Commençons par écarter tous les faits. Quelques réflexions freudiennes et lyotardiennes sur la réalité psychique

Abstract

ObjectivesThe aim of this article is to question the Freudian notion of psychic reality, by asking ourselves whether it prefigures the recognition of a form of emancipation from the facts of the world. The assertion that fact often carry less weight than certain thoughts is at the heart of the Freudian notion of psychic reality. Indeed, Freud is not content, when he discovers the depth of hysterical fantasies, to ask that psychic reality be taken into account alongside practical reality, nor that it not be confused with material reality; instead, he endeavors to show that the unconscious literally ignores the difference between fact and desire. Thus, the difficulty is not only that of an overestimation of reality and an underestimation of fantasy. Nor is it confined to neurosis, which places psychic reality above factual reality, but it is necessary to admit the superiority and even the domination of psychic reality in the formation of many contents of representation: in the unconscious, nothing distinguishes desire from fact. Therefore it is very difficult to differentiate between “normal” beings, who would only trust realities, and neurotics, who would react with the greatest seriousness to thoughts alone. The point is delicate and will be at the heart of the Freudian discussion, an open-ended discussion on whether the original act of parricide is an historical truth or more of a fantasy. MethodTo discuss these questions, I will compare the reflections on the unconscious found in S. Freud and in the French philosopher J.-F. Lyotard, who both commented on Freudian texts devoted to fantasy but also drew inspiration from Freudian theories, while putting them at a distance, in order to forge his own conception of the unconscious and of affect. The first step will be a reconstruction of this great unconscious scene from which any formation powerfully invested with affect has more value and importance than its denial by reality or the so-called objective facts. In a second step, I will ask whether the Freudian psychic model is thus only an anticipation of the empire of the post-truth or whether Freud also fails to spot unmistakable signals of reality or signs that are not themselves mere layers of interpretation. I will then question the Freudian idea, formulated in The Interpretation of Dreams, according to which affect is always right, at least as far as its quality is concerned. It is well understood that affects, like representations, can be reversed into their opposite. It seems, however, that affects are less subject to modification than the contents of the representation. Following Jean-François Lyotard's philosophical interpretation of the Freudian notion of affect, which leads him to elaborate the notion of “affect-phrase,” I will, in a third step, summon this affective voice that would testify – in truth – without representing anything and without ever “lying.” ResultsThe comparison of Freud and Lyotard allows for the establishment of a connection between the question of the meaning to be given to the notions of psychic reality and fantasy and that of unconscious affect. Indeed, it seems that what prevents us from assimilating the unconscious to a place only containing facts of desire, completely devoid of any index of reality or referenciality, from concluding, in so doing, that nothing is a sign towards reality or that it is only constituted of interpretative layers that we never finish going through, is perhaps that fantasy can create an event on the psychic “stage” – and that this possibility is conditioned by a strong investment in affects. DiscussionThe aim is to initiate a discussion about the points of similarity between a thought and the unconscious, as well as their differences, in terms of Freud's “small unconscious things.” This is followed by a discussion on the distinction between thought and unconscious in Lyotard, in terms of sentences, affect sentences. ConclusionThe double view of affectivity based on the thoughts of Freud and Lyotard displaces the idea of an unconscious, in a way that is post-factual. Admittedly, the full and complete motivation or justification of affect derives from the recognition of psychic realities on which these affects are based. Nevertheless, these affects signify the existence of a dimension of psychic reality that goes beyond the structure of the layers of fantasy or interpretation that one never stops going through and that constitute the unconscious as a reality devoid of facts. In this article, I have insisted on the importance of the Freudian idea formulated from the Interpretation of Dreams, according to which the affect is always true, as to its quality. In the same way, I have argued that, in the last period of his thought, Lyotard presents the affect or infantia as a fact of the unconscious.