Comments by Arnaldo Chuster
Bion’s theory of Thinking develops from two fundamental propositions. Let's elaborate a little on them before we enter into their unfoldings.
The first proposition says that psychoanalysis is a practical answer to philosophical questions. The basic meaning of this proposition is the ability of psychoanalysis to answer life questions in a practical way and in a way, which philosophy cannot.
Philosophers know very well how to formulate those questions, but do not have a practice to unfold them in a singular way, which is the unconscious vertex of reality.
When Bion presented his paper, there was a perplexity in the audience. However, if we go deep into Freud's work, there is no reason to have such perplexity that seems to express that Bion was talking about something that had nothing to do with psychoanalysis.
Our task in face of Bion’s formulation would be to detect which philosophical questions enter into psychoanalysis, which is to say, does philosophy really offer questions for life in all its aspects?
In my opinion, since Bion's psychoanalysis proposes to deal with the complexity of the mind, it may seem necessary to seek a view of the objects described in philosophy as complex and those that do not fit into this kind of system. However, if complexity encompasses both_, which is true_, then we need only devote ourselves to describing it.
At this point, it is worth to advice that Bion’s theory of thinking is a good example of complexity theory.
Before carry on, I think it is worth to review briefly philosophy in Freud.
In Freud’s texts, the history of the relations between psychoanalysis and philosophy begins with outlines similar to those that constitute references to literary works and characters in literature. All over Freud´s work, there are multiple quotes from philosophers and writers supporting new concepts. Nietzschean ideas, Shakespeare's characters, and many characters from other playwrights, such as Dostoyevsky, inhabit Freudian metapsychology.
Specific references to passages of philosophers, such as Plato and Schopenhauer, are also essential in the organization of Freud´s texts.
Let us remember that, in writing Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud resorts to Plato's Banquet and Schopenhauer to talk about Eros and Thanatos.
The human being, described as a paradoxical and ambiguous being, lives on this landscape of psychic duality. That is Nietzsche view.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud presents a view on philosophy somewhat different from what he has shown so far. In Chapter VI, we find an explicit reference to psychoanalytic speculation.
Freud did not avoid taking this path, which he criticized until then. On the contrary, he warns his readers about his proposal and goes on: What follows is speculation, often forced speculation, which the reader will consider or put aside according to his preference. It is more an attempt to systematically follow an idea out of curiosity to see where it will lead. (P.35).
We will find in this idea of speculation rather vague references to Plato, Empedocles, and Kant. This is, we may say, the fundamental question of imagination in conducting intuition in the process of psychoanalytic observation.
In The Banquet, Freud will cut out part of Aristophanes' speech to present the initial human sexual undifferentiation. Freud refers to the concepts of Neikos and Philia, formulated by Empedocles, to present the life and death instincts.
One can say that using Kant´s ideas points to the fact that psychoanalytic discoveries could open a proposition that time and space are necessary forms of thought for Freud.
Philosophical references in Freudian discourse are scarce and always punctual. They often give the impression of having only rhetorical value because they are only clippings dislocated from the whole context that originates them and without any complimentary discussion. Such analogies appear only to illustrate Freudian thought since Freud does not consider himself affiliated with any philosophy. Everything happens as if the psychoanalytic discoveries, originating from experience and observation, found their anticipation in the intuitions of the most renowned philosophers.
In Resistance to Psychoanalysis (1925), Freud resumes his argument that the psychic of the philosophers is not similar to that of psychoanalysis and that the privileging given to consciousness impedes the dialogue between the two disciplines.
In The Question of Lay Analysis (1927), he will again examine the scientificity of psychoanalysis and its relation to philosophy. At the beginning of the second chapter, Freud proposes presenting psychoanalysis in an understandable way to an audience that does not participate in the analytic process.
"I have illustrated it dogmatically as if it were a complete theoretical structure. But do not suppose that it came into being as this structure, as a philosophical system. We have developed it slowly, wrestling with every little detail of it. We have modified it ceaselessly, keeping in continual touch with observation, until it finally acquired a form in which it seems to be sufficient for our purposes. (' ) Science, as we know, is not a revelation; long after its beginnings, it still lacks the attributes of determination, immutability, and infallibility for which human thought so deeply yearns. (p.187)
Opposing the revealed emergence of the philosophical system to the slow and laborious scientific evolution, Freud inserts psychoanalysis into the latter category. Even if the end product may be similar to philosophy, the process that constitutes it would involve the scientific field.
Psychoanalytic science is concerned to a complex and new object of research, the unconscious psyche, and grounds it through the study of dreams and so called neurotic symptoms. As psychoanalysis finds meaning in these objects and described systematically them, consequently it could be considered a science.
For Freud, a psychology that cannot explain dreams cannot understand the domain of psychic and, therefore, does not constitute a science. Such a statement is established to differentiate psychoanalysis from psychology in two different approaches: the psychology that is developed in universities and laboratories, which are dedicated to the study of the physiology of the sense organs, and the non-scientific psychology that any philosopher, writer, or historian or biographer is allowed to propose.
A little later, however, Freud will state his interest in remaining in contact with the "popular way of thinking" (p.190) by trying to make its constructions scientifically valid instead of rejecting them. This is the way Freud recognize that many of his theories are already found in the speculations of poets, writers, and philosophers without, however, giving up his scientific pioneering.
Further on, we will find the distinction between psychoanalysis and psychiatry, which searches for the somatic determinants of mental disorders. In Freud's discourse both have equal status as science, but differ in their objects. It is precisely because it is different from medicine that psychoanalysis can contribute to science. Freud states that the treatment of neuroses is only one of the uses of psychoanalysis, since it can constitute an indispensable knowledge for the human sciences in general. In the 1927 postscript, we find the rescue of the statement that cure and research are inseparable when it comes to psychoanalysis. This science constructed in contact with each patient and the effect of this new knowledge on the therapeutic process constitutes the happiest aspect of analytical work for Freud.
In 1932, Freud dedicates a conference to dealing with the relations between psychoanalysis, philosophy and science. His discourse starts from a central question that unfolds into another: "Does psychoanalysis lead to a certain Weltanschauung, and if so, to which one? " (P;155)
Right at the outset, Freud presents his conception of what a Weltanschauung is: In my opinion, the Weltanschauung is an intellectual construction which solves all the problems of our existence, uniformly, based on a dominant superior hypothesis, which would therefore leave no question unanswered and in which everything that interests us finds its fixed place. (p.155)
The desire for constructions of this type constitutes, in Freudian view, something extremely human and responds to the longing for security brought by absolute knowledge that teaches, in a transparent way, how to deal with day-to-day difficulties. Psychoanalysis allows science to understand these demands of the human mind and examine their origins. This, however, does not mean to justify or despise these creations but only to unveil their motivations. Psychoanalysis does not constitute a Weltanschauung by itself, but it participates in the scientific Weltanschauung. The latter also supposes a way of explaining the world. Still, such a goal is a future project to be achieved slowly and following a particular method in which no other sources of knowledge participate than the "intellectual elaboration of carefully chosen observations.” (p.156)
No scientific knowledge is derived from revelation or divination; these are only illusions created to give an appearance of reality to "impulses full of desires. " (p.156)
As examples of these illusions, Freud cites art, religion, and philosophy, which differ structurally from science in that only the latter works with reality.
By placing philosophy next to illusion and science next to reality, Freud clarifies the hierarchy between the two disciplines. It is not just a matter of establishing differences but also a value judgment between the two. It is not licit to declare that science is one field of human mental activity and that religion and philosophy are other field with equal value.
That science has no reason to interfere in them: that they all have similar claims to be accurate and that every person is free to choose from which of them he derives his convictions and in which of them he places his belief. Such an opinion is seen as incredibly superior, tolerant, emancipated, and free from uneducated prejudices. Unfortunately, it is not sustainable and shares all the pernicious aspects of an unscientific Weltanschauung and is equivalent to it in practice. (p.157)
It thus becomes quite evident the reasons that led Freud to distance psychoanalysis from philosophy and bring it closer to science. His theories, insofar as they claim to be accurate, cannot be taken as philosophical illusions. It is a matter of bringing to psychoanalysis the quality of a science capable of describing and operating on reality and distancing it from any proximity to a discourse of low value.
For Freud, philosophy differs from science by clinging to the illusion of presenting a coherent and flawless world view from purely logical operations and accepting intuition as a source of knowledge.
Freud compares the "slow, hesitant, laborious" (p.169) science march to the analytical process. Constant observation, the new facts that impose themselves, the construction of previous hypotheses that will be proved or disproved, and the renunciation of hasty conclusions are practices shared by scientists and psychoanalysts in their respective works. Thus, Psychoanalysis does not constitute a Weltanschauung of its own. It shares the scientific Weltanschauung by its method and, mainly, by its emphasis on the natural world and rejection of illusions. Still, on philosophy, Freud will establish a critique of what he calls intellectual nihilism, namely, the belief that truth does not exist and that science is an illusion like any other, also a product of human needs. The intellectual nihilist assumes no specific knowledge of reality because we only find and see what we want. Therefore, it matters little what opinion one adopts, and it remains just one opinion among others since no criterion of truth would distinguish them. Equally true and false, there is no hierarchy between the different beliefs. Affirming his lack of interest and ability to delve into the subject, Freud limits himself to stating that: 'Anarchist theory sounds wonderfully superior while it refers to opinions about abstract things but collapses at the first step it takes in practical life. (...) it is the same scientific spirit that speculates about the structure of atoms or the origin of man and plans to construct a load-bearing bridge. If we believe we’re unimportant, if there were no such thing as knowledge, which is different from opinions because it corresponds to reality, we could build bridges with cardboard and stones (...) But the intellectual anarchists themselves would reject such practical applications of their theory. (p.172)
Ultimately, the Freudian argument puts the value of science into practice. It is true because it works. In the same way, psychoanalysis initially established itself as a science because of its therapeutic value, as Freud had already stated in 1932 at the end of his previous conference. From the original condition of the treatment method, psychoanalysis extracted the truths that it can now present about human nature.
In An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1938), we find yet one last time the same reference to philosophy as linked to consequentialism and in opposition to the unconscious psyche of psychoanalysis. In this text, left unfinished because of his death, Freud repeats what we could find throughout his work constantly and repetitively. From the Freudian perspective, philosophy is fundamentally contrary to psychoanalysis, which is on two distinct levels. Insofar as it is built through logic and intuition, the internal structure of philosophy is opposed to the scientific pretensions of psychoanalysis, which wants to be based on the observation of reality. The theoretical assumptions configure the other point of distance insofar as Freud identifies philosophy with the complete acceptance of a conscious mind, opposed to the fundamental psychoanalytic concept of an unconscious mind.
Freud, is he an anti-philosopher? However, besides the homogeneous anti-philosophical discourse, three aspects must be considered to establish a more or less adequate reading of the relations between Freud, philosophy, and science.
Freud's biography brings us indications of someone very interested in philosophy; the historical context establishes the prevalence of science over philosophy when it comes to the value of propositions about mind and metapsychology, Freud's solution to the speculative part of his theory.
In his biography, we find several significant elements of interest in the speculative discipline. During medical school, Freud attended Brentano's seminars to initiate philosophical reflection and the history of philosophy.
In his biography of Freud, Ernest Jones points out that the study of philosophy, previously compulsory for three years of medical school, was suspended when Freud entered college. The non-mandatory status, however, did not keep him away from philosophical studies. The withdrawal of philosophy as a compulsory discipline is indicative of its discredit in the medical-scientific environment in which Freud was inserted and from which he drew his fundamental training. We can notice then, from this academic beginning, the ambivalent position of philosophy concerning the construction of Freudian thought. In the same work, Jones reports that Freud wrote to Martha about ten years after his course with Brentano, then his fiancée, a philosophical ABC. He developed a kind of introduction to philosophy to interest her in his work. In a letter dated August 16, 1882, also to Martha, Freud declares that philosophy fascinates him more and more, even though he imagined it as a refuge for his old age. He wrote to Fliess in January 1897 that philosophy was his original goal. In April 1896, he pointed out that he was fulfilling his youthful desire to pursue philosophical knowledge by moving from medicine to psychology. Jones also mentions that Freud, when questioned by him about the number of his philosophical readings, would have told him that he was fascinated by speculation as a young man. Still, he bravely moved away from it, and for this reason, he read few philosophical works.
One impression that philosophy was a significant interest of the young Freud was abandoned because of the desire for psychoanalysis to be taken seriously in scientific circles. His inclination for philosophy was limited to his inner circle and denied when it came to public statements. However, his texts, especially those of his maturity and old age, are camouflaged under a pseudonym: metapsychology.
The second proposition of the theory of Thinking tells us that the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis should follow the same order as the relationship between pure and applied mathematics.
That is to say, psychoanalysis must have a field defined by its limitations and possibilities, ruled by epistemological principles that keep it away from empty beliefs and habits. In summary, one should treat psychoanalysis scientifically. But what does this mean?
All answers may be found on epistemology and ethics.
That is, the epistemological proposition has many ethical implications since the psychoanalytic field attends to psychic suffering, and thus, the more scientifically in the service of humanity we conduct ourselves, the more we move away from dehumanizing, medicalizing beliefs and propositions, the less risk we run of committing mistakes and acts of cruelty.
By scientific, it means to assume that psychoanalysis comes close as possible to being a science of observation of human relationships through the vertex of the unconscious. Its effects do not aim to eliminate the unconscious (as many medical and behavioral, psychological practices naively preach) but modify relationships with the unconscious. The greater the changes are, the more effects arise in the life of the analysands. They are effects of language and thought, not just any speech or pure and simple thought, but on the impact of precision in communicating emotional experience in the field. They are effects of transformations of intra and extra psychic bonds.
The communication of emotional experience is not a narrative, which would be unreliable, but descriptions with expansions. I will try to make this point clearer later on.
Let us first try to understand what is meant by this relationship between the mathematics that epistemologically govern the analytic field, starting with an overview of pure mathematics.
The origin of mathematics lies in counting, but this process is not uniquely human ability. Some animals are also capable of counting.
Prehistoric counting records are made with marks on bones, but counting was initially based on the extensive use of fingers. This is seen in the etymology of the names of specific basic numerals, especially for ten and one hundred in Proto-Indo-European, both of which have the root dḱ also present in "fingers" (Latin digits).
The Egyptians created the first equation, and the ancient Greeks made progress on many fronts, such as geometry and numbers.
Negative numbers were invented in China, and Zero was supposedly first used in India. But the name comes from the Venetian dialect.
In the Golden Age of Islam, Persian mathematicians made significant progress when the first book of Algebra was written.
Mathematics expanded in the Renaissance and other sciences until it reached the modern era, when it could be divided into pure mathematics and applied mathematics.
Applied mathematics means creating tools that help solve real-world problems. This is pragmatism.
The link between the two mathematics remains. It is worth pointing out that when someone goes into the world of pure mathematics, motivated by investigative curiosity and guided by a sense of aesthetics, they create new fascinating mathematics that at first may have no practical application. One may go many years before an application is discovered for those formulas and equations. This has happened a lot over the centuries. A clear example of this is the theory of computation.
Pure mathematics is divided into several parts; first, we study numbers, which start with natural numbers and their use through mathematical operations. We have other types of numbers, such as integers containing negative numbers and rational numbers like fractions. These real numbers include numbers such as the number π, infinite decimals, and complex numbers.
The study of structures is where we put numbers into equations in the form of variables. Algebra contains the rules of how to manipulate equations. Here we also find vectors and matrices that are multi-dimensional numbers. The regulations for relating them to each other follow linear algebra and various forms of object organizations.
A part of pure mathematics deals with shapes and how they behave in space, as in fractal geometry, which are mathematical patterns that have scale invariants, meaning that you can zoom in and out, and they still appear in the same pattern. Drawings such as Esch's angels and demons are an example of this.
Topology studies various properties of space where you are allowed to continuously deform objects without tearing or sticking. For example, a Moebius strip has only one side and one edge, no matter how moved.
Differential geometry looks at the properties of shapes on surfaces, which takes us to a part of pure mathematics that is variations, which includes integral and differential calculus, where we consider areas generated by functions and the behavior of their interpretations. From there, we go to dynamical systems that consider systems that evolve in time from one state to another, like fluid flows and things with feedback loops such as ecosystems. Modernly included in this is chaos theory, which studies dynamical systems that are very sensitive to initial conditions.
Finally, complex analysis, which considers the properties of functions defined in complex numbers.
When we go to applied mathematics, we must consider the theories described as a kind of network, a web, a grid interconnecting the various elements.
Applied mathematics expands into many disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, engineering, control, game theory, economics, statistics, financial mathematics, probability, computing.
The Foundations of mathematics seek the fundamental rules upon which mathematics rests. Is there a complete set of basic rules called axioms from which all mathematics can be built? And prove that all rules are consistent? The Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel studied this.
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says there are factual mathematical statements, but even a conspiracy theory cannot be demonstrated from the axioms. This means that mathematics does not have a complete and consistent system of axioms. This is strange because mathematics explains so much in the universe so well. This means that it is as if all this was created totally by us humans. There is a profound mystery here.
Finally, complexity theory looks at what is not computable and how much memory and time we need, which for most interesting problems is an insane amount. But complexity theory goes further, as it talks about open systems that can only be understood in their beauty through the concept of symmetry.
Complexity epistemology is a branch of epistemology that studies complex systems and associated emergent phenomena. It is, therefore, a term rich in meanings and ambiguous, which has been asserting itself in recent decades, especially concerning the ongoing transformation in the world of scientific research due to the growing tendency to deny the assumptions of linearity in dynamic systems and to inquire more deeply into their behavior.
Edgar Morin is considered the "founder of complexity science.” Morin's work is the most extensive and the most profound on the subject of complexity epistemology, especially after he completed the six-book series on "The Method."
For Morin, modern or classical science, in its search for autonomy from medieval scholastic religious thought, ended up separating itself instead of just distinguishing itself from philosophy, common sense, arts, and politics. Quantitative-based science then took precedence over the various forms of knowledge, not least because it favored the interests of the classes emerging with the bourgeois revolutions. National states could only be organized based on statistical learning of the quantitative control of the economy, territories, and populations. All industrialization made substantial use of the quantifiable aspects of the natural sciences in the generation of technologies, to the point of having decisively contributed to the emergence of techno science, a form of scientific knowledge directed by technological criteria. The extension of the methodological standards of the natural sciences to the social sciences led to the formation of a great Western paradigm, which is characterized by being disjunctive-and-reductive, that is, by separating (disjoint) science and philosophy (including here humanities, arts, and all non-quantifiable knowledge), and by reducing (reductionism) what is complex to what is simple (for example, by searching for the smallest part of physical reality, the atoms, and then the particles within the atoms). Disjunctive-reductive thinking simplifies reality and thereby gains space that historically belonged to religious, dogmatic thinking. Disjunction-reduction review establishes itself as a great paradigm, apparently reliable. In fact, subatomic physics has already introduced uncertainties as to the limits of reductionism. Phenomenology has already shown the insufficiencies and naivety of positivism, of the pretension of capturing an "objective" reality independent of the gaze and assumptions of the researcher. In the mid-twentieth century, the earth sciences, ecology, cosmology, and other forms of knowledge began to seek a multidisciplinary dialogue. From then on, that crisis that the disjunction-reduction paradigm had suffered with the emergence of subatomic physics (theory of relativity, uncertainty principle, etc.) and with the emergence of phenomenology in the first decades of the 20th century is reinforced by multi, inter and transdisciplinary dialogues.
In this context of the history of science, complex thinking or complexity paradigm emerges, which aims at associating without merging, distinguishing without separating the complex thinking is not limited to the academic sphere: it overflows into the various sectors of society.
Complex thinking is not limited to the academic sphere: it overflows into the various sectors of societies. And with this, it questions all forms of unilateral, dogmatic, unilaterally quantitative, or instrumental thinking. Uncertainty is part of the complexity paradigm, as an opening of horizons and not a principle that immobilizes thought. To think in an open, uncertain, creative, prudent, and responsible way is a challenge to democracy itself. Hence, the notion of cognitive democracy aims to establish a dialogue among the various forms of knowledge. This is the path of complex thinking, a path that, although it has several principles, coming from ancient, modern, and post-modern times, is a path that is made in its course, in its own doing, and continuously rethinking itself.
We can see from the considerations above that complexity theory connects the four propositions, establishing a field where we will discuss the relationship between principles coming from four points: pure mathematics, applied mathematics, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.
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