Learning about/from psychoanalysis

“However, what feminists have largely ignored in their discussion of Freudian theory are the cultural and racial particularities of the metaphor of the "dark continent." In not raising the question of racial difference with regard to irrational and mysterious "others" (Africans and Orientals) in theories of subject formation, feminism both reproduces and reifies Freud's insouciance regarding (gender) difference”-reinforcing normative scripts by failing to challenge and look at the question through an intersectional lens “Gayatri Spivak suggests that it is the task of the (feminist) literary critic to "read work in other disciplines, however quantified or 'empiricist' their approach might be," in order to "flesh out" their researches "with considerations of the Third World female sub-prole”“the impossibility of using psychoanalysis (or ethnopsychology) to describe the subproletariat woman as an already constituted, thus wholly accessible subject”-YES“Psychoanalysis, in pertaining to non-Western countries, is al- ways imbricated with anthropology (as ethnopsychology), which largely precludes the specificity (and thus normativity) of the object of study”-exactly, psychoanalysis often pathologizes differences in cultures yet completely ignores the hypocrisy of comparing another culture to the norms of Western society“Who can legitimately lay claim to psychoanalytical knowledge?6 How is the discourse of the analyst authorized?”-this is the larger question. Who can speak for whom? What can we really *know* particularly about others.“the contradiction between the theoretical aims and the historical development of psychoanalysis may point toward a moment of contact. An encounter, not a confrontation, between history and theory would offer the possibility of generating internal criticism within psychoanalysis itself. The critique of Freudian psychoanalysis emerges from a consideration of psychoanalysis and its most fundamental theoretical concerns”“the history of psychoanalysis finds itself in the role of reader and analyst: history reads theory and in so doing forces the latter to modify its framework. The originality of this analysis resides precisely in the methodological proposition that the theoretical future of our field of inquiry cannot be divorced from the study and conceptual integration of its history”-exactly, following tradition leads to limitations“It is against this general background of domination of western knowledge and neglect and denial of Indian wisdom and tradition of indigenous learning that the introduction of scientific psychology in India is to be viewed and its process of growth understood”-growth from one perspective but a loss from another; illustrates how Indian psychologists view their field; however, this paradigm must be challenged because the two do not necessarily need to be in opposition to one another Lack of adequate knowledge of the classical language, and a fear of stigmatization by fellow psychologists as a reversion to philosophy or romantic revivalism not only discourages but also prevents any effort from yielding fruitful results. Coupled with it, is the need for approval from the western psychologist, although perhaps the latter would welcome any such”-exactly, the fear of not knowing or having to change and challenge dominant scripts that were formed with less information or from a particular point of bias“scientistic trend, in fact, has not changed very much. In his survey, Sinha identifies four phases of psychological research in India. He names them chronologically as the phases of imitation, expansion, problem-oriented research, and indigenization.”“Ashis Nandy says: "Our search for relevance has been as imitative as are the present demands for relevance in the country. All that has happened is that we have studied caste like race, communalism like antisemitism and untouchables like American black”-only pay attention when it’s already a problem that needs to be solved; ignore all warnings“However, insofar as we, as women, are committed to the problematic of subjectivity and representation-the specific dynamics of power, and how it engenders and sustains unequal class and sex relations-there is in India, and I suspect in other former colonies, no institutionalized forum for debate or the production of such knowledge.”“The work by Indians leaves out an explicit perspective on the colonizer; although they internalized colonial rule, they remained concerned about themselves, and did not objectify the British rulers”-who knows to challenge the norm when it’s still recognized as the norm?“As a history of the development of psychoanalysis in India, hers is a viable account of power relations that inevitably (and un- surprisingly) inhere in a colonial setting. But the danger is of forcing a familiar (master/slave) narrative and perhaps obfuscating deeper problems”“While the letters are too brief and enigmatic to sustain the burden of weighty arguments on cross-cultural dialogue, they do, however, rhetorically stage the vexed questions of the theory's accessibility (to non- Westerners) and more importantly the assumed identity and implicit power of the analyst”“Feminist defenders of Freud such as Rose and Mitchell have in their turn shown how such interpretations assume an essential and knowable feminine subject, which can then have the pernicious effect of prescribing a normative feminine”“They argue instead that (Freudian) psychoanalysis has, in fact, a great interventionary power in the arrangement of the sexes and show how it can subvert prescriptive ideas of normativity with its deessentialized notions of gender.”-still essentializes biological sex as determining“The unconscious constantly reveals the "failure" of identity. Because there is no continuity of psychic life, so there is no stability of sexual identity, no position for women (or for men) which is ever simply achieved.... Feminism's affinity with psychoanalysis rests above all, I would argue, with this recognition that there is a resistance to identity at the very heart of psychic life”-but why assume that the changing of identity is a failure of the unconscious? Why is the normative lens still that one must stay static throughout their life?“Rose suggests that the question be posed differently to ask "what was the intervention of psychoanalysis into the institutions which, at the time of its emergence, were controlling women's lives? And what was the place of the unconscious, historically in that?”-exactly, it’s not just theory, it’s how the theory is utilized and employed à women are expected to uphold moral standards and are responsible for the general welfare of society and if they do not live up to this standard, they are pathologized. It’s a reinforcement of heteropatriarchal norms.“Insofar as Torgovnick continually refers to Freud as "the great colonizer of psyches" (206) who prescribed a colonizing role for the ego "which will colonize primitives quite literally and colonize (in the figurative sense) many feelings, including feelings of free sexuality and oceanic oneness”“A critique of race or cultural otherness that is based on theories of gender subordination can never be adequate and will only entail the loss of specificity and therefore of analytical power and understand”-exactly, you have to first identify what is constricting the framework of the argument before you ever analyze it“(1) Freud's view of "history"-what or, more precisely, who constitutes the past and what or who constitutes the present-and (2) the particular manner in which Freud sutures the individual mind to the group mind”“In other words, the primitive mind is characterized by the dominance of the primary processes, where the pleasure principle rules and action substitutes for thought. The function of the secondary processes-of thought and cogitation-are not available to it. The primitive, therefore, does not possess the requisite strong ego defenses necessary for reality testing. The reality principle and its elicitation of the renunciation of instinctual pleasures for deferred gratification, which are the building blocks of civilization, are appropriated for the European man-this, despite the fact that Freud noted that savages under the animistic system too underwent severe restrictions of pleasure and consequent repressions of their instincts”“he is interested in working out how unconscious motivations of people are released in the symbolic system made available to them by culture and the transformations that the subject and culture undergo at different stages of expression”“Though I retain a distinction between symptom and symbol for analytical purposes, there are situations where it is not possible to draw a fine line between them. The idea of symbolic remove and levels of symbolization resolves this difficulty by recognizing that some symbolic forms are closer to, or isomorphic with, symptoms while others are far removed from”“Claiming that symbols wholly satisfy libidinal needs and "obviate the need for fantasy" also means that Hindus do not dream but mythologize. It may be more useful to see symbols acting as a safety valve and the symbolic system as such as a way provided by the culture to displace libidinal pressure-as a (therapeutic or repressive) discourse that can engender the levels of psychical remove that Obeyesekere so effectively argues for”“Finally, this relatively comfortable apportioning of ego functions serves to instate the paradoxical status of woman in India, where she is invested with great symbolic power but very little actual agency-a particularly vexing contradiction that, as Madhu Kishwar has noted, jeopardizes feminist activism”