Freud Lives!

By
Slavoj Žižek

Vol. 28 No. 10 · 25 May 2006 page 32 | 2150 words

I
n recent years, it’s often been said that psy- cognitivist-neurobiologist model of the human
choanalysis is dead. New advances in the mind has superseded the Freudian model; it is
brain sciences have finally put it where it be- outdated in the psychiatric clinic, where psycho-
longs, alongside religious confessors and analytic treatment is losing ground to drug treat-
dream-readers in the lumber-room of pre-scien- ment and behavioural therapy; and it is outdated
tific obscurantist searches for hidden meaning. in society more broadly, where the notion of so-
As Todd Dufresne put it, no figure in the history cial norms which repress the individual’s sexual
of human thought was more wrong about all the drives doesn’t hold up in the face of today’s he-
fundamentals – with the exception of Marx, some donism. But we should not be too hasty. Perhaps
would add. The Black Book of Communism was we should instead insist that the time of psychoa-
followed last year by the Black Book of Psychoa- nalysis has only just arrived.
nalysis, which listed all the theoretical mistakes One of the consistent themes of today’s con-
and instances of clinical fraud perpetrated by servative cultural critique is that, in our permis-
Freud and his followers. In this way, at least, the sive era, children lack firm limits and prohibi-
profound solidarity of Marxism and psychoanal- tions. This frustrates them, driving them from one
ysis is now there for all to see. excess to another. Only a firm boundary set up by
A century ago, Freud included psychoanaly- some symbolic authority can guarantee stability
sis as one of what he described as the three ‘nar- and satisfaction – the satisfaction that comes of
cissistic illnesses’. First, Copernicus demon- violating the prohibition. In order to make clear
strated that the Earth moves around the Sun, the way negation functions in the unconscious,
thereby depriving humans of their central place in Freud cited the comment one of his patients made
the universe. Then Darwin demonstrated that we after recounting a dream about an unknown
are the product of evolution, thereby depriving us woman: ‘Whoever this woman in my dream is, I
of our privileged place among living beings. Fi- know she is not my mother.’ A clear proof, for
nally, by making clear the predominant role of the Freud, that the woman was his mother. What bet-
unconscious in psychic processes, Freud showed ter way to characterise the typical patient of today
that the ego is not master even in its own house. than to imagine his reaction to the same dream:
Today, scientific breakthroughs seem to bring ‘Whoever this woman in my dream is, I’m sure
further humiliation: the mind is merely a machine she has something to do with my mother!’
for data-processing, our sense of freedom and au- Traditionally, psychoanalysis has been ex-
tonomy merely a ‘user’s illusion’. In comparison, pected to enable the patient to overcome the ob-
the conclusions of psychoanalysis seem rather stacles preventing his or her access to normal sex-
conservative. ual satisfaction: if you are not able to get it, visit
Is psychoanalysis outdated? It certainly ap- an analyst and he will help you to lose your inhi-
pears to be. It is outdated scientifically, in that the bitions. Now that we are bombarded from all
sides by the injunction to ‘Enjoy!’, psychoanaly- translated into its explicit content, but another un-
sis should perhaps be regarded differently, as the conscious wish, which inscribes itself in the
only discourse in which you are allowed not to dream through the Traumarbeit (‘dream-work’),
enjoy: not ‘not allowed to enjoy’, but relieved of the process whereby the latent thought is dis-
the pressure to enjoy. torted into the dream’s explicit form. Here lies the
Nowhere is this paradoxical change in the paradox of the dream-work: we want to get rid of
role of psychoanalytic interpretation clearer than a pressing, disturbing thought of which we are
in the case of dreams. The conventional under- fully conscious, so we distort it, translating it into
standing of Freud’s theory of dreams is that a the hieroglyph of the dream. However, it is
dream is the phantasmic realisation of some cen- through this distortion that another, much more
sored unconscious desire, which is as a rule of a fundamental desire encodes itself in the dream,
sexual nature. At the beginning of The Interpre- and this desire is unconscious and sexual.
tation of Dreams, Freud provides a detailed inter- What is the ultimate meaning of Freud’s
pretation of his own dream about ‘Irma’s injec- dream? In his own analysis, Freud focuses on the
tion’. The interpretation is surprisingly reminis- dream-thought, on his ‘superficial’ wish to be
cent of an old Soviet joke: ‘Did Rabinovitch win blameless in his treatment of Irma. However, in
a new car on the state lottery?’ ‘In principle, yes, the details of his interpretation there are hints of
he did. Only it was not a car but a bicycle, it was deeper motivations. The dream-encounter with
not new but old, and he did not win it, it was sto- Irma reminds Freud of several other women. The
len from him!’ Is a dream the manifestation of the oral examination recalls another patient, a gover-
dreamer’s unconscious sexual desire? In princi- ness, who had appeared a ‘picture of youthful
ple, yes. Yet in the dream Freud chose to demon- beauty’ until he looked into her mouth. Irma’s po-
strate his theory of dreams, his desire is neither sition by a window reminds him of a meeting with
sexual nor unconscious, and, moreover, it’s not an ‘intimate woman friend’ of Irma’s of whom he
his own. ‘had a very high opinion’; thinking about her
The dream begins with a conversation be- now, Freud has ‘every reason to suppose that this
tween Freud and his patient Irma about the failure other lady, too, was a hysteric’. The scabs and na-
of her treatment because of an infection caused sal bones remind him of his own use of cocaine
by an injection. In the course of the conversation, to reduce nasal swelling, and of a female patient
Freud approaches her and looks deep into her who, following his example, had developed an
mouth. He is confronted with the unpleasant sight ‘extensive necrosis of the nasal mucous mem-
of scabs and curly structures like nasal bones. At brane’. His consultation with one of the doctors
this point, the horror suddenly changes to com- brings to mind an occasion on which Freud’s
edy. Three doctors, friends of Freud, among them treatment of a woman patient gave rise to a ‘se-
one called Otto, appear and begin to enumerate, vere toxic state’, to which she subsequently ‘suc-
in ridiculous pseudo-professional jargon, possi- cumbed’; the patient had the same name as his
ble (and mutually exclusive) causes of Irma’s in- eldest daughter, Mathilde. The unconscious de-
fection. If anyone had been to blame, it transpires sire of the dream is Freud’s wish to be the ‘pri-
in the dream, it is Otto, because he gave Irma the mordial father’ who possesses all the women
injection: ‘Injections ought not to be made so Irma embodies in the dream.
thoughtlessly,’ the doctors conclude, ‘and proba- However, the dream presents a further
bly the syringe had not been clean.’ So, the ‘latent enigma: whose desire does it manifest? Recent
thought’ articulated in the dream is neither sexual commentaries clearly establish that the true moti-
nor unconscious, but Freud’s fully conscious vation behind the dream was Freud’s desire to ab-
wish to absolve himself of responsibility for the solve Fliess, his close friend and collaborator, of
failure of Irma’s treatment. How does this fit with responsibility and guilt. It was Fliess who
the thesis that dreams manifest unconscious sex- botched Irma’s nose operation, and the dream’s
ual desires? desire is not to exculpate Freud himself, but his
A crucial refinement is necessary here. The friend, who was, at this point, Freud’s ‘subject
unconscious desire which animates the dream is supposed to know’, the object of his transference.
not merely the dream’s latent thought, which is The dream dramatises his wish to show that Fliess
wasn’t responsible for the medical failure, that he Levi’s poem ‘Reveille’ the concentration camp
wasn’t lacking in knowledge. The dream does survivor recalls being in the camp, asleep, dream-
manifest Freud’s desire – but only insofar as his ing intense dreams about returning home, eating,
desire is already the Other’s (Fliess’s) desire. telling his relatives his story, when, suddenly, he
Why do we dream? Freud’s answer is decep- is woken up by the Polish kapo’s command
tively simple: the ultimate function of the dream ‘Wstawac!’ (‘Get up!’). In the second stanza, he
is to enable the dreamer to stay asleep. This is is at home after the war, well fed, having told his
usually interpreted as bearing on the kinds of story to his family, when, suddenly, he imagines
dream we have when some external disturbance – hearing again the shout, ‘Wstawac!’ The reversal
noise, for example – threatens to wake us. In such of the relationship between dream and reality
a situation, the sleeper immediately begins to im- from the first stanza to the second is crucial. Their
agine a situation which incorporates this external content is formally the same – the pleasant do-
stimulus and thereby is able to continue sleeping mestic scene is interrupted by the injunction ‘Get
for a while longer; when the external stimulus be- up!’ – but in the first, the dream is cruelly inter-
comes too strong, he finally wakes up. Are things rupted by the wake-up call, while in the second,
really so straightforward? In another famous ex- reality is interrupted by the imagined command.
ample from The Interpretation of Dreams, an ex- We might imagine the second example from The
hausted father, whose young son has just died, Interpretation of Dreams as belonging to the Hol-
falls asleep and dreams that the child is standing ocaust survivor who, unable to save his son from
by his bed in flames, whispering the horrifying the crematorium, is haunted afterwards by his re-
reproach: ‘Father, can’t you see I’m burning?’ proach: ‘Vater, siehst du nicht dass ich ver-
Soon afterwards, the father wakes to discover that brenne?’
a fallen candle has set fire to his dead son’s In our ‘society of the spectacle’, in which
shroud. He had smelled the smoke while asleep, what we experience as everyday reality more and
and incorporated the image of his burning son more takes the form of the lie made real, Freud’s
into his dream to prolong his sleep. Had the father insights show their true value. Consider the inter-
woken up because the external stimulus became active computer games some of us play compul-
too strong to be contained within the dream-sce- sively, games which enable a neurotic weakling
nario? Or was it the obverse, that the father con- to adopt the screen persona of a macho aggressor,
structed the dream in order to prolong his sleep, beating up other men and violently enjoying
but what he encountered in the dream was much women. It’s all too easy to assume that this weak-
more unbearable even than external reality, so ling takes refuge in cyberspace in order to escape
that he woke up to escape into that reality. from a dull, impotent reality. But perhaps the
In both dreams, there is a traumatic encounter games are more telling than that. What if, in play-
(the sight of Irma’s throat, the vision of the burn- ing them, I articulate the perverse core of my per-
ing son); but in the second dream, the dreamer sonality which, because of ethico-social con-
wakes at this point, while in the first, the horror straints, I am not able to act out in real life? Isn’t
gives way to the arrival of the doctors. The paral- my virtual persona in a way ‘more real than real-
lel offers us the key to understanding Freud’s the- ity’? Isn’t it precisely because I am aware that this
ory of dreams. Just as the father’s awakening is ‘just a game’ that in it I can do what I would
from the second dream has the same function as never be able to in the real world? In this precise
the sudden change of tone in the first, so our or- sense, as Lacan put it, the Truth has the structure
dinary reality enables us to evade an encounter of a fiction: what appears in the guise of dream-
with true trauma. ing, or even daydreaming, is sometimes the truth
Adorno said that the Nazi motto ‘Deutsch- on whose repression social reality itself is
land, erwache!’ actually meant its opposite: if you founded. Therein resides the ultimate lesson of
responded to this call, you could continue to sleep The Interpretation of Dreams: reality is for those
and dream (i.e. to avoid engagement with the real who cannot sustain the dream.
of social antagonism). In the first stanza of Primo