The Urgeschichte of Subjectivity Reconsidered

Abstract

Examining Dialectic of Enlightenment from vantage of current psychoanalytic thinking, one is struck by its prescient appreciation of realm of preoedipal experience. This is in marked contrast Freud, who, we can now see, was remarkably tone deaf when it came earliest phases of human development. Whether we consider his minimization of significance of mother in his case histories, his awkwardness in dealing concept of narcissism, his lack of acquaintance oceanic feeling, his discomfort preverbal nature of music and nonrepresentational art, or his helplessness when confronted dark continent, it is apparent that Freud was ill at ease more archaic layers of psychic life. As opposed less differentiated world of dyadic phase, oedipal phase, as Chasseguet-Smirgel has observed, with its incest taboo, solidifies awareness of 'third dimension', which enables us to keep object at a distance.' D. W. Winnicott has argued that because Freud's own infancy experiences had been good enough, entered the Oedipus . . . period in his life as a whole human being, ready meet whole human beings, and ready deal in interpersonal relationships. As a result, he could take mother of infant for granted2 in his self-analysis, and mother-child dyad did not have become an object of sustained analytic scrutiny. It can be objected, of