (Ibid, p. 4)

       These claims, other than being literarily descriptive, are largely incorrect regarding the philosophical intentions of Descartes’ text. The full title of the text is Mediations on First Philosophy, which indicates that Descartes had set his sights on redefining and to a large extent undermining the previous thinking about metaphysical questions, particularly those concerning the existence of God and the human soul. Moreover, he intended to accomplish this by resurrecting Platonist principles. Thus the Meditations is an extraordinarily complex and elaborate deductive proof that proceeds by stages and is intended to advance a position directly contrary to the then popular Scholastic (Aristotilian/Thomistic) doctrine of the so-called Schoolmen.  As such, his claim that he is “a thing that thinks” is simply an attempt to remain consistent with his stated purpose in the First Meditation, which is reiterated in the Second, that is,   “At present I am not admitting anything except what is necessarily true. I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks.” (Descartes, Med.  p. 19) Thus, the claim by the authors that Descartes is somehow in error calling himself a thinking thing when they assert that “the mind lacks extension in space possessed by material things,” totally disregards the fact that Descartes cannot predicate anything about his existence other than he is “a thing that thinks.”  If he were to claim that he was, say, an object in space that thinks or a thinking body that would seriously undermine the consistency of his whole project, which must inevitably proceed on the basis of what is “necessarily true.”   Thus nothing could be necessarily true about the mind other than what occurs in the mind and can be indubitably determined as true and real. This also counters another of the authors’ criticisms of Descartes’ notion of the thinking thing, which states:” . . . .he (Descartes) nevertheless called it a “thinking thing” and moreover located psychological faculties as existing somehow “inside.” (Ibid., p. 4) These “psychological faculties, of course, were not just elements inserted in the mind as one would insert tools in a box, but, rather, mental processes whose existence he was able to determine with certainty since they were inherent to a real, existent, and already established mind.  In short, the mind could not have become an object at this stage of the proof, since no objects could possibly exist with necessity.

       Following their strained attempt to demonstrate the “reification” of the mind in the Second Meditation, the authors indulge in a textbook case of a variant of the intentionalist fallacy, which holds that knowing the intentions and background of a writer or artist is inadequate in fully understanding the work of art. Similarly, the authors attempt to continue their critique of Descartes by claiming his quest for certainty must be seen against his background and as largely a result of his personal struggles. On this, they write:

The biographer Stephen Gaukroger described Descartes as having had a persistent tendency toward melancholia and paranoia, linking this disposition to the loss of his mother and his home, and to the later separation from and loss of his grandmother. Could these early upheavals in his life been the source of his life-long need for something unassailably certain, something that would be absolutely solid and secure? In Descartes’s philosophy, certainty and security are finally found, not in relationships with other human beings but rather in the isolated workings of his own mind, envisioned as a rational, self-contained, self-sufficient entity. (Ibid., p. 6)

        What the authors have done here in claiming that the fundamental project in the Meditations (certainty in metaphysics, particularly in proofs for the existence of God and the soul) is simply a reaction to Descartes’ life crises, reduces his entire philosophical project to merely a reaction to these crises. This, in turn, radically limits the extraordinary complexity of Descartes’ life history, philosophical project in the Meditations, and thought in general, reducing it to a series of “traumatic” events. The need for indubitable clarity in metaphysics–which is the fundamental project of the Meditations— was really the result, not of this philosophically significant project, but of the death of his grandmother, which, in the end, doesn’t seem to follow.  Given this logic, we could say that Melville’s Moby Dick was written strictly as a reaction to being frightened by an enormous white whale. Or that Van Gogh’s tortured later canvases were the result of the pain of his severed ear. Or, to continue the painting examples, we could claim the French Impressionists painted that way because they needed eyeglasses.

       This reductive tendency continues in Worlds of Experience, now directed at Descartes’ stress on “inner” causes for mental and physical problems, and the cures for these problems being situated entirely in him. On this, they write:

The proneness to sadness and depression and sadness resulting from the losses incurred in early life highlight the vulnerability of a man who could not find security and well-being through connections to the human world outside of himself, and who was driven instead to find contentment and peace on the terrain of his own inner soul. (Ibid, p. 7)

       Given that Descartes was a Catholic, trained in a Jesuit school, and completely versed in the theological traditions of the period, it would seem very odd that he would not turn inward and find solace, “peace and inner contentment” within his soul. Where else might he turn, since Christian practice at that time was overwhelmingly directed toward contemplation, and particularly in Descartes’ case, since he viewed himself as a later disciple of St. Augustine (the father of inner contemplation)? Besides, with medical science in its infancy, and discursive therapeutic interaction limited to the pastoral, there was very little “contentment and peace” available outside the person’s inner religious experience.

       In more quotes from letters to Princess Elizabeth, the authors point out Descartes’ tendency to avoid external causes for disease and depression, focusing rather on his own interiority:

I take the liberty of adding that I found by experience in my own case that the remedy I have suggested cured an illness almost exactly similar, and perhaps even more dangerous. . . .From her I inherited a dry cough and a pale colour which stayed with me until I was more than twenty, so all the doctors who saw me up to that time condemned me to die young. . . .But I have always had an inclination to look at things from the most favorable angle and to make my principal happiness depend on myself alone. (Ibid. authors’ italics)

        The authors’ interpretation of this quote is that Descartes retreated into himself because he could not find happiness outside of himself and that this was somehow proof that he was completely isolated from the outside world. This example might make sense if it was set in the modern world where one could identify external causes for certain disorders like “dry cough” and “pale colouring.” But in the early to mid-17^th century, external causes for disease or mental illness were largely unknown. Most medicine at that time was derived from the theory of humours, first proposed by Galen, the Greek physician, and later expanded by Paracelsus and others. Bad humours caused virtually all diseases, and the inner movements of the body, like the flow of blood and bile, carried them. It would thus be common sense therapeutic advice given by Descartes to Elizabeth, not based on his tendency to retreat into himself, but, rather, on the very limited medical science of the period. After all, William Harvey had just discovered the circulation of blood in 1616, while it wasn’t until 1854 that Louis Pasteur expounded the germ theory of disease.

       Further quotes from the letters to Princess Elizabeth continue this line of arguing for inner contemplation as an example of the “isolated self.”

In another letter to Princess Elizabeth, Descartes extolled the virtues of becoming detached from the passions (that is, intense affects) and from the pleasures of the body,because they inevitably involve us with the world of transitory things. True happiness, according to his discussion, “is to be found not in the “passing joys which depend on the senses,” but rather on an inner consciousness,” a mental satisfaction and contentment” in which one guards against the false appearance of the goods of the world.” (Ibid., p. 8)

       This quote makes little sense–other than serving as a poorly conceived reference supporting their philosophical positions–with regard to the claims about Descartes’ thinking. What he expresses here is a standard position of the Platonist and Neo-Platonist tradition. Perhaps Plato’s most famous example, the “Allegory of the Cave” in the Republic, entails precisely the same thing. Appearances are deceiving, and sensory experience yields only shadows. This is the core of the idealist, Platonist and rationalist positions, which inform the work of thinkers like Plotinus, St. Augustine, Boethius, and, later, Spinoza and Leibniz, among many others. So, Descartes’ journey into the isolated mind was not at all, as the authors argue, an example of his tendency to separate himself from the world of experience, but, rather, the result of his long-term experience in and his adherence to a tradition that gives preference to inner intellectual understanding above the contents of sensory experience.

       They go on. “The second prominent feature of Cartesian-mind thinking is the infamous subject-object split. Cartesian ontology claims that the object is real (existing independently of any knower) but that the subject (cogito ergo sum) is even more fundamentally real because self-evidently known.” (Ibid., p. 23) Disregarding epithets like “infamous,” this set of statements is just wrong. The authors tend to completely disregard one of the main points of the                                                                                                                           Fourth Meditation, in which Descartes establishes a link between subject and object, by means of the concept of clarity and distinction. One can be certain of the existence of what is perceived clearly and distinctly because whatever is perceived in this manner must be real. “This is because every clear and distinct perception is undoubtedly something, and hence cannot come from nothing, but must necessarily have God for its author.” ( Med., p. 41) Descartes reiterates this claim in the Sixth Meditation, where he is concerned to prove the existence of material things and to further clarify the relationship between mind and body. In the first case, he can be certain that material things exist because he is able to perceive them clearly and distinctly and has done so for his entire life. These clear and distinct perceptions must be real since a non-deceiving God–a point that was already established in the Fourth Meditation– guarantees them.  If it is the case that the mind and external reality share the same source of certainty (i.e., God), there must necessarily be some connection between the two; therefore the object, in this sense, cannot exist “independent of any knower.” In the second case, Descartes is very clear in presenting a significantly altered version of what the authors are calling “the mind-body split.” Here he is simply stating that the mind and body differ in the specific modes of thinking that form their essences. The mind is self-evident, whereas external bodies must be apprehended through the senses, and therefore have their source in the external world.  This does not mean, however, that they are “split,” only that they are apprehended differently, for, one should remember, Descartes is still only “a thing that thinks” even at this late stage. He is still speaking about the operations of the mind, but does not deny that the external world exists or that there are no factors–like God’s perfection–that might unify the two.

       There are many more errors and oversights in the treatment of Descartes’ philosophy in both books. However, an exhaustive study of these problems is really unnecessary, since the references to Descartes in these works are not really concerned with Descartes’ philosophy per se, but rather, with establishing a basis for their own work.  This becomes evident in several passages from the authors’ works, none so clear, though, as the following: “We would contrast the solitary reflection that led to Descartes’ philosophical ideas with the dialogue out of which our inter-subjective approach was born.” (Stolorow et al., p. 9)

       The contrast they speak of in the above quote really does not exist. In the superficial and often wrong, often a-historical accounts of Descartes’ work, the authors merely invent a distinction without a difference. Although it is certainly true that Descartes introduced a dualism into his philosophy, the dualism was not the result of his “retreat from the real world,” but rather an attempt to reconstruct philosophical reality in terms of proofs that incorporated the subject as a fundamental actor in this reconstruction. In fact, one of the most common theological objections to Descartes’ Meditations is that in the order of reasons the apprehension of the human mind precedes the proof for God’s existence.  This being the case, one could argue that the dualism has very little to do with Descartes’ life crises, attitudes, and mental states, but serves as a necessary step toward establishing the certainty in metaphysics he sought in the First Meditation. This certainty is by no means merely a symptom of his insecurity, functioning as a kind of security blanket for a seriously disturbed man, as the authors would have it. Rather it is a necessary step toward reconstructing a world without the tripartite soul inherent in Aristotle’s philosophy and continued well into Descartes’ time by the Scholastic/Thomistic tradition. Moreover, not only does the question of a shift away from the Aristotelian notion of the soul dominate the Meditations,but it is also a major factor in a great deal of Descartes’ other writings, including L’Homme and Le Monde, his two most important scientific works. “In Aristotelianism the domain of the living stretches from the lowly plant to the perfect being; in Cartesianism there are two desperate domains, joined only by the way of the union of the human soul and its body. . . . Descartes’ program, then, is to explain all those functions of the body that occur in us without thought.” (Des Chenes, 2001, p. 3)

       The promotion of the idea that Descartes was a solitary person, friendless and adrift in a self-imposed mental isolation is also quite absurd. It is a blatant confusion of a philosophical project with a personal one. Using the selective evidence presented in both books regarding Descartes’ personal behavior, one could apply this to any philosopher or theologian who thought in terms of inner experience, reason, religious contemplation or idealist deliberation in general. We could argue that Plato and Socrates were isolated, self-involved individuals because they sought understanding through intellectual contemplation and argument rather than sense experience. Obviously, neither were personally withdrawn. Neither was Descartes by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Descartes was perhaps one of the most sociable characters of the 17^th century. He had numerous close friends and associates, including such important figures as Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, Princess Elizabeth, Queen Christina of Sweden, and Isaac Beeckman, to name but a few. He also engaged in lively, sometimes raucous correspondence with many of his critics, which included Thomas Hobbes and the great mathematician Pierre de Fermat.  More important regarding his character, though, was his personal correspondence, which showed clearly his concern with others and their problems.  As a major scientist and doctor of a kind (Genevieve Rodis-Lewis, 1998, pp.127-28) he was often sought after for cures and information regarding disease and various family and personal crises. He answered many of these requests, and in most cases showed deep compassion for the correspondents. A particularly poignant example of this type of concern appears in a letter written to Alphonse Pollot, who had suffered bereavement due to his brother’s death:   

I have just learned the sad news of your loss, and although I do not undertake to say anything in the letter which could have any great power to soften your pain, I still cannot refrain from trying, so as to let you know at least that I share what you feel. . .Not long ago I suffered the loss of the two people who were very close to me, and I found that those who wanted to shield me from sadness only increased it, whereas I was consoled by the kindness of those who I saw to be touched by my grief.  So I am sure that you will listen to me better if I do not try to check your tears than if I tried to steer you away from a feeling which I consider justified. . .Now I certainly do not want to advise  you to use all your powers of determination and steadfastness to check the internal agitation you feel straight away–for this would perhaps be a cure more troublesome than the original sickness. . .I ask you merely to try to alleviate the pain little by little, by looking at what has happened to you from whatever perspective can make it appear more bearable, while at he same time taking your mind off it as much as you can by other activities.  (Grayling, 2005, pp.154-55)

       This hardly seems the advice of a man  “who could not find security and well-being through connections to the human world.”(Stolorow et al. p.7) In fact it seems more like the observations of a man who has learned much from his own experience of that world and is willing to exchange that experience with others. Once again, there are many passages like this from many letters, but it is really unnecessary to continue referring to examples. The authors’ straw man has been constructed outside the most basic parameters of both Descartes’ life and work. He was simply squeezed into a mold that fit the needs of the authors’ aspiration to create a strikingly new form of psychoanalytic theory.  Oddly enough, it was precisely this Cartesian move away from the inflexible, antiquated and all-inclusive Aristotelian system that dominated the western world into the 17^th century that created the very ground on which strikingly new scientific theories could and would be built.

Freud

       The next figure to be knocked over as a sacrifice to the novelty of relational psychoanalysis is Sigmund Freud. It appears that the authors view Freud, much like Descartes, as a figure who isolated the mind within the human subject, disallowing the integral and intersubjective approach breached by Heidegger and continued by the authors. The treatment of Freud and his theories, however, is strictly limited to the most basic contours of his thinking, and this, much like the case of Descartes, serves as a means of limiting Freud’s enormous project to one in uncomplicated disagreement with that of the authors.

       If we total just about everything said about Freud in the two books, it amounts to the “fact” that Freud applied the Cartesian mode of isolation, and that his early and his so-called meta-psychological works were fully exemplary of this trend. On this Stolorow writes: “Traditional Freudian theory is pervaded by the Cartesian ‘myth of the isolated mind'” (Stolorow, 2011, p. 24). Elsewhere he states more or less the same thing, but in greater detail:

Freud’s psychoanalysis expanded the Cartesian mind, (Descartes’s (1641) “thinking thing,” to include a vast unconscious realm. Nonetheless, the Freudian mind remained the Cartesian mind, a self-enclosed worldless subject or mental apparatus containing and working over mental contents and radically separated from its surround. (Ibid., p. 20)

       From the above quotes and indeed from most of the