Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Community

Abstract

Is it true that there is no life that is not in community, or is this simply T. S. Eliot being dramatic? It is, of course, the poet’s prerogative and penchant to be dramatic, though Aristotle said much the same thing in Nicomachean Ethics. Let us accept, for a moment, that Eliot, echoing Aristotle, is correct. We might then face a number of questions. What does Eliot mean by life, and why is human life contingent upon community? Is life something created in community, a property of community, or something held among and between members of a community? Is the problem of living a problem of community? For that matter, what does community mean? What do we call “life” outside of community—solipsistic existence in the form of survival, or simply death? Now, what if we were to pose these questions not simply to the poet or philosopher, but to the psychoanalyst? These are somewhat unfamiliar questions for psychoanalysts. Freud, and many who followed him, confronted questions regarding the etiology of suffering, pathology, symptoms, and how to facilitate the process of recovery. Freud’s theories are his answers to these particular questions. Different queries, as Wittgenstein noted (Ayer, 1985, p. 36), can alter not only our method of responding, but also our very answers. What answers, then, would analysts proffer to the question of life-in-community? This article offers a few answers to these questions and identifies some of the implications for psychoanalytic theory and practice. Relying primarily on John Macmurray’s philosophy, I