Abstract

The term "Metaphysics" denotes the predominant way of living (and dying) in the western world, and the way of this world as such, as it has been articulated in philosophical thought since Plato and Aristotle. Psychoanalysis has been conceived and practised accordingly.

It seems that this way has come to an end - and Metaphysics all along with it. I think that Psychoanalysis has to take this fact into account and even question its very foundations in order to face the new reality and meet its challenges. A possibility to meet adequately the challenge of post-Metaphysics might be the opening of the seeking eye for that which ante-Metaphysics could reveal to it.

This paper is the partly revised translation of a speech given in 1997 at an international symposium "Philosophy and Medicine" in a greek island. It tries some insecure steps along this direction.

Lecture

In the dialogue «Theaitetos»(155d) Plato states: «Indeed this is the pathos of the philosopher, the wondering; since there is no other principle of philosophy but this.» Aristotle says the same (met.A2, 982b 12sq): «Because of wondering man came to philosophize ever since.» Yet the wondering, the «pathos» of the greek philosophers, does not exist in its absolute. Plato and Aristotle, by rendering themselves to wondering, also they relate to the prosaic. This is shown in their language as such. Since here, for the first time, the so-called “prosaic” speech appears, here is accomplished the decisive step towards the abolition of that previously existing primordial unity of poetry, music and dance which, as Thrasyboulos Georgiades discerned it, comprises the unique character of the initial greek LOGOS. In the antithetical pair of the wondering and the prosaic is met the platonistic-metaphysical division of cosmos which dominates western thought. Yet in the abundant collection of that language, another wording has been said by a Pre-platonic, without pathos and wondering, on the «philion», the essential matter of philo-sophy, the «sophon»: «HEN PANTA», «One All» (Heraclitus, frg.50 DK). Ever since it faded away, along with the language that brought it to bear.

The division of cosmos in Metaphysics is characterized by the fact that the one is given as the superior, as cause, principle and fundament, and the other as the inferior, as the effect and the accidental, and their relationship is determined in one way or another by dominance and conflict, by antithesis and mediation, where always a unity is being pursued, which ever since is bound to be secondary and traumatized

With the arrival of rationalism another pathos becomes decisive for western thought, that of certitudo, of certainty. As the wondering does not exist but in a necessary conjunction with the prosaic, in the same way the pursuit of certainty always comes along with the threat of doubt. This is, also, most apparent in the beginning. Descartes’ Meditationes speak for themselves: «Yesterday’s reflections [seeking for something «firm and permanent in the sciences»] threw me in so great doubts (...); as by an unforeseen fall in a deep vortex, I am found in such an upset that I cannot either step firmly on the bottom or ascend to the surface.»

The pathos of certainty renders man open, and at the same time confines him to his cogito, his intellect as the principle, and, from here, to the calculable aspect of things, assumed by the sciences as their assignment. Now the sciences succeed philosophy, which has insofar fullfilled its own assignment.

And the sciences by their own course reach a common ground, that of cybernetics. Here a new era is proclaimed. This is so because in cybernetics the familiar division of cosmos in the platonistic-metaphysical tradition does not exist. Now everything is being given in terms of information, without any further gradation or valuation. Anything appearing as a threat to the homeostasis of the system is neither underestimated nor fought against nor ignored nor mediated, but on the contrary it constitutes the cornerstone of the system itself, because it is being assumed as its very feedback. Here for the first time, and in an uncanny way, in the original greek meaning of “DEINON”, the “HEN PANTA” returns

Now if Psychoanalysis has to be thought of and practiced appropriately to our times, it can no longer move in the region of Metaphysics, with its divisions and the respective attempts to their solution. It can no longer call upon a principle, for example the «lust principle» and the frustration of reality, nor it can persist on the dimension of cause and effect, nor it can oscillate between the antithetical pairs of internal and external world, of the biological-somatical and the psychical, of conscience and the unconscious, of normal and pathological behaviour, nor it can be content with the presentation of human concerns through conflicts and «defence mechanisms».

The essential matter of Psychoanalysis remains what Freud calls the «basic rule». The analysand, Freud writes, «should not only report to us what he says intentionally and willingly (...), but also anything else his self-observation provides to him, what comes to his mind, even if it is unpleasant for him to say, even if it seeems to him trivial or even meaningless. Insofar as he would become able, under this direction, to put aside his self-censoring, he provides us (...) with thoughts, ideas, memories (..).»

We may pursue the essential of the «analysand» as such in the word «client», and this in its original relation to the latin «cluere», «to hear, to obey». The psychoanalyst’s client is the one who finally hears and obeys to his own callings with no «self-censoring».

The «basic rule» can no longer be posed as a «rule», as a «basis», on which the client’s behaviour «should» be based. Now it needs to be thought of in a different way, which will be discussed later on. Beyond this, however, Freud’s words, today, at the end of Metaphysics, tell us that man mostly, and without being aware of it, moves within the metaphysical terms of the cartesian cogito, since his «intention», which constitutes the principle for his words and deeds, is what seems to him», is eventually the subjectum, his consciously and unconsciously existing ego as the subject. The man of Metaphysics has preferances, he sets values, he makes choices, he becomes involved in ambivalences, dilemmas and conflicts. And his «self-censoring» does not merely concern his personal inhibitions, but is determined by the imperatives of his overt or covert metaphysical «philosophy», wherein the one is pursued and permitted and the other is avoided and forbidden, the one is favourable and welcomed and the other is threatening and rejected, according to the respectively adopted principles and values. The «basic rule» of Psychoanalysis, as it may be heard today, calls upon the still metaphysically moving man to loosen himself from such a «self-censoring», which now means: to assume the end of Metaphysics and to become the man who is, in his times.

It is however the end of Metaphysics that gives space and allows the time to come for an attitude as the one undertaken by the psychoanalyst. Because only in our time an interlocutor is conceivable, and needed, who does not advise and does not guide, and this not simply for the sake of the method, but because in our time no guiding idea is given, which would serve as a principle. The psychoanalyst is the one who, in the setting bearing the name “Psychoanalysis”, has in this sense nothing to say, and for this reason mostly remains silent.

And the «basic rule» can no longer be thought of and stated in this way. For the psychoanalyst it is not possible to set bases and rules. The only thing he can tell to his client is that he is free to say whatever comes to his mind. I say «the only thing», but this means a lot. It presupposes the openess of the psychoanalyst to hear whatever comes from the client. And that is: to remain silent, honestly and deeply, even when he speaks.

The latter paragraphs bring back to me a familiar sensation of malaise: So, is this the Psychoanalysis that seeks to become contemporary? Dissolution of the whole and desertion into a mute emptiness? Is not this the invasion of «european nihilism», as it is declared by Nietzsche: «(...) the highest of the values lose their value. The intention is lacking; a reply to the ‘why?’ is lacking.»? Yet, for the one who endures the withdrawal of the «why?», and thus remains by the end of Metaphysics and bears the grief of its ending, as it respectively concerns him, the malaise in time fades away. Not because something else comes. What to my experience comes, is rather a quiet, to itself confined, aporia. In its calling everything shows itself as a question, freed from the demand for a reply.

The world, an aporia. In time the calling of the aporia becomes ever more perceptible, ever more lucid. It tells about the, with no pathos, resignment from the «how?», from the «why?», from the «what for?» of metaphysical tradition, and frees the sense to its abiding by the «that (it is...)», that the things are, as they are. And then it sees itself opening up for another, latent tradition, of which two critical landmarks are recalled here. The most proximate is a phrase by Martin Heidegger: «Questioning is the devoutness of thinking.» The most distant is the words of a goddess who speaks to Parmenides and says for the first and, until to our days, the last time: «HOS ESTIN», «that is».

The aporia does not escape technics. The aporia owes itself to technics, and thus always carries it along. But, also, it does not belong to technics, since such an aporia, which does not seek anything, perhaps is the only thing that technics does not, and cannot, take into account. So the aporia, remaining by technics without belonging to it, talks with technics, and their talking is the articulation of its very name. And along with this talk, technics is transformed: It loses the absolute of its domination, it comes to meet its own limits.

Yet the word, by which in the aporia the limits are said clearly, and they are revealed as such, is not any alternative to technics. It is the word «no» against its claim for authority by all means. Now the silence of the psychoanalyst acquires another dimension. The psychoanalyst belongs to those who today are called upon to defend the limits. The psychoanalyst, with his craft, with his silence and with his voice, says «no». The client, confronted with the «no», assumes it by resignment and grief. Let us look closer at it:

— In technics the preeminent concern is homeostasis, balance. It orders the control, the managing, the securing as the way by which the real is taken into account. This way determines mostly the client’s relation to the world and himself.

Yet the call of the «basic rule», when the psychoanalyst means it sincerely, unfolds by itself such a power that it imposes on the client a resignment from the control and the «censorship» and renders him unselfish and willing towards what may come. The client submits to the need to experience things and himself as such, and not as he wants them to be or fears that they could be.

— In technics nothing changes essentially, since everything, even «chaos», is engaged in the circles of its systems and in what Nietzsche prophetically called «the eternal return of the same». «Nothing changes», this is by now a common belief. Indeed nothing changes when all things belong to a «network» and are disseminated in the interrelations into which they are trapped. In Psychoanalysis this is familiar in the form of the so called «associations» and of what Freud names the «determinism» of the psychical.

And yet «the rose is without why; it blossoms because it blossoms», writes Angelus Silesius. If we abide by what is before our eyes, and if we keep it free from alien interventions, we would recognize that a dream, a moment of brilliance, a mood, come because they come, and they remain in their place and time. And change is no longer an issue since nothing is presumed as unchangeable. This opening can occur to the client, as far as the psychoanalyst, always through his craft, refuses to contribute in his attempts to associate, to understand, to interpret. Those attempts again and again fall empty. By this way, in time, the client could be driven to resignment from his own intervention unto what comes. And by that time things, a glass of wine, a caress, a death, speak in themselves, their sounding is overheard, and they appear in an unprecedenting richness.

— Technics brings along the abolition of the dimension of time. Its «memory» is informations stored and reserved for use. The oncoming reaches through an «enter», allready compatible with the conditions of the system. Concerning time, technics is non-dimensional. But this is usually the case with man, in the way he thinks of himself: He is enclosed within his past, since this continues more or less evidently to determine his relations. And he is enclosed in his future, when he lives in his expectations and phantasies, as if they were actual.

The psychoanalyst, with his art, calls upon the client to keep his distance from what he has been by recognizing it as the «no more», and from what he is going to be, by recognizing it as the «not still». This distance, at which man comes with the things concerning him, corresponds to the dimensionality of time. It provides the clearance wherein everything is, in its time.

— Technics brings along the abolition of the dimension of space. Through telephon, television and internet, through automobile, airplane and spaceship, proximity and distance are being dissolved into the non-differentiated.

In the psychoanalytic relationship, through the strictly defined hours and days of the sessions, limits are being established, there is introduced a dimension which, in time, allows the client to differentiate what is called «near» and what is called «far», and it opens his eyes for the corresponding ways in which things are for him, each one remaining in its place, immovable.

— In technics man thinks of himself through his enlistment in the system. He is man and woman, worker and pensioner, producer and consumer, vulgar and intellectual. He belongs to the system, and through it he is given rights and he has obligations. Massive information dictates the way of the so called «communication» with the others. In a strict sense, an «other» does not even exist. Here the genuinely other is unthinkable.

The client in the beginning, and for a long time, experiences his psychoanalyst in a non-differentiated way: He speaks to him, yet he does not speak only to him but rather to someone else, to people close or distant to him, he even speaks to the man of the mass, as he also understands himself.

The fact that the psychoanalyst has nothing to say here, that he sincerely remains silent always, meaning that he refuses any answer which would verify or refute such an image of his, is that, again and again, drives the client against a wall, untill he, after repeated crashes, recognizes the psychoanalyst as the one who he is: a ready hearing, and nothing else. But then he also recognizes himself in his miness, which is not the so called «individuality» but the uniqueness, through which his self is given to him and which, in a paradox and enigmatic way, the clearer it emerges, the more opens him up for the common world.

In all previous cases the limits are not set by the psychoanalyst along to his own accord. As such they would not have any weight. The limits are set by things themselves. When those limits become clear and are accepted, there does not occur any limitation. On the contrary, here emerges the trace of an «unrevealed harmony» (cf. Heracletus, frg.54) that attunes «PANTA», «all», to the «HEN», to the «one» of the COSMOS, sometimes furnishing things with an unexpected and almost ineffable richness.

The way in which man is involved into «HEN PANTA», «one all», is language. The indicative to this way comes from Heracletus in the same fragment where “HEN PANTA” is being stated: «Having heard not me but the LOGOS, commune with it [...]: One All».

The psychoanalyst does not tell a word of his own. He communes with the LOGOS, in which things themselves sound to him. His language communes with this LOGOS, it establishes his involvement in the world. His refusal to enter in a conversation and to «communicate», his silence even, and mainly, when he speaks, this «not me» forces his client in time to stop being preoccupied with him. It allows his client to render a favoring ear for the voice which every other time speaks to him and calls upon him. Him and none else. Caring for the limits in the way mentioned above, the therapeutic encounter allows the client in time to open up for the things that concern him, to commune with them, to accept them, that they are, as they are.

The language, in which this encounter is put to the proof, is no more a codex of significants because in its very act, in the fortunate hours where it happens to be a genuine encounter, reality becomes purified and things shine. In those hours the client communes with himself too: He is "collected" (this is what the Presocratics call "LOGOS") amidst this shine, thus becoming himself real and true. Only this way do things find their place and the soul its peace.

The communion with the ancients, that seems to begin for the first time in our days, is naturally not exclusive to Psychoanalysis. It is a sign of our times itself, about which the poet Giorgos Seferis writes:

the ancient dead came out of the circle and resurrected

and they smile within a strange silence.