An Unholistic Alliance

Abstract

As a psychoanalyst and philosopher whose work over the past 35 years has been centrally focused on rethinking psychoanalysis as a form of phenomenological inquiry (Stolorow et al. 2002), I looked forward with eager anticipation to delving into a volume aimed at illuminating the scientificity of psychoanalysis with the help of philosophical (primarily Husserlian) phenomenology. Reading Karlsson's (2010/2004) new book, however, left me feeling sorely disappointed. The sources of my disappointment were prefigured in the two ways in which the book's title, Psychoanalysis in a New Light, turned out to be misleading. First, the book is not about psychoanalysis as such; the book's focus is largely narrowed to classical Freudian psychoanalysis, for the most part leaving out of account innovative developments in contemporary psychoanalysis, especially in North America. Second, the book does not cast even Freudian psychoanalysis in a new light at all; indeed, Karlsson leaves the entire edifice of Freudian metapsychology largely unchallenged and unchanged. To me, the book reads like old Freudian wine, epistemologically propped up by, but never really making it into, new phenomenological bottles. Before elaborating in greater depth on my criticisms of Karlsson's work, let me note six accomplishments of the volume that I think are valuable contributions. First, Karlsson presents a reader-friendly introduction to the basic principles of Husserlian phenomenology such as the transcendental and eidetic reductions, the intentional structure of consciousness, and the lifeworld that will prove helpful to psychoanalytic readers unfamiliar with philosophical phenomenology. Second, Karlsson usefully extends to psychoanalysis Husserl' s (1970/1936) contention (reminiscent of Heidegger's (1962/1927) insistence that our experience of being-in-the-world is always ontologically prior to scientific knowledge) that our