Review Article: Psychoanalysis as finite, psychoanalysis as infinite? Psychoanalysis' religious potential

Abstract

This paper explores the implications of James Grotstein's important book, which revisits the question of the foundations of psychoanalysis in the light of its relation to ‘infinity’. The review article argues that there are at least three infinities in psychoanalysis which complement one another, and which vindicate Grotstein's stance. These are the Kantian infinite, the metaphor of an infinity behind any and all experience, an infinity of the unknowable; the Hegelian infinite, the metaphor of a mirror infinity of mutually reflecting, or mutually alienating (but still, in that sense, negatively mutually mirrored), centres of subjectivity, implicit in experience; and the Freudian infinite, an infinite of cross-referencing, and mirroring, reduplication in a textual sense, transcending the immediacy of experience, a textual sliding away from any possible metaphor, model, or located centre of subjectivity, with various degrees of mutual supression, censorship, and forced disguise, or partial revelation, which...