To begin, I find Levi’s argument interesting, as opposed to his earlier attempts to somewhat naïvely convert Marx’s entire body of works into ontological objectology in one fell swoop, but in my opinion I don’t find it entirely convincing, for basically one simple reason.

The beginning of his post does a decent job of outlining the difference between epistemology and ontology. Levi talks about how epistemology is premised on “bracketing” entities as they are in themselves and privileging the sensible realm of how we perceive things: accordingly, epistemology is, obviously, a philosophy of access. No one was claiming otherwise. On the other hand, ontology, etc., etc.

What I don’t understand is this: Levi goes from talking about the difference between epistemology and ontology (let’s call this “axis 1”), and then, after quoting very large excerpt from Roy Bhaskar, he switches to talking about the difference between anti-realism and realism (let’s call this “axis 2”). In other words, it seems to me that Levi’s argument makes sense only if we agree with this clever rhetorical substitution (I’m tempted to use the word “trick,” but I’ll give Levi the benefit of the doubt) of “axis 2” for “axis 1.” Note that the first reference to the word “realism” (occurring as “anti-realism” in Levi’s post) doesn’t appear until immediately after he cites Bhaskar, rather than being part of a larger argumentative syllogism.

Maybe I’m stupid or missing something, but how can one so quickly make this jump from axis 1 (epistemology—ontology) to axis 2 (anti-realism—realism), without providing any argument for why we should believe that these two axes of terms are interchangeable? I’ll grant Levi the fact that his reference to Hume sort of implies that he’s talking about a specifically anti-realist form of empiricist epistemology (as opposed to naïve epistemological realism, which he’s gone into quite some depth about in his past posts), but that doesn’t solve the problem of conflating the latter of the two terms (ontology and realism) in his set of binary oppositions, which seems a bit deceptive in my opinion.

Now, obviously, Levi has certain partisan commitments to ontological realism, commitments which predate this post, but unless he’s truly convinced himself so thoroughly of just how correct he is that he doesn’t need to provide any argument for why ontology and realism are interchangeable terms, one would at least expect some mention of why he’s substituting these terms for one another. I mean, it seems pretty clear to me that there are a lot of different forms of ontology that aren’t realist, as I’m sure Levi’s well aware of.

Ordinarily, such a substitution might not be entirely problematic: if the argument just ended there, we could just presuppose that Levi was extending an argument from one of his previous posts about how ontological realism offers a more powerful and coherent philosophical argument than does epistemological anti-realism, but that isn’t the point of this post. The point of this post seems to be that psychoanalysis presupposes a realist ontology, which is another thing entirely:

Wouldn’t it be delicious, I thought, if it could be shown that Lacanian psychoanalytic practice could be shown to presuppose a realist ontology?

Of course, this isn’t exactly what the title of his post suggests (“A Psychoanalytic Defense of Realism” is different than “A Realist Interpretation of Psychoanalysis”), but I’ll put that aside for now. The problem seems to be that Levi’s extending his conflation of axis 1 and axis 2 towards a second, far more complex argument about psychoanalysis presupposing a realist ontology, as he writes. But, while he’s provided a convincing argument for why psychoanalysis is premised on certain fundamental ontological conditions, this is hardly tantamount to proving that it implies a commitment to ontological realism. And while his last paragraph purports to answer the question of where the “realism” is in all of this, it seems that he’s only restated what is ontological about the argument, not what is realist.

So, we might ask, where is the ontological realism in all of this? Why, we might ask, is this practice only intelligible on the grounds of an ontological realism? If, as my good friend suggested, we only went on perception, the practice of analysis would be completely incoherent? Why? Because the practice of drawing the differend between the Other and the Other is dependent the premise of something that we do not have access to through perception.

That psychoanalysis is not premised on epistemology or perception or “access,” etc., is not tantamount to psychoanalysis being ontologically realist. One can’t simply jump from axis 1 to axis 2 like Levi’s done. Now, Levi is obviously well-versed in Lacanian theory, so maybe I’m just missing the crucial lynch-pin in his post, or perhaps like Harman’s theory of vicarious causation, it is an incomplete argument to be followed up with something more thorough, but I’m kind of at a loss.

As a final remark, I want to note that Levi’s defense of the self-reflexive nature of psychoanalytic theory in this Ktismatics thread belies his argument in favor of ontological realism, at least of the object-oriented variety:

It is, of course, true that every practice has a theory of what it is doing behind it. The shaman has a theory of his interventions, the CBT a theory of his engagement, and so on. This isn’t really the point. What distinguishes psychoanalytic theories of practice from a number of other theories of practice is that it is a self-reflexive theory. Other therapeutic orientations tend to think of the therapist as something separate from the patient. They think of the problem as in the patient and their role in the treatment as separate from that problem. This is basically the medical model of psychological disorders. When a doctor treats someone for the flu, the flu is strictly inside the patient and the doctor is independent of that disorder. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, takes into account the transferential relationship between the patient and analyst and how transference structures the dynamic of treatment.

(Although it isn’t entirely relevant to my argument, I also think it’s worth pointing out that in this same thread, Levi additionally foregrounds the epistemological dimension of psychoanalysis, rather than the ontological—gasp!):

The point was that if a therapist does not know how to properly listen they end up making the patient’s symptom worse. When analysts attempt to mold their patient’s in the image of what they believe is good for the patient they further alienate the patient’s symptoms or desire, intensifying the lethal nature of the symptom.

While I vigorously agree with Levi’s argument regarding the issue of reflexivity, as I think it offers a powerful answer to the skeptical charges against psychoanalytic diagnostics of symptoms—and indeed, the entire notion of “symptoms” as such—I fail to see how this argument, which relies on a category of subjectivity that necessarily carries out the reflexive operation (otherwise, how can the theory itself be operatively reflexive? Does it make any sense for objects themselves to be reflexive?), chimes with object-oriented ontology, for which the subject is just another object. Here Levi’s arguments appear totally anathema to those of Graham’s, or even his own. I mean, quite simply, how could such reflexivity possibly function in a flat and realist ontology like Levi’s? In fact, Levi even says it can’t (!) in one of his posts titled “Self-Reflexivity and the Hegemonic Fallacy”:

What self-reflexive approaches cannot abide is an ontology where the agency of difference cannot be localized in any one or predominant agency. In other words, self-reflexive analysis cannot abide multiplicities where the final phenomena is the result of a complex interaction of differences without one presiding over the putting-into-form, and where the actors in these multiplicities are heterogeneous, consisting of a variety of different objects ranging from the human to signs to technology to physical objects to animals and so on. Unfortunately, for self-reflexive thought, the world consists of these sorts of multiplicities.

In my opinion, this amounts to a major contradiction.

[Caspar David] Friedrich’s own destiny is part of the psychological landscape of his age. In almost every one of the poems by Wihelm Müller that Schubert set in his Winterreise, there are lines that seem to mirror the painter’s distraction and dread of human contact:

Durch des Bergstroms trock’ne Rinnen
Wind’ ich ruhig mich hinab–
Jeder Strom wird’s Meer gewinnen
Jedes Leiden auch sein Grab. (Irrlicht)

(Down the mountain stream’s dry gullies
I calmly pick my way
Every stream will reach the sea,
Every sorrow finds its grave.)

In “Revolution in Mind,” Makari argues that we’ve been blinded to the cultural reach of psychoanalysis by the magnitude of Freud’s stature and the magnetic pull or repulsion of his personality and theories. In Makari’s view, much contemporary discussion about the relevance of psychoanalysis is based on a false choice: “Freud as everlasting genius, or Freud as relic and fraud.” To Makari, the director of Cornell University’s Institute for the History of Psychiatry, this dichotomy is artificial. Instead, he argues, we should look to the rich, polyphonous context that gave birth to and was influenced by the analytic enterprise: “the culture of Kant; the assumptions of Geisteswissenschaft and a European classical education,” along with “evolutionary biology, positivism and Newtonian physics.”

Sounds similar to what I’m trying to do with my own thesis on Lacan.

Most therapies aim to hear what is being expressed in a symptom: not to stifle it, but to give it a voice and to see what function it has for the individual. CBT, by contrast, aims to remove symptoms.

… Today it is plasticity and change that govern our self-image. Personality itself is represented as a set of skills that we can learn and modify. Just as we can alter our bodies through cosmetic surgery, so we can change our behaviour through “work” on ourselves. Reality TV displays princes who become paupers, children who swap parents and geeks who become Don Juans. The possibilities of transformation seem endless. Thatcher’s dream of social mobility has become not just nightly entertainment, but also individual imperative.

CBT promises change just as swiftly. Unwanted character traits or symptoms are no longer seen as a clue to some inner truth, but simply as disturbances to our ideal image that can be excised. Instead of seeing a bout of depression or an anxiety attack as a sign of unconscious processes that need to be carefully elicited and voiced, they become aspects of behaviour to be removed.

The market has triumphed here, as our inner worlds become a space for buying and selling. We pay experts such as life coaches to teach us how to change in the desired way. Aspects of ourselves, such as shyness or confidence, become commodities that we can pay to lose or amplify. Depression or anxiety are seen as isolated problems that can be locally targeted without calling into question the rest of one’s existence, in the same way that a missile attack on a terrorist installation is supposed to get rid of the problem posed by terrorism.

I suggest giving the whole article a read. Leader’s criticism of CBTs seems spot on to me: the problem isn’t that it’s merely an attack on psychoanalysis, but instead that it is an attempt at a quick fix, a cost-effective method to conform people’s psyches to the so-called “realities” of the market-economy. And, as k-punk suggests, “it is the idea that positive thinking is mandatory which most closely links neoliberalism and CBT.”

In a review of 23 studies of such treatment involving 1,053 patients, the researchers concluded that the therapy, given as often as three times a week, in many cases for more than a year, relieved symptoms of those problems significantly more than did some shorter-term therapies.

There’s quite a lot of evidence that psychodynamic therapy is making a comeback, largely as a reaction to CBTs, which research suggests only make short-term progress on unconscious symptoms. Yet the mere fact that psychoanalysis might be re-entering the mainstream is one that should not be taken as in itself a good thing: what is important is precisely how it will manifest itself. It’s up to informed psychoanalysts, particularly in the Lacanian field as opposed to ego psychology, to ensure that the path psychoanalysis takes in its ostensible resurgence is one that places the unconscious, and therein the signifier, at the center of analysis. What this amounts to is the proper re-politicization of psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis strives, first of all, to reveal the meaning of symptoms (not to mention dreams, slips, free-associations, transferences, and anything else mysterious in someone’s mental life and behavior). But this meaning is none other than the apparent but illusory good sought by the analysand. He may inquire, for instance: “What is the meaning of my coming late to sessions every day?” The hard-won answer will be something of this form: “I want my analyst to feel as though I don’t need him; I want him to feel worthless, to snub him, so that he will know how he makes me feel.” When such an apparent good comes to light, it reveals itself as illusory: “My analyst doesn’t make me feel unworthy, he’s waiting there patiently for me everyday; I think the person I really want to snub is my father; he’s the one who made me feel worthless.” When the analysand exposes such illusion himself, he grows in wisdom, not least by the acknowledgment that he unconsciously chose that illusory good and has clung to it all the while. He grows further in wisdom when he recognizes that his boss, and no doubt many others besides, have been victims of his illusion, since he has sought its apparent good from other relationships as well. His character changes, finally, when he can relate differently to these others, seeing them not as ghosts of his father—or his mother, or his siblings, or whomever—but instead as the unique individuals they really are.

I don’t know how I feel about conceiving of psychoanalysis as a “spiritual” science, which to me reeks of New Age obscurantism. I recommend giving the whole article a read though. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

However, while an adult subject may come to see that the found object that supports a cultural experience (an idea, a relationship, or a community) is never truly a property, a much younger subject will reject even the slightest suggestion that the toy or blanket it has found is not entirely its own; it will not look kindly upon the adult’s attempts to mend or clean or in any way alter said toy or blanket; it will tolerate even less the prospect of having to share anything it has found with those around it. As the first “other-than-me” possession, the found object is not automatically registered as “other-than-mine.” The implication here is that the passage from “other-than-me” to “other-than-mine” is one that the subject will have to undertake if it is to look both forward and backward in time on the objects it has found, and experienced, and eventually acknowledge them as such.

Taking this line one step further, it seems as if Winnicott may have inadvertently set the ground for an assessment of the experience of “private” property as inherently childish.

At what point do certain statements, certain declarations, certain assertions, take on the capacity to resonate and produce effects in a receiver? What are the conditions for the possibility of being heard? … I became capable of receiving a message where before I was not. But how and under what conditions? Likewise, under what conditions do certain political positions and declarations begin to resonate within the social field? This question is at the very heart of social change and is not secondary or ancillary to questions of critique. For without adequately answering these questions, adequate strategies of producing change cannot be formulated. However, a glance at the history of political transformations also seems to indicate that while these shifts are cultural in character, they also seem to involve material transformations that problematize the cultural sphere, calling for new institutions, new group formations, new ways of feeling, new subjectivities, and new ways of living.

It is undoubtedly the case that America is a nation of whiners. It is and always has been, how else do you think it came into existence? I don’t think anyone will contend otherwise, which is probably why the media has focused almost solely and unrelentingly on the “America is a nation of whiners” sound-bite from Phil Gramm’s recent diatribe. Even the blogosphere is partly to blame for this. Of course, this focus is essentially a reaction-formation designed to obscure and repress the far more ideological claim on Gramm’s part that economic failure is “psychological,” i.e. subjective.

The subjectivist theory of economics has long been a staple of neoliberal ideology, which argues, for example, that the value of a commodity, rather than being the objective cost of the labor required to produce said commodity, is in fact reflective of its marginal utility. But on the specific issue of the business cycle and economic crises, marginalist theory fails to provide an adequate explanation: instead it has to rely on its late-capitalist ideological counterpart, New Age obscurantism, which promulgates that the problems we experience, and our reality in general, are purely of our own making. And clearly the liberal rejoinder that “it has real consequences!” is not enough. It is a prototypically pathetic response, as it accepts the neoliberal framing of the debate, simply adding that subjective reality can lead to actual, concrete harm to human-beings.

There is obviously a grain of truth to the liberal argument, but the more important issue at stake is whether economic crisis is “psychological” in nature, or part in parcel of an objective process. Marx articulated the latter view in his Theories of Surplus-Value. His formulation of crisis theory, which points to an inherent tendency of capitalism to undergo crises as a result of the over-production of fixed capital, is perhaps one of his most important contributions to the critique of capitalism.¹

As Marx writes, “In the crises of the world market, the contradictions and antagonisms of bourgeois production are strikingly revealed.” To take that a step farther, crisis also reveals these very same contradictions and antagonisms within our political discourse. Here the link between Marxism and psychoanalysis becomes quite explicit: it is the goal of the analyst to confront the analysand with the contradictions inherent to her/his discourse in order to fully expose to them their relation to the unconscious truth, a truth which contradicts every discourse, including its relation to itself. The whole debacle involving Gramm points to an unconscious repression of class struggle, which is the sine qua non of the political struggle.

That is why I will be voting for Stalin come November.

1. A condensed overview of Marx’s crisis theory is available at ISR.