Paul Ricoeur's 4 criterion of a psychoanalytic 'fact'

Paul Ricoeur's 4 criterion of a psychoanalytic 'fact'

Annotations:

• This essentially a 'folding' work - tie in Ricoeur's ideas with previously used ideas, and the 'fold in' nodes are red.

1. 1. 'There enters into the field of investigation and treatment only that part of experience which is capable of being SAID.'
   1. 'desire as a meaning capable of being deciphered, translated, and interpreted.'
   2. 'facts in psychoanalysis are in no way facts of observable behaviour.' They are "reports."'
   3. Taylor on language and self-interpretation.
2. 2. The analytic situation singles out not only what is sayable, but what is SAID TO ANOTHER PERSON.
   1. WHY IS THIS A SEPARATE POINT FROM 1?!? THIS IS AN IMPORTANT QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED!1!!
      1. VERY FUCKING IMPORTANT!
      2. I don't get it yet, but it is apparently due to TRANSFERENCE.
         1. “The greater the resistance, the more extensively will acting out (repetition) replace remembering.”
         2. “What is thereby singled out from human experience is the immediately INTERSUBJECTIVE DIMENSION OF DESIRE.”
            1. The Other
   2. This ties in Taylor’s emphasis on language with Midgley’s concept of ‘atomism’ and Schwartz’s ‘the Myth of the Man Alone’.
3. 3. Freud's "psychic reality"
   1. Midgley on many layers of reality - NO BOTTOM LINE!
   2. This is the most inneresting(sic) aspect of the 4 criterion and is really the KEY to it all!
      1. I can feel it twisting my mind!
         1. The most FUN part!
   3. Has a RESISTANCE + COHERENCE comparable to material reality.
      1. The more important aspect here is the COHERENCE!
         1. This in turn relies on SUBSTITUTABILITY.
            1. Might this help me understand OBJECTS? I will keep it in mind.....
            2. 'In effect, the entire reality of these psychic formations consists in the thematic unity that serves as a basis for the interplay and the substitutions. Their reality is their meaning, and their meaning is their capability of mutually replacing one another.'
               1. Does this relate to Tony’s self-reinforcing inner world?
                  1. Or does it merely PARALLEL it?
                  2. Is this the link to the epistemology of rationalisation?
                     1. DEFINITELY KEEP IN MIND.
      2. I take resistance to be largely self-evident - we cannot simply change our mind by simply changing our minds, even though our minds are not physical, actual Things!
         1. Parallel, Hayek's fatal conceit - the market is not a Thing, but it cannot simply be rejigged at will
            1. "psychical reality" can BE changed so the metaphor only goes so far!
               1. “All right, so most metaphors don’t bear close examination.” – Neil
            2. David Suzuki don't geddit!
      3. “Psychoanalysis begins by acknowledging the fantasy as the paradigm of what represents psychical reality…”
         1. This is good, but the problematic part is -
            1. “…psychoanalysis deals only with psychical reality and not with material reality.”
               1. Qua philosopher this is NOT convincing!
                  1. KEEP IN MIND!
   4. Is NOT based on observation!
4. 4. “The analytic situation selects from a subject’s experience what is capable of entering into a STORY or NARRATIVE."
   1. Taylor narrative based on our qualitative distinctions.
   2. This is what psychoanalytic case histories are.
   3. Remembering has to replace repetition.
      1. But this can only happen in a story or narrative.
   4. ‘recovering traumatic events through the work of analysis reveals that, at the time they were experienced, they could not be fully integrated in a meaningful context.'
      1. The difficult psychoanalytic WORK must be carried out to form a narrative - does not simply just happen.
5. In terms of 'folding', can I relate all 4 criterion to 'Tony's Problem' or at least to Tony overall?
   1. This might be difficult, but a good integration of 'theory' and 'practice' as it were.
6. Something that has only just occurred to me – I (implicitly) assumed that ‘facts’ in PA must originate in the analysand, but might it originate in the analyst instead? Or is the wrong way to think about it in the first place – that it only come out in the ANALYTIC RELATIONSHIP? I’m not sure either way, but something to keep in mind.