(Un)Easily Contained Elements

Freud reveals his fascination with words with two meanings where one is the opposite of the other in his 1910 essay, "The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words." In this vein, Derrida reads the word "analysis" in Resistances of Psychoanalysis as both "philolytic" and unity-seeking along the lines of "the archeological or anagogical motif of return to the ancient as archi-originary" (27). Derrida might as well be describing the philolytic when he describes the double bind as "a transcendental sickness of the analytic" (qtd. in How99 121). We can read Derrida’s ambiguous quote as suggesting that that which aspires for the transcendent and unitary is also in a way a sickness of the philolytic analytic in that it represses its difference. If we read "the analytic" above in terms of analysis as a return to archi-origins, the philolytic aspect of the double bind might be considered the "sickness" of the transcendental, that which would not allow for a stable health of unitary totality. One of the major goals of this project is to show how Freudian theory is most clearly divided–contradictory, aporetic, "sick"–when it goes furthest toward establishing such a unity, totality, and transcendence.

Though "the deconstruction of logocentrism is not a psychoanalysis of philosophy" (Der78 196), psychoanalysis and deconstruction are both a part of this "analytic" (these parts, of course, having no discernable boundaries, as I argue in chapter one). Derrida calls deconstruction a "hyperanalytisme" (qtd. in How99 121), which suggests that psychoanalysis would be simply an "analytisme," the differentiation being determined by, as Christina Howells implies, the "radically differing degrees of consciousness" of psychoanalysis and deconstruction "of the effects of this entrapment" of being "caught in the aporias and double binds of their own projects" (How99 121). Whereas Freud speculates on precursors of the double bind, ultimately playing a game of fort/da with whatever is beyond his various systems–whatever philolytic aspects of his work threatens the stability of his archi-origin analysis--Derrida attempts to call attention to the doubleness of his own work, and the work to which he is responding, without reducing the other work, the other text, to his own terms, to more of the Same. The double bind being explored here is more a product of Freud’s ultimately divided attempts to establish an archi-origin of truth found: psychoanalysis as Truth, and as the basis of a transcendent legacy.

Despite what Derrida recognizes as the marginal status in psychoanalysis of any Freud of the trace and différance, Derrida often interprets the Freud of the Project in "Freud and the Scene of Writing" ("Scene") as amenable to deconstruction: "It is with a graphematics still to come, rather than with a linguistics dominated by an ancient phonologism, that psychoanalysis sees itself as destined to collaborate" (220). As Derrida makes clear in his later essays, destiny and the type of graphematics Derrida is known to promote cannot peacefully coexist: they are mutually exclusive because a Derridean graphematics embraces chance and is therefore adestinational. His formulation here of how psychoanalysis sees itself would suggest a certain paradoxical self-perception with regard to chance–a graphematic destiny–or simply a lack of awareness on the part of Freud regarding this mutual exclusivity, or division’s inevitability or irreducibility. In his later essay on Lacan, "Le facteur de la vérité," Derrida seems at times critical of Lacan for betraying those graphematic aspects of Freudian theory that Derrida values most, those aspects that seem to suggest a kind of chance-embracing psychoanalysis which that make destiny an identitarian fantasy. With regard to destiny, Derrida shows that Lacan would also "betray" Crébillon and Poe when he misquotes Dupin’s quotation of Crébillon in the substitute letter:

Lacan twice substitutes destin for dessein ("destiny" for "design"). As early as "Scene" Derrida would argue that whatever "the historical originality" of "the Freudian breakthrough" might be, "this originality is not due to its peaceful coexistence or theoretical complicity with [a certain] linguistics, at least in its congenital phonologism" (199). Derrida, later calling this linguistics "destinational," would argue that the Lacanian letter supposedly always arrives at its destin(y)ation. Derrida is indirectly referring to Plato and Lacan when he writes "congenital phonologism." He is also attempting to establish an epistemological connection that stems from Plato to a Freud of metaphysics and "hypomnemic writing" (227) to Lacan and the "ancient phonologism" of his destinational linguistics of "castration-truth." Derrida is therefore suggesting that Lacan’s phonologism (and Freud’s too) would be a sort of betrayal or repression of those "otherwise" aspects of Freudian theory that Derrida relates to the "Freudian breakthrough" and its "graphematics still to come" that are supposedly "proper" to it. Later in this essay on the Project, Derrida again refers to a Freud akin to deconstruction when he warns that

The Freud Derrida wants to avoid betraying here is not the descendent of Plato. If not simply a unitary and deconstructive Freud–the "may" leaves room for other possible Freuds with whom this would not be a betrayal, and avoids any paradoxical pairing of "unitary" and "deconstructive"–this is a Freud where immobile texts, origins, and translation are betrayals. But what happened to the "without-exception" Freud of metaphysics of presence and hypomnemic writing? The Freud of phonologism and logocentrism? Derrida seems to want to salvage an otherwise and graphematic Freud, a "breakthrough" Freud akin to Derrida’s own breakthroughs–and he does this even though he begins the essay by arguing that "Freudian concepts … without exception, belong to the history of metaphysics" (Der78 197).

In two of the quotations above Derrida seems lured by a paradoxical "otherwise essence" of psychoanalysis that would somehow determine a proper legatee, a destiny–though in the "graphematics" quotation he indicates that the destiny is what psychoanalysis sees for itself and not necessarily what Derrida sees. Because Derrida is trying in this essay to locate a "Freudian breakthrough" that would account for the paradigm shift away from Platonism and a crude Cartesianism for which Freud is generally credited and to which Derrida seems to feel indebted–and to put this breakthrough in the language of the then nascent deconstruction–the metaphysical Freud, the Freud that tried hard to deny the radical nature of his insights, ends up being marginalized in "Scene" despite Derrida’s "without-exception" opening to the essay.

In the next two chapters I attempt to problematize whatever "Freudian breakthrough" there might be that would account for any debt Derrida has to Freud by extending Derrida’s "without-exception" reading of Freud. I hope to problematize as "easily contained" or even tools of "logocentric closure" those concepts that might be typically considered by Derridean readers of Freud to be the "uneasily contained elements" (see Der78 198) of Freudian theory with regard to logocentric closure: memory and the scene of writing of the Project (Derrida), overdetermination (Smith and Kerrigan), the navel of the dream (Weber), the primary process (Derrida and Weber), repression (Weber and Barratt), anxiety (Weber), and the id. In the next chapter, "Freud’s Masterplotting," I attempt to show how Freud’s psychic determinism is extended toward a cosmology as chance is negated within the ever-expanding domain of Freud’s castration masterplot. When read with regard to this masterplot, I hope to show that Freud’s concepts of the primary process, repression, anxiety, and the id are all transformed into, if not simply easily containable elements of Freudian theory within logocentric closure, then elements that are integral parts of this totalizing masterplot. In this chapter, I attempt to problematize or disturb the (non)origins of the psychical apparatus as Derrida reads them in Freud’s Project. In this chapter I look at Derrida’s essay on the Project and a variety of readings of The Interpretation of Dreams in order to problematize the "uneasy" or "otherwise" status of such concepts as overdetermination, the navel of the dream, memory, and the primary process, which will set up my next chapter on Freud’s theoretical movement toward a totalizing theory.

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