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Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Religion: a triangle of hostility?

In an essay, “A Triangle of Hostility?—Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Religion,” John Cottingham¹ writes: “as a generalization, it appears that contemporary philosophical thought is on the whole inimical to psychoanalytic ideas. (I am speaking here of the analytic branch of philosophy: among so-called ‘continental’ philosophers, psychoanalytic modes of thought have been extremely influential).” While published over ten years ago, this assertion, with the appropriate exceptions, remains largely true.

Generally speaking, anglophone academic analytic philosophy accuses Freud’s theories “of being unscientific, over-sweeping, and, by some critics, virtually incoherent: since the defining characteristic of the mind is consciousness (so runs the objection), doesn’t the concept of unconscious mentation verge on the absurd? There are admittedly staunch philosophical defenders of Freud to be found,² but I think it is fair to say the prevailing reaction of analytic philosophy towards psychoanalytic ideas is either oddly indifferent or markedly hostile.”

Cottingham proceeds to address the relation between philosophy and religion:

“[A]gain, as a broad generalization, it seems that the dominant position in the modern analytic academy [Cottingham is himself rightly identified as a member of same, although he represents a dissenting or peripheral position] is one of hostility towards religion, the traditional arguments of God’s existence are widely supposed not to work, while the arguments against his existence (most notably various forms of the problem of evil [the theodicy question]) here taken to be pretty decisive.³ The general temper of contemporary analytic thought is, moreover, broadly scientistic [This claim is often not well understood, as it in no way suggests or is indicative of an ‘anti-science’ attitude or even a strong skepticism about scientific knowledge, rather, it is about the imperialist pretensions on behalf scientific knowledge or, put differently, it acknowledges various kinds of ‘knowing’ within distinguishable domains of intellectual or humanist inquiry and praxis, thus it attempts to circumscribe science such that it does not represent the absolute pinnacle of the quest for knowledge, however indispensable it remains to that quest.], or at least rationalistic, in its methodology and outlook. The model to which most or at least a very large number of modern anglophone philosophers aspire is that of the rational, precise, and cautious thinker, with a skeptical (with a small ‘s’) and no-nonsense outlook; and this means that, speaking generally, they tend to have little truck with the idea of the supernatural [i.e., anything that cannot be described in purely naturalist, physicalist or materialist terms; although it might be said that some conceptions of naturalism border on the supra-natural or at least allow for that possibility]. In short, atheism appears to be the default position at least in the anglophone philosophic academy.”

I will not here share Cottingham’s treatment of Freud’s psychoanalytic critique of religion (which is primarily based on the latter’s –at times intimate—understanding of only two religious traditions, Judaism and Christianity, as his knowledge of religious worldviews outside that orbit was rather weak, at least no way comparable to his acquaintance with these two of the three ‘Abrahamic’ traditions), which is fairly well known, so suffice to say for now that Cottingham can grant Freud provides insight into the beliefs and praxis of Judaism and Christianity on the ground, as it were, and thus there is some truth to be gleaned from his critique, however reductionist and crude in its approach and conclusions. In a future post I plan to delve more deeply into Cottingham’s views on this score. Of course not all contemporary psychoanalysts share Freud’s views on “religion,” if only because analysts are not out to change, let alone abolish, the overarching cultural beliefs and values or worldviews (religious or not) of their patients (or clients or analysands…). Still, it is fair to say, at least historically and theoretically, that traditional psychoanalysis (to the extent that it is defined as primarily ‘Freudian’) is hostile to a religious outlook.

Which brings us to the heart of Cottingham’s argument: there is more or less a “triangle of hostility” in which (i) psychoanalysis opposes religion; (ii) religion is opposed by philosophy; and (iii) philosophy opposes psychoanalysis. I wholeheartedly agree with Cottingham’s  contention that, “in so far as such antagonisms do in fact obtain, they ought not to; for properly understood, there is no good reason why any of these three respective modes of thought [of course they are modes of praxis as well, which Cottingham evidences robust appreciation of elsewhere] should be taken to be in [intrinsic] tension.” In brief, he concludes that “the psychoanalytic project is … closely related to the religious quest [cf. ‘therapies of desire,’ individuation, self-examination, etc.]; and an enlightened philosophical outlook can find room to acknowledge the value of both.” Hear, hear!

Notes

1. Please see Louise Braddock and Michael Lacewing, eds., The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis: Papers in Philosophy, the Humanities and the British Clinical Tradition (Routledge, 2007): 92-110. From his Wikipedia entry: “John Cottingham (born 1943) is an English philosopher. The focus of his research has been early-modern philosophy (especially Descartes), the philosophy of religion and moral philosophy. He is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, University of London, and Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford. He is also a current Visiting Professor to the Philosophy Department at King's College, London. Cottingham has served as editor of the journal Ratio, president of the Aristotelian Society, of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, of the Mind Association and as Chairman of the British Society for the History of Philosophy. A Festschrift with responses by Cottingham, The Moral Life, was published by Palgrave in 2008.”
2. I listed many if not most of these philosophers in my post at Religious Left Law (cross-posted at Ratio Juris) from June 7^th (2019), “Philosophy and Psychoanalysis.”
3. As Cotthingham writes in the Preface to The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (2005): “Current attitudes to religion among philosophers are highly polarized, some impatient to see it buried, others insisting on its defensibility. But as long as the debate is conducted at the level of abstract argumentation alone, what is really important about our allegiance to, or rejection of, religion is likely to elude us. There is, to be sure, a cognitive core to religious belief [for a brilliant analysis of what this does and might entail, please see James Kellenberger’s The Cognitivity of Religion: Three Perspectives (University of California Press, 1985)], a central set of truth-claims to which the religious adherent is committed; but it can be extremely unproductive to try to evaluate these in isolation. There are rich and complex connections that link religious belief with ethical commitment and individual self-awareness, with the attempt to understand the cosmos and the struggle to find meaning in our lives; and only when these connections are revealed, only when we come to have a broader sense of the ‘spiritual dimension’ within which religion lives and moves, can we begin to see fully what is involved in accepting or rejecting a religious view of reality.” Later in the book, Cottingham’s conception of spirituality is defined so as to embrace the possibility of non-religious spirituality: “[A]t the richer end of the spectrum [of spirituality], we find the term used in connection with activities and attitudes which command widespread appeal, irrespective of metaphysical commitment or doctrinal allegiance. Even the most convinced atheist may be prepared to avow an interest in the ‘spiritual’ dimension of human existence, if that dimension is taken to cover forms of life that put a premium on certain kinds of intensely focused moral and aesthetic response, or on the search for deeper reflective awareness of the meaning of our lives and of our relationship to others and to the natural world.”

A few of the many books by Cottingham (chosen because I’ve read them and they speak more or less to topics broached above):

• Philosophy and the Good Life: Reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian and Psychoanalytic Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• On the Meaning of Life (Routledge, 2003)
• The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
• Philosophy of Religion: Towards A More Humane Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Momentary Musings on Miscellaneous Topics

These brief thoughts were intermittently composed over the past several months and make, I think, for light summer reading.

Compare these three recent news items (political and cultural symptoms of a pathological moral psychology among the powers-that-be):

(i) “Federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against activist Scott Daniel Warren for doing nothing more than giving food, water and shelter to migrants trekking through the desert.” “[P]rosecutors charged Warren with several counts of one of those offenses, conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants. A federal felony that could land Warren in prison for 20 years.”

(ii) “President Trump has indicated that he is considering pardons for several American military members accused or convicted of war crimes, including high-profile cases of murder, attempted murder and desecration of a corpse, according to two United States officials.”

(iii) Jeff Koons’ stainless steel sculpture of a rabbit (‘Rabbit’) sold at auction for $91 million. “The buyer in the latest sale was Robert E. Mnuchin, a former executive at Goldman Sachs who currently plies his trade as an art dealer. He’s the father of Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, which must stand as some sort of commentary on 21st century robber barons and their relationship with a plutocrat-loving administration in Washington.”

*           *           *

Generally speaking, arbitration clauses and processes have been a predictable boon to the rich and powerful (meaning the rest of us, as we say, get shafted), which explains why businesses frequently insist that “arbitration is a better alternative for consumers than litigation.” This is of a piece with the ideological bullshit propagated by conservatives that we are in urgent need of “tort reform,” hence the importance of Koenig and Rustad’s classic retort (pun intended), In Defense of Tort Law (New York University Press, 2001). As we learn from article in the Los Angeles Times, “[a] recent academic study confirms what consumer advocates have been saying for years: Mandatory arbitration is a rigged system — rigged, that is, in favor of businesses.”

*           *           *

When it comes to examining or learning from motley doctrines, grand theories, worldviews, philosophies, and so forth, the qualifying phrase, “such truth as there is” (exemplifying the epistemic if not metaphysical spirit common to Jain epistemology, pragmatism, and more sophisticated notions of pluralism) is often apropos. This does not mean that “anything goes,” indeed, it may lead us to discover how or why this or that aspect or part of a theory or philosophy may be wrong and another right, and some theories or philosophies may therefore  increase in plausibility or persuasiveness while others thereby diminish or recede in significance or insight.

*           *           *

In an attempt to dispassionately view the debate surrounding the Democrats running for President, I’ve arrived at the tentative conclusion that some, if not perhaps too many of us on the Left are hell-bent on displaying to our real and virtual comrades in real and envisaged struggle our virtuous Leftist bona fides and doctrinal purity, which strikes me as betraying at once both psychological insecurity and (relatedly) an inordinate desire for intellectual security: the former proves, oddly, motivating, for we then need to continually strive to demonstrate to ourselves and others the converse case (i.e. that we are not insecure); while the latter impoverishes the imagination and amounts to a variation on the proverb that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” as it proves reckless with regard to consequences, be they foreseen, probable, or unintentional.

*           *           *

The President, a pathological narcissist and megalomaniac, is caught up in a welter of phantasies, delusions, and illusions, many of which are now shared with his supporters. One does not need a medical degree or psychoanalytic training to come to this conclusion. He should be removed from office forthwith. The President’s behavior, rhetoric, and policies are suffused with irreality and surreality, while Republican pundits and politicians take great pains to assure us that their twisted character and perverse logic are merely for entertainment and justifiable partisan purposes, allowing the Right to accomplish otherwise unobtainable putative purposes and ends that, at bottom, serve our individual and collective interests! How else to describe this but as political sorcery in the service of sheer madness and evil?

*           *           *

The U.S. government views itself as uniquely entitled to untrammeled pursuit of its political and economic “interests” around the globe, while other countries are entitled to their geopolitically and legally circumscribed nation-state interests and, on occasion, nearby “regional interests,” although the latter can never trump U.S. interests, which are at once global and supreme by definition, thus recognition of regional interests must coincide with if not promote U.S. interests to have any sort of validity. The U.S. does not feel bound by the legal rules and norms of international law insofar as those clash with its tendentious formulation of national interests, all other countries (save Israel), however, are subject to the preeminence of U.S. interests and thus when there is conflict with those interests, the U.S. will find sufficient reason to call upon this or that international law only if it can somehow be construed in support of its globally sovereign political and economic interests.

*           *           *

Pandering to those desires, preferences, and sentiments of the masses that are ill-formed, self-destructive or harmful, irrational, fickle or evanescent (subject to quickly changing fads and fashions), myopic, or shaped by fondness for instant gratification, or rhetorical appeals to our basest instincts and fears, our phantasies, illusions and delusions (this is not an exhaustive list), amounts to a flagrant failure to embody or exemplify any coherent and principled notion of democratic political representation and leadership. “The people” are not always and everywhere a reliable let alone intelligent or wise judge of their best interests, and thus to assume otherwise, is corrosive of the public good, the common welfare, and our individual and collective well-being. To assume otherwise may win you an election, but the deleterious consequences of this path to political power will eventually manifest themselves in both predictable and unpredictable ways.

*           *           *

In retail marketing rhetoric and “branding,” using the adjective “upscale” is intended to get your attention and money (after all, you’re worth it!). In our case, it means “stay away,” this is not a place we’d like to visit. It also informs one that the lower classes are not welcome (well, that is, unless they dream of one day joining the upper classes), even if they could afford to buy something now and again. But what if “upscale” is combined with putatively “green” or “sustainable” practices (e.g.: ‘Caffe Luxxe [appropriately named] is diligent about its sourcing, down to the plantation level. Alternating between farms in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, Caffe Luxxe sources its beans from growers who focus on sustainable practices, such as crop rotation, tree renewal, and complementary crop cultivation.’)? What could be better than that, right?

Reality and Sour Grapes

“’Human kind cannot bear very much reality,’ T.S. Eliot said [see “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets (Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1943)]. What our psychology, too, stresses is how hard the process of self-awareness is, how painful, sometimes searingly painful [it is], to face the reality of who we are. Not that this is surprising when we remember that it was the unbearability of this pain that produced our defenses against awareness in the first place, when we began our splitting off, or repression, of aspects of ourselves [cf. the ‘fragmented’ mind, the divided self, our capacity to ‘compartmentalize,’ etc., all of which, strictly speaking, are logically distinct from, even if perhaps thought to provide some sort of evidence for, the ‘modularity of mind’ theory in cognitive science and philosophy of mind which goes back to the late philosopher Jerry Fodor [see his book, The Modularity of Mind (MIT Press, 1983)]. Part of the work is for both parties to the [therapeutic process of psychoanalysis] to begin to tolerate what has been untolerable [or intolerable] so that self-awareness can happen.

Psychoanalysis has refined and deepened our knowledge of how much this is so, and how the denials function to limit, constrain, and distort our lives. We find it hard to bear our hatred; but it is also hard to bear our loving and all that goes along with love—need, dependence, greed, lack, fear of rejection, loss, jealousy, envy, rage, and guilt. Nor is it easy to bear the humiliation of others’ harshness and contempt (or others’ imagined harshness and contempt) if we allow or show the dependence (and all the rest). Love, which always has elements of possessiveness in it, inevitably makes us vulnerable to psychic pain.

Similar hard-to-bear vulnerabilities arising as a result of wanting or desire occur with less personal feelings of love – think of the fable of the man [rather than the fox!] who, hungry, thirsty, and tired, is walking along a dusty road, and sees delicious-looking grapes hanging over the high hedge. He tries desperately to reach them, but can’t. He then denies his longing, saying to himself: ‘the grapes were green and unripe. I didn’t really want them’ [Brearley here references a later—1962—English translation (with a slightly different title) of Sartre’s brief use of this fable* in his book, The Emotions: Outline of a Theory (Philosophical Library, 1948) (original in French, 1939)]. This man thus changes the world as he perceives it in order not to suffer disappointment. If he never wanted the grapes, he doesn’t have to mind not having them.” – From Michael Brearley’s essay, “What do psychoanalysts do?” in Louise Braddock and Michael Lacewing, eds., The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis: Papers in Philosophy, the Humanities, and the British Clinical Tradition (Routledge, 2007): 20-32.

* “The Fox and the Grapes” is one of the Aesop’s fables, although widespread knowledge of these are likely owing to La Fontaine’s Fables, which “adapted them into French free verse. They were issued under the general title of Fables in several volumes from 1668 to 1694 and are considered classics of French literature.”

In a future post I will discuss Jon Elster’s use of the “sour grapes” fable (in his brilliant book by that title) to illustrate and explain “adaptive preference formation,” as well as G.A. Cohen’s critique of same as part of the latter’s larger and important discussion of “market socialism” in the conclusion to his book, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

On moral philosophy—or ethics—and moral psychology (and the general irrelevance of scientific or academic psychology)

Moral philosophy is the mirror that self-consciousness holds to morality, and it tends to distort that which it reflects. It idealizes it. It gives it a cohesiveness or a clarity that it lacks, and it exhibits it as uniformly benign, which it isn’t. It gets away with this because it ignores or obscures the story of morality. Restored to its proper place in the life-history of the individual, morality does not, self-evidently, or even evidently, have the features that moral philosophers have given it. — Richard Wollheim, The Thread of Life (Cambridge University Press, 1984): 199.

There is a set of apparently anomalous psychological activities—self-deception, akrasia, the irrational conservation of the emotions, agent regret—that present problems for theories of rational agency. Having put aside [in the first half of her book] the distinctions of faculty psychology, and having placed cognitive, rational, activities within a larger psychological context, we are in a better position to understand why such apparently wayward activities are so common, and why they resist correction. They are … by-products of common, highly functional psychological activities: their analysis reveals the structures and operations of the self, operations largely ignored by reconstructive, rationalized accounts of psychological functioning. — Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (Beacon Press, 1988): 195.

… [P]hilosophy has nothing to fear from psychoanalytic thought, and may even have something to learn from it. But one may go further and argue that a sound philosophy can hardly subsist without it. This … is particularly and obviously applicable to moral philosophy; for in so far as the task here is to establish how humans should best live, a proper understanding of the passions and their role in our choices and decisions is absolutely crucial. And given the opacity of the passions—the way in which they so often mislead us because they carry a resonance from forgotten early experience of which the subject is typically unaware—any recipe for the good life that fails to find room for systematic self-scrutiny and reflective analysis, in short for a broadly psychoanalytic programme of self-discovery, will be found to be seriously impoverished.

Let us assume, for the moment, that it is a moral truth that humans cannot live well if they reject the demand for progressive moral improvement. On a personal and psychological level, the problem of responding to that demand will now immediately become one of achieving integration and wholeness. For as long as there is a psychic split between what I feel like doing and what I am morally called to do, as long as there is part of myself that sees the ethical demand as something alien, something harsh and tyrannical that risks interfering with my personal comforts and convenience, then there will be an unresolved tension at the heart of my moral nature. In psychoanalytic terms, this split is characteristically described as a compartmentalization or division of the self—the root of all instability, encompassing the full range of disturbance from minor psychic irritation to entrenched neurosis and even potential catastrophic breakdown. In existential terms, the result will be something variously described as Angst, a sense of dread, fear and trembling, nausea. In theological terms, what is involved is the idea of sin, the inherent sense in each human that it has fallen short of the normative pattern laid down for each by the creator.

If the sense of a gap between our ordinary human capacities and what we might best achieve is an ineradicable part of what it is to be a reflective adult human being, then it must be among the most fundamental moral aims for humanity to form some kind of strategy for addressing the problem of that gap. And this is what the psychoanalytic programme, in its broadest sense, sets out to achieve. The psychoanalytic project of self-discovery aims at integration of the demands of conscience and morality into a fully adult awareness: the passions that may push us in a direction contrary to those moral demands are neither repressed or denied (for that would be a recipe for instability), nor wantonly indulged (for that would be a recipe for chaos), but rather brought to the surface so that their character, their ‘allure,’ is properly understood. The psychoanalytic project, correctly construed, is a deeply moral project, since it involves nothing less than a radical transformation of the self, a kind of re-birthing or re-education process, where the harsh imperatives of the superego on one side, and the raw urgency of our instinctual impulses on the other, are systematically scrutinized, and brought together into an integrated whole where they lose their threatening and destructive character. — John Cottingham, from his essay, “A Triangle of Hostility? Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Religion,” in Louise Braddock and Michael Lacewing, eds., The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis: Papers in Philosophy, the Humanities, and the British Clinical Tradition (Routledge, 2007): 103-104.

*          *          *

The passages above explicitly and implicitly provide us with a nuanced and profound assessment of the impoverished nature of moral philosophizing and ethics when bereft of a plausible moral psychology. And this is why any ethicist or moral philosopher who aims to be practical, realistic, pertinent, or simply speak with conviction and suasion to those outside academic philosophy proper, need to accord moral psychology (i.e., ‘the study of the growth of moral sentiments, moral beliefs, and moral habits in the typical life-history of the individual’) a central role in their philosophizing. To some extent, philosophers working in virtue, feminist, and care ethics have moved in this direction, but their work as well is often subject to the regnant standards and constraints of their profession which effectively ignore, marginalize or even trivialize questions of moral psychology, if only because of a de facto or normative submission to the academic division of labor (interdisciplinary studies notwithstanding). The relevant moral psychological topics are addressed in one way or another in psychoanalytic theory and therapy, earlier by French moralists, by novelists and playwrights, and to some extent by contemporary philosophers dedicated to the study of the emotions. Some religious worldviews and those philosophers committed to same (e.g., Buddhism, Pascal, Kierkegaard), are likewise capable of speaking to questions of moral psychology with a relevance that extends beyond the specific tenets of their traditions.

As Ilham Dilman has argued in a couple of books, the moral psychology Wollheim refers to here is critically and crucially distinguishable from that which looks to experimental or scientific or academic (i.e., empirical) psychology for its bearings. The latter psychology, in Dilman’s words has, so to speak, “no soul.” Thus, for instance, the entry on “moral psychology” in the SEP (the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) exemplifies a scientistic or unrealistic conception of moral psychology:

“Progress in ethical theorizing often requires progress on difficult psychological questions about how human beings can be expected to function in moral contexts. It is no surprise, then, that moral psychology is a central area of inquiry in philosophical ethics. It should also come as no surprise that empirical research, such as that conducted in psychology departments, may substantially abet such inquiry. Nor then, should it surprise that research in moral psychology has become methodologically pluralistic, exploiting the resources of, and endeavoring to contribute to, various disciplines.”

The demarcation and specification of “moral contexts” alone shows the enterprise has gone awry, as it is based on a fundamentally mistaken assumption or premise, as the late philosopher and writer Iris Murdoch suggests in this passage from her book, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992). For the moral life or “ethical living” in one very important sense, and in which questions of moral psychology are paramount, is “not intermittent or specialized,” cabined by circumstances or situations, even if these are sometimes appear or are in fact, more morally conspicuous or salient or urgent than other times and places in our lives, for the moral life has to do with the person qua person. Thus the moral life is not a  

“peculiar separate area of our existence. [….] Life is made up of details. We compartmentalise it for reasons of convenience, dividing the aesthetic from the moral, the public from the private, work from pleasure. [….] Yet we are all always deploying and directing our energy, refining or blunting it, purifying or corrupting it, and it is always easier to do a thing a second time. ‘Sensibility’ is a word which may be in place here. Aesthetic insight connects with moral insight, respect for things connects with respect for persons. (Education.) Happenings in the consciousness so vague as to be almost non-existent can have moral ‘colour.’ All sorts of momentary sensibilities to other people, too shadowy to come under the heading of manners of communication, are still parts of moral activity. (‘But are you saying that every single second has a moral tag?’ Yes, roughly.) [….] [M]uch of our self-awareness is other-awareness, and in this area we exercise ourselves as moral beings in our use of many various skills as we direct our modes of attention.”

When the authors of our SEP entry conclude that “empirical research … conducted in psychology departments” is “substantially abet[ting]” the interdisciplinary research into moral psychology conducted by ethicists, this should give us pause, indeed, it might prompt us to refrain from imbibing in the enthusiasm (at least the kind of enthusiasm permitted professional philosophers in their academic work) that marks their conclusion. Furthermore, the claim that this field of study has become, of necessity, “methodologically pluralistic,” sounds agreeable if not heartening, but this pluralism is predictable if not banal, for these “empirical approaches” fail to encompass psychoanalysis, the humanities, religious worldviews, the French moralists, the work of novelists and playwrights, all of which are, I and others would argue, far more enlightening and helpful when it comes to integrating moral psychology into moral philosophy and ethics. And thus I am reminded of something Jon Elster wrote in Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (1999):

“I believe … that pre-scientific insights into the emotions [we could substitute ‘moral psychology’ for ‘emotions’ without altering the point] are not simply superseded by modern psychology in the way that natural philosophy has been superseded by physics. Some men and women in the past have been superb students of human nature, with more wide-ranging personal experience, better powers of observation, and deeper intuitions than almost any psychologist I can think of [I am assuming Elster has in mind here a practitioner of what we know as ‘scientific psychology’]. This is only what we should expect: There is no reason why one century out of twenty-five should have a privilege in wisdom and understanding. In the case of physics, this argument does not apply.”

Lock Him Up

In a closed Democratic caucus meeting, Nancy Pelosi argued that instead of impeachment, it would be better if Donald Trump would be defeated in the next election and then prosecuted. She expressed the hope that he goes to prison. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/05/pelosi-impeachment-1355435

Perhaps it is not surprising that Sean Hannity thought this was comparable to what takes place in a banana republic. Hypocrisy is his middle name. This is the same Sean Hannity who publicly calls for the jailing of Hillary Clinton. https://www.vox.com/2019/6/7/18656356/hannity-lock-them-up-pelosi-trump

Surprising, however, is the comparison by Chris Matthews to what happens in Pakistan (making the Hannity argument with a different example). And equally surprising is the claim of Ari Melber that Pelosi is off base because the Mueller report like it or not did not result in an indictment. https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/liberal-msnbc-hosts-pelosi-jail-trump (perhaps the Fox link is inaccurate; it would not be the first time).

These comments are themselves off base. Pelosi was not calling for Trump to be sent to jail without due process. She was assuming that a jury would convict him or that Trump would accept a deal. Banana republics do not afford due process. Second, prosecutors across the country have concluded that Trump would have been indicted in the absence of the Justice Department policy. In fact, we saw Trump’s obstruction in plain sight and Barr’s attempts to argue the contrary are widely regarded as indefensible. Third, because of justice department policy regarding sitting presidents, Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Cohen case (although he is not specifically named). Moreover, Cohen testified that Trump committed numerous acts of fraud. And many believe that money laundering is on the horizon. Finally, the Mueller report expressed the view that Trump could be prosecuted when he was no longer a sitting President.

To be sure, some of these alleged crimes will be ripe for prosecution if Trump is not reelected. Some have not yet ripened to that point. But the desire of Speaker Pelosi expressed in a private setting that she would like Trump to go to jail does not remotely suggest that she would like to abandon our nation’s commitment to due process. Similarly, I too hope after a fair judicial process that Donald Trump goes to jail. It could not happen to a nicer guy.

 

Philosophy & Psychoanalysis

“In general, in the English-speaking world, there has been a regrettable tendency for philosophers and psychoanalysts to ignore each other. There are important exceptions. But in general there has been an intellectual splitting that has led to impoverishment on both sides. Philosophers, for their part, take seriously such notions as autonomy, authenticity, freedom and happiness in their accounts of human life and its possibilities. But it is difficult to see how these notions can be adequately addressed without taking into considerations Freud’s genetic account of how the psyche comes to be.”—Jonathan Lear

“Freud revolutionized our understanding of certain forms of ‘mental trouble’ and their treatment. The kind of work that led to his discoveries obviously does not belong to philosophy. So it does not fall within the province of philosophy to tell Freud, or any other psychoanalyst, how to proceed. Yet in this matter of appreciating Freud’s discoveries and the concepts he developed philosophy does have a positive role to play, provided it remains well informed. Since, however, philosophy can alter the practitioner’s understanding of what he is doing and the character of what is working on, it can actually influence, albeit indirectly, the development of the practice in question. Naturally, to do so is not part of the philosopher’s brief, and it would be presumptuous of him to aim at it. Nevertheless, this may be an effect of his reflections when he is sufficiently in touch with that practice to be taken seriously by those who engage in it.”—Ilham Dilman

“Virtually all those who are not ignorant of Freud or totally sceptical of his findings believe that he altered our conception of the mind. He effected a change in what we think we are like, and it was a big change. Astonishingly enough, it is philosophers who have been of all people the slowest to recognize this fact.* They have been slowest to recognize that this has anything to do with them.”—Richard Wollheim

* Among those whom Lear refers to above as “important exceptions” to the generalization he shares with Wollheim, I note the following philosophers, in addition to Lear, Dilman and Wollheim (in no particular order, and confined to those whose work I am familiar with, thus not an exhaustive list): Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, John Wisdom, Jerome Neu, Marcia Cavell, Donald Levy, David Sachs, Herbert Fingarette, J. David Velleman, James Hopkins, Jennifer Church, John Deigh, Linda A.W. Brakel, Paul Ricoeur, Jon Mills, Michael Stocker, and Ernest Wallwork. In fairness, of course, we might mention Adolf Grünbaum who, while taking psychoanalytic theory seriously, was quite critical of psychoanalysis within the strictures of his rather positivist philosophy of science.

Suggested Reading (this is a fairly large sample of the relevant philosophical literature):

• Abramson, Jeffrey B. Liberation and Its Limits: The Moral and Political Thought of Freud. New York: Free Press, 1984.
• Boag, Simon, Linda A. W. Brakel, and Vesa Talvitie, eds. Philosophy, Science, and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Meeting. London: Karnac Books, 2015.
• Brakel, Linda A.W. Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Brakel, Linda A.W. Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the A-Rational Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Burston, Daniel and Roger Frie, eds. Psychotherapy as a Human Science. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2006.
• Cavell, Marcia. The Psychoanalytic Mind: From Freud to Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Cavell, Marcia. Becoming a Subject: Reflections in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Cottingham, John. Philosophy and the Good Life: Reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian and Psychoanalytic Ethics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Deigh, John. The Sources of Moral Agency: Essays in Moral Psychology and Freudian Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Dilman, Ilham. Freud and Human Nature. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
• Dilman, Ilham. Freud and the Mind. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1984.
• Dilman, Ilham. Freud: Insight and Change. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
• Dilman, Ilham. Raskolnikov’s Rebirth: Psychology and the Understanding of Good and Evil. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2000.
• Edelson, Marshall. Hypothesis and Evidence in Psychoanalysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
• Erwin, Edward. A Final Accounting: Philosophical and Empirical Issues in Freudian Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
• Fingarette, Herbert. The Self in Transformation: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and the Life of the Spirit. New York: HarperCollins, 1977.
• Forrester, John. Truth Games: Lies, Money, and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
• Frie, Roger, ed. Understanding Experience: Psychotherapy and Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 2003.
• Gardner, Sebastian. Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Gay, Volney P. Freud on Sublimation: Reconsiderations. Albany, NY: State University Press, 1992.
• Gipps, Richard G.T. and Michael Lacewing, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Grünbaum, Adolf. The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984.
• Lear, Jonathan. Love and Its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990.
• Lear, Jonathan. Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Lear, Jonathan. Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
• Lear, Jonathan. Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony. New York: Other Press, 2003.
• Lear, Jonathan. Freud. New York: Routledge, 2005.
• Lear, Jonathan. Wisdom Won from Illness: Essays in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
• Levine, Michael P., ed. The Analytic Freud: Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 2000.
• Levy, Donald. Freud Among the Philosophers: The Psychoanalytic Unconscious and Its Philosophical Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
• MacIntyre, Alasdair C. The Unconscious: A Conceptual Study. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.
• Mills, Jon, ed. Psychoanalysis at the Limit: Epistemology, Mind, and the Question of Science. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004.
• Mills, Jon, ed. Rereading Freud: Psychoanalysis through Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004.
• Neu, Jerome, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Freud. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• O’Neill, John, ed. Freud and the Passions. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.
• Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970.
• Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg. Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1988.
• Smith, David Livingstone. Freud’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999.
• Wallwork, Ernest. Psychoanalysis and Ethics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.
• Whitebrook, Joel. Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
• Wisdom, John. Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1953.
• Wollheim, Richard. The Thread of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
• Wollheim, Richard. The Mind and Its Depths. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Wolheim, Richard and James Hopkins, eds. Philosophical Essays on Freud. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Transitional Justice bibliography

 

I’ve substantially updated the bibliography for “transitional justice” which, together with 109 other bibliographies on diverse topics (in addition to essays, some published and unpublished work, and ‘study guides’ for a handful of religious worldviews) is available on my Academia page (to see everything there, one has to patiently scroll down the page). As with all such compilations, I welcome suggestions for additional titles (most of these lists have two constraints: books, in English).