Wittgenstein and Freud

Heinz Kohut believed that psychoanalysis should adopt new theories in the light of new evidence. His work with borderline and narcissistic patients led him to question the prevailing Freudian orthodoxy, and, in 1977, he published The Restoration of the Self, in which he put forward a theoretical framework based on a psychology of the self rather than on drive theory. Kohut’s commitment to scientific progress was admirable, but his book raised issues that he had trouble resolving. How can psychoanalysis be a science if only one researcher ever has direct access to the (clinical) data on which it is based? Since it does not make testable predictions, how can disagreements between practitioners be resolved? And in the face of multiple frameworks/theories, how is it possible to reach a definitive position on whether one is correct?

Kohut was not a natural rebel and he presents his challenge to orthodoxy in a conciliatory way. Not entirely convincingly, he says his framework is intended to complement rather than replace drive theory. He claims that the structural model (id, ego, superego) is excellent in explaining (and treating) the problems of individuals who have a well-formed self but who struggle to manage their libidinal and aggressive drives. But he argues that it cannot explain (or help) people who suffer from problems of the self. He recognises that dispensing with a familiar framework is difficult, but he claims that this is necessary in order to expand our grasp of the psychological essence of man and to increase our ability to explain man’s motivations and behaviour. In his view, we can only understand certain sets of empirical (clinical) data – and certain aspects of these empirical data – if we adopt his new framework.

Kohut notes that traditionally the task of analysis was to resolve the patient’s Oedipus Complex. It was about helping the patient abandon their hopeless, disturbing sexual love for one parent and their hopeless, disturbing hatred of the other. The aim was to help the patient achieve relative freedom from the object-instinctual involvements of the Oedipal period. But the narcissistic and personality disordered patients Kohut was seeing were not suffering from Oedipal problems. Their problems did not arise from the unsatisfactory resolution of conflicts between the ego, id and superego, but from defects in the structure of their selves. These defects prevented them from leading meaningful lives.

Kohut sees the self as having two poles – a grandiose pole that is related to self-esteem and vitality, and an idealising pole that is linked to ideals, values and inner strength. The former is nurtured in the early years of a person’s life by the empathic responses of their merging-mirroring-approving self-object (usually the mother), while the later is nurtured by an empathically responding self-object (usually the father, especially in boys) who permits (and enjoys) the child’s idealisation of and merger with them. He suggests that the positive tension between these poles provides the basis for the individual’s agency, driving their efforts to lead a happy and successful life. If there is a serious problem in either pole, the individual will be unable to find realistic, socially acceptable ways of expressing themselves. Their need to express themselves may be inhibited or narcissistic (defects in the grandiose pole) or their self-expression may lack coherence and focus (defects in the idealising pole), but one way or another, they will be unable to lead coherent, satisfying lives.

Kohut recognises that he needs to demonstrate the superiority of his new framework in relation to the evidence. He presents a significant amount of clinical material, but he accepts that no amount of (second-hand) clinical material is going to persuade others to accept a new framework or theory. So, he urges his colleagues to be open-minded and to engage in unprejudiced clinical observation. He believes they should be able to confirm his theories in the experimental laboratory of their practices. More broadly, he claims that the way for psychoanalysts to accurately recognise psychological patterns is for them to: examine (via empathy) a large amount of clinical data from as many different viewpoints as possible; focus on the empathic stance that allows them to see the data in the most meaningful way; and make sure they have done everything they can to remove any obstacles to true empathic engagement. Kohut assumes that, if everyone follows these principles, a consensus will emerge around the most accurate theories and frameworks.

This seems optimistic to say the least. In practice, psychoanalysts disagree in their assessment of patients, in their interpretation of patients’ actions and reactions and, of course, in their beliefs about which theoretical framework is correct . In principle, the therapeutic value of different frameworks could provide an independent criterion for deciding between them, and Kohut does indeed suggest that his framework supports more productive engagement with certain types of patient. But he accepts that what constitutes improvement in a patient is a matter of judgement. So, this criterion too does not provide an easy route to or even towards consensus. In the end, Kohut is reduced to falling back on assurances that his extensive clinical experiences leave him confident that his hypotheses are correct. Hopefully, his peers will put aside their established views and come round to his position, and if they do not, maybe younger colleagues will either take his word that this new approach is a superior one or be sufficiently open-minded to see that his conclusions are correct.

Kohut discusses the nature of psychoanalysis as a science, and here, too, sees a need to go beyond Freud. He suggests that Freud’s commitment to psychoanalysis as a natural science led him to devise a quasi-mechanical drives-based framework, where forces and counterforces interact with each other. Kohut does not think this provides an adequate framework for understanding human experience. He claims that we need to go beyond the type of scientific objectivity Freud aspired to and embrace an objectivity that includes introspective-emphatic observation. In Kohut’s view, “the essential focus of the psychoanalyst concerns the meaning and the significance of the material under scrutiny, rather than causal sequences”. Psychoanalysis is like hieroglyphics and, by implication, it is a science in a similar sense. For example, it might be characterised it as a rigorous investigative discipline that collects data in a specific way and, through theoretical analysis and professional discussion, seeks to generate shared conclusions on the meaning of the data. 

This seems a very reasonable conclusion, but Kohut’s book shows that the scale of disagreement in psychoanalysis is always likely to be on a different scale to that within hieroglyphics. Take the issue of aggression. Within the Freudian framework, destructiveness is seen as a primary human instinct. But Kohut rejects this view. He claims that his clinical work demonstrates that destructive aggression is a secondary phenomenon and that it arises from the failure of the self-object environment to meet the child’s need for empathic responses. Here, Kohut confronts a central issue in any account of human nature. Theologically, it is the issue of original sin. Are human beings essentially good, even if they sometimes do bad things, or are they essentially bad, even if they have some power to restrain the worst parts of their nature? You could use this question to divide philosophers and other writers on human nature into two groups, and you can do the same with psychoanalysts. Freud and Klein would be in one camp (the “original sin” camp) and Kohut and Winnicott in the other.

Kohut’s theory-building is driven by his efforts to make sense of his patients’ actions and experiences. His search is a search for meaning, and he believes that drive theory, with its basis on an analogy to mechanical action patterns, cannot do justice to the psychological facts, that is to say, to the reality of people’s experience. To help people make sense of their lives, you need to explore their sense of self and their relationships with significant others (who, in Kohut’s view, help shape the individual’s self by acting as their self-objects). Working within the deterministic Freudian model, Kohut had worried about free will and choice, but now he thinks that, while some things can be (causally) explained, other things can (and should) be explained as actions of a unit that tries to follow its own course.

Kohut’s framework captures a particular view of human nature. The traditional Freudian view sees the human condition as characterised by the conflict between our drives (our pleasure-seeking and destructive tendencies and our drive-elaborating and drive-curbing equipment (the ego and the superego). Kohut labels this view “Guilty Man” – it is about someone doing their best to cope with their sinful drives and failing – to a greater or lesser extent. In contrast, his framework is about “Tragic Man” – someone seeking to express the pattern of their nuclear self (an endeavour that is beyond the pleasure principle but is not based on the death drive). It might also be seen as being about self-expressive or creative Man, but Kohut notes that failure is more common than success (and success always contains an element of failure), hence his preference for Tragic Man as the label for his framework/view of human nature.

So what should we make of this? Kohut emphasises that, unlike the natural sciences, psychoanalysis is a two-stage process based first on understanding and then on explaining. This approach links psychoanalytic explanations and our normal explanations of human action. The latter are not causal explanations that seek to find law-like patterns in human behaviour, but attempts to understand or make sense of a human action. Judgements about human actions (why Bob hit Bill, why Jane slept with Jill) are substantive. They are based on the idea that there is a correct explanation of the action (a correct ways of making sense of it), but there is no process for resolving disagreements on what the correct explanation is. As individuals, we have to take a position. If you and I disagree, I may see this in various ways: as a rare lapse on your part; as a reflection of the fact that you do not understand the specific people involved; or as a reflection of the fact that in general your judgements about human action are poor. Perhaps with greater experience you will come to understand people better or maybe I will change and come to see that it was (and is) you who are the better judge of human nature.

The same points apply to psychoanalytic judgements even if there are, of course, differences between psychoanalytic and traditional explanations of human action. The former go far beyond the reasons the individual would spontaneously offer. But our everyday approach also does not treat the individual’s (sincere) account as definitive. We have always recognised that people deceive themselves and sometimes offer (sincere) reasons that are not real explanations of their actions. Psychoanalytic explanations build on these aspects of our traditional approach. They refer to unconscious motivations in a systematic and much more sophisticated way than traditional explanations, but they are still essentially a way of making sense of what people do. As with everyday explanations of human action, there is no mechanism for securing agreement. Psychoanalysts are committed to the idea that there is a correct way of making sense of Bob’s angry outbursts inside (and outside) the consulting room, but they often have different views on what the correct explanation is and their views may change over time on the basis of new material about the individual or on the basis of material drawn from their work with other individuals.

These points apply to specific psychoanalytical explanations, but also to the wider frameworks that bring together specific judgements and/or are used to generate them. Psychoanalysis is a systematic attempt to capture the truth about human action and experience, and many of its claims are hard to dispute (e.g. that in our relationships with others we repeat patterns from earlier in our lives), but because it is concerned with understanding human action (rather than developing a causal model that can predict it), differences of opinion about the correct view are inevitable.

There is no doubt that psychoanalysis has transformed our understanding of human life, generating a mass of new insights, new theories and new perspectives, but it would be implausible to suggest that it is progressing towards a body of knowledge everyone agrees on. There is no prospect of Freudians, Kleinians and Winnicottians one day reaching agreement. But this shouldn’t be surprising. How could any form of enquiry resolve the issue of original sin and provide an account of human nature no one could disagree with? Kohut was brave and right to raise these issues, and it seems to me that his responses to them point in the right direction, but a step further is needed to take them to their natural conclusion.