Nussbaum as Freudian
In comments on ‘Reading Nussbaum’ Tea mentioned that Nussbaum ‘is not only delusional about religious believers (and dogmatic about respecting religious beliefs), she is also a Freudian.’ True. I’d remembered the Freudian claims in Hiding From Humanity, but when I found that chapter again I realized I’d forgotten that they’re also heavily present in Upheavals of Thought. She introduces the subject in a very interesting way in the latter book (p. 181):
It has become fashionable in the United States to sneer at psychoanalysis. In part this dismissive attitude results from the fact that Americans are generally impatient with complexity and sadness, and tend to want a quick chemical fix for deep human problems. People who have that view of life will not have reached Chapter 4 of this book anyway…
Fashionable? Really? And ‘sneer’? Really? No, I don’t think so. There are people, in the US and elsewhere, who take a critical view of Freud, but do they amount to a fashion? I think it’s more reasonable to say that it used to be highly fashionable among intellectuals, especially of the humanist variety (as opposed to scientific), to view Freud as almost infallible, and that there has now been a rational and well-informed reaction against that fashion, thanks to people like Fred Crews and Allen Esterson who have carefully investigated Freud’s claims and found them wanting. It’s not a matter of sneering, it’s a matter of rational judgment – which is not something Nussbaum should be sneering at.
She goes on to say that there are people who admire humanistic approaches in literary or philosophical form (Proust and Plato) but ‘react with suspicion’ to any mention of the names Klein and Winnicott, because, she thinks, they consider such figures pretend scientists who don’t measure up to ‘a model of science set by the natural sciences.’
To them I simply want to say that I myself treat these figures as humanistic interpretive thinkers, very closely related to Plato and Proust, whose work gains texture and depth through having a clinical dimension.
Yes well that’s a very ‘fashionable’ ploy with die-hard fans of Freud, and it’s not at all how Freud thought of himself or how his ardent fans thought of him until the feebleness of his ‘science’ became too obvious to ignore, so it tends to look more like a protective dodge than like a considered view of what Freud was really attempting to do. But okay; think of Freud as a kind of poet who occasionally saw patients, if you like, but then don’t be so damn rude about skeptics. For someone who is so insistent on respect, Nussbaum can be remarkably sneery herself when it’s her ox that is being gored.
And I don’t care how literary and poetic and humanistic a take on Freud she embraces, attributing mental illness to “birth trauma” is still complete bollocks! She’s a frickin’ PHILOSOPHER for Pete’s sake: She should know that a claim about the world, even if it is not strictly speaking a scientific claim, is still a truth claim, and must therefore be evaluated in light of the evidence and reasoning which supports it (or, as in the case of “birth trauma,” utterly fails to support it).
Philosophers who spin rhetoric about literary value and metaphorical meaning when discussing truth claims are pulling a fast one, plain and simple. They are no longer acting as philosophers or any other sort of engagers in honest intellectual inquiry, they are – to borrow a carefully defined technical term from Harry Frankfurt – bullshitters.
Well that’s certainly how it strikes me. And as you’ve said, it’s not as if she’s no good at acting as a philosopher – to say the least.
It’s really as if she’s two different people. But then, I don’t get that…Presumably as a philosopher she values rigour – so how does she manage to completely stop valuing it when she’s this other person? Why doesn’t the philosopher in her hate all this woolly stuff? How does she just turn that off? It’s mysterious.
I could see it for writing poetry or something, but she’s definitely arguing here.
Well…I thought Poetic Justice was a mess. I think the rot started there.
I don’t get it. Why not just say “Freud was total crap as a scientist, but he came up with a few creative and interesting ideas that I’m going to play with”?
Jenavir,
Perhaps she is paid by the word?
In passing, Nussbaum’s equating criticism of psychoanalysis with unwillingness to consider emotional life in depth is intellectually cheap.
Her pairing of Melanie Klein with Winnicott is bizarre. Winnicott wrote on children in a way that one might at least consider worthy of discussion, whereas Klein out-Freuded Freud in the absurdity of her early childhood theories and interpretations. A few examples.
From her own “Narrative of a child analysis”: From a drawing by the ten-year-old “Richard” of a boy at an hotel Klein interprets that the hotel stood for Mummy’s inside and the boy for Daddy’s hostile genital attacking him. I quote from her own notes: “During this interpretation Richard had taken one of the pencils into his mouth and was sucking and biting it… Mrs K. interpreted that he not only wanted to suck it (standing for Daddy’s or Paul’s penis), but to bite it off and eat it, and then he felt inside himself the good penis turned into the octopus, into the bad, dangerous penis…” and so on for about another 20 lines of nonsense. The next paragraph opens with: “Richard apparently did not pay any attention to this interpretation.”
Richard says he wanted to climb mountains. “Mrs K. interpreted that his wish to climb mountains expressed his desire to have sexual relations with his mother…” etc, etc.
I see Nussbaum says that Klein has an advantage over Plato and Proust as her work “gains texture and depth through having a clinical dimension”. What a joke!
One of my favourites Kleinisms is her explanation for her daughter Melitta’s problems with algebra: Melitta had difficulty thinking through algebraic equations with two unknowns because of inhibition about thinking about her parents’ sexual intercourse. And then son Hans hated school games, because they evoked a masturbatory fantasy of playing with little girls whose breasts he caressed as they played football together. That would have been alright had his fantasy not also invoked fear of castration…
God, poor Melitta and Hans…what fun childhoods they must have had.
That Person was a doctor Allen?
>That Person was a doctor Allen?< If you’re referring to Melanie Klein, no. As you can see above, in her own notes she refers to herself as Mrs Klein. Her ‘qualifications’ were that she was analysed by Sandor Ferenczi and Karl Abraham, two of Freud’s most devoted disciples.
Thank God for that I had an awfull vision of a lunatic like that treating people with mental problems Allen. Is that the sort of ka ka that Freud espoused ?I know almost nothing about him.
>Thank God for that I had an awfull vision of a lunatic like that treating people with mental problems Allen.< Treating people with mental problems was, of course, precisely what the psychoanalysts did. In Klein’s case, it was mostly child analysis – and she analysed her own children. As Ophelia said, poor Melitta and Hans.
Well you see this is the great advantage of not worrying about the ‘scientific’ qualifications of psychoanalysis and instead thinking of it as a branch of humanistic interpretation – it means people with no medical qualifications whatever can treat people with mental illnesses – or even people with stomach pains who in fact have undiagnosed stomach cancer! What fun!