Formation of the Psychoanalytic Field

Abstract

ObjectivesThe purpose of this paper is to situate the emergence of psychoanalysis, its differentiation from clinical psychiatry, and its constitution as a specific field of practice and knowledge in the context of the modern, Cartesian conception of the autonomous subject. MethodThe methods used include textual critique, and the genealogy of concepts and their contextualization in the history of the doctrines and foundational ideas of modernity. ResultsBy its constitutive postulates, in particular organicism, psychiatric practice is deeply rooted in the foundational paradigm of modernity, which opposes a consciousness-centered subject, defined by its liberty, to a geometrized material universe, submitted to a strict mechanical determinism. With the concept of the Unconscious, psychoanalysis has always positioned itself in opposition to psychopathology's objectifying approach, which translates into an interrogation of the organicist postulate. DiscussionFreudian theory, however, borrows its main models from rationalist psychology, whose constitutive principles are a direct tributary of the now partly obsolete paradigm of classical science. Jung will vigorously object to that, but without success, largely because of the regressive and mystical character of his conceptualization. ConclusionsIt is not until the arrival of the post-Freudians, most importantly Lacan, that the foundation for the heteronomous causation of the subject can be laid; thus, the psychoanalytical clinic can find the doctrinal framework that will allow it, with the formulation of structural theory, to address causality in psychopathology.