Richard Klein 1935-2021
Richard Klein died at the end of 2021 He was familiar to many lacanians through his writing and analytic work in London where he lived for decades.
A Transmitter
First and foremost Richard saw himself as a psychoanalyst who offered treatment and supervision from his modest London flat. In order to educate his son at institutions offering the international baccalaureate, he needed more income. So in addition to his psychoanalytic practice, Richard returned to being a NHS general practitioner. That was no mean feat for a man in his sixties who had already happily retired from this job once before. Rigorous re-training was mandatory; and yet his psychoanalytic practice in London continued to flourish alongside his new commitments as a GP. His practice remained in operation even beyond his second NHS retirement! He remained in regular contact with continental and American colleagues he had known throughout decades of professional commitment.
Broadcasting from Alexandra Palace: public domain
Medical re-training during one's sixties is quite a challenge, but Richard met it head-on. A great personal asset throughout life was his great ability for self-discipline. As well as informing his studies and practice, he took much care of his body being watchful about diet and exercise -which included riding a push-bike around Oxford or London in addition to regular sessions at a gym.
Richard's paramount mission in life was transmitting psychoanalysis. This vocation possessed him with a single-minded passion. He believed intensely in the efficacy of Lacanian psychoanalysis and did everything within his powers to promote Lacan's clinic whether by talks or writings. He was instrumental in founding organisations. One eventually became the London branch of a new lacanian school. Another was a London-based training organization which sometimes acted as a pressure group, promoting state registered psychoanalysis. Eventually he distanced himself from both. Towards the end of his life Richard became involved in another project -an analytic training organisation based mainly in Cyprus. A number of his writings were once published on their website. I remember well reading those papers -and many more besides- when Richard invited me to give editorial input to the numerous papers he intended to publish online.
Richard loved writing psychoanalytic papers; though often in both construction and delivery these papers were extremely demanding of time and concentration. They were invariably in dire need of summary, sharpening, and pruning. Moreover they presupposed audiences and readers would have as great a familiarity with debates surrounding Lacan's writings -as well as the history of psychoanalytic theory and practice- as Richard himself did. Personally I found reading and discussing these papers with him highly rewarding and illuminating. He was adamant that they should be published online so as to be easily available at little or no cost. No books or concessions to pushy publishers for him. Dilution of content for the sake of sales or costs was totally out of the question.
One paper in particular helped me to revise my own views about equipping oneself for working as an analyst. Another writing helped me to understand what Lacan may have meant by "absolute difference" which Richard thought to be one of the central benefits and challenges of Lacanian analysis. Richard possessed immense knowledge of the history of psychiatry as well. Yet again my own practical work benefitted from his detailed appreciation of Cottard, Capgras, Fragoli, and De Clarembeault. His attention to clinical detail was enriched by medical experience in psychiatric clinics as well as by years of generalist medicine.
I mentioned above how Richard Klein's devotion to the mission of transmitting Lacan's therapy is evident from his co-founding of various groups. These activities also directly engaged his own fascination with politics. Richard, it will be known, could well be termed radical left wing. Though he eschewed any formal, doctrinaire socialism, Klein transferred to psychoanalysis a fierce commitment regarding the purity of its cause, for which he was prepared to do battle. More often than not this led to conflict with all sorts of colleagues. Similarly valued highly -perhaps too highly- were those who seemed to agree with his stance. They became comrades, much more a demanding community than colleagues perhaps. He wanted political support for his insights. Perhaps he wished to become a "master" analyst with dedicated followers and comrades. In this context "master" refers to the magister of a school, like the masters of medieval academies, whose students remained in stutu pupillari until they were ready to become masters themselves.
Old Schools Quadrangle Oxford: public domain
Despite Lacan's famous expose of master discourses which were developed through his own take on Hegelian dialectic, one wonders why a deeply learned lacanian like Richard Klein should wish to retain some concept of master? One reason may be the insufficiency of Lacan's three registers to embrace the entirety of language, behaviours, and praxis. As well as real, imaginary, and symbolic, one might be tempted to add a fourth register: that of the ideal. Such a fourth register could well lead to an Aristotelian frame of reference. The ideal master would then be continually constructed his/him/their "self" ethically -as well as consisting of a body which at once real, alive, and material until death.
It was a dialogical master that Richard seemed to be constructing. He had an ability to tolerate and debate all sorts of views, beliefs, passions, and sexualities. This may have been construed as lack for professional boundaries by some. There was nevertheless an intellectual rigour and integrity sometimes involved. I recall once discussing Aristotle's Poetics with him. Richard was thoroughly familiar with the text in translation. He was not simply paraphrasing or recycling Lacan's views about Antigone. He had read the relevant texts himself, as well as more contemporary commentators like Martha Nussbaum. Similarly with philosophy. Though completely familiar with Sartre and more recent continental philosophical writers influenced directly by Lacan, he had taken full advantage of Oxford's academic ambience. There he read, as well as attended, seminars offered by Sir Isaiah Berlin and Terry Eagleton. Quite surprising too was his appreciation of Anglo-Saxon moral philosophy, especially the works of R M Hare.
There were nevertheless limits to his intellectualising. He did have definite conceptual boundaries, though they varied from time time to time as the occasion needed. He disliked parodies of learning and was capable of responding most forcibly when he believed his (or Lacan's) concepts were being rubbished, attacked, or misrepresented -particularly by people calling themselves analysts. He would often respond to criticism with some form of lacanian mathemes, algebra, or calculus. This was designed to prove that views expressed by his opponents were erroneous from a lacanian perspective: they highly misrepresented of the French master in some fundamental way or other. The force of his responses on these occasions could be surprising, if not downright shocking, to unsuspecting colleagues. To these colleagues there seemed something slightly paranoid about Klein's vehemence, but such was his devotion to purity and the vocation of transmission.
Insider, Outsider, Dissident
Decades ago when I was attempting to learn the practise of group analysis, one group participant had been expelled by every local left-wing group of which he had been a member. He saw himself and his own theories as pure embodiments of authentic international socialism, Unfortunately, he could not share either his praxis or theory with anybody. The fierceness of his loyalty to the internationalist cause, as well as to its doctrinal purity, prevented him from having any comrade; his stance to all existing socialist groups was invariably attacking and dismissive. His registers were firmly fixed. He became a total dissident and a group of one.
By contrast Richard Klein often liked deviants of all sorts and socialised with them unreservedly. It seems to me Richard often naturally identified with outsiders. Doubtlessly this might well be related to option for a secularist jewish identity in which one cannot but help being both "inside" and "outside" at once. Richard seemed close to becoming an enduring dissident himself. In retrospect it could well be claimed that his devotion to "transmission" was an impossible vocation. On the one hand he wanted to be recognised as an "ideal" magister of psychoanalysis. Simultaneously though he was suspicious of groups -whether professional, political, or social, whether small or huge. It is as if he needed to obey some "heretical imperative". So as well as broadcasting or passing on a psychoanalytical tradition, previous takes on this required amendment. Though being secularist, Richard admired long-enduring groups, like Jesuits or Trappists. But it is hard to see him founding a secular version of these institutions for which for obedience is paramount to their existence.
Why is it, I wonder, that some analysts have such a great need to transmit anyway? Not all do or have done, Maybe there is some drive geared to parenting, raising, or nurturing a new generation. But this might be like demanding one's own child to become an image of oneself, one values, or professional/social circle. In fact for decades institutional analytic organisations did exactly that by rigourlessly de-selecting gay people from training. Transmitting items, values, ideas, traditions or institutions obviously intends gifting something precious. However, what is the guarantee that such treasured legacies will remain highly valued by recipients or successors -especially when transferences and pecuniary interests are in play?
More sinisterly when mechanisms for transmission go awry, Richard believed "product" and "process" resulted in the mass manufacture or reproduction of a deadly series of lifeless dummies -semblants in short. Such replicants could talk the talk for a while perhaps, but their everyday practice was based upon the repetition of their own imagined success - which of course was yet another "semblance".
Jonty & Company
Few will know much of Richard's life before his activities in London. He once told me how his family in the States were like "Hillbillies" -lower-class agriculturalists. They were Jewish. Though not practising himself, Richard was keenly aware of his origins and remembered Hebrew from his Bar-Mitzvah. May be this was responsible for his love of, and fascination with, languages. Towards the end of his life he once phoned me to ask about words in an ancient Hebrew text. Needless to say the questions he posed to these venerable texts had never been placed during millennia!! Perhaps he had now become a Cabalist.
Why on earth then, did this man of letters decide to read medicine at university rather than languages and literature which remained amongst the loves of his life? This probably had to do with the way psychoanalysis and its transmission were then organised in the United Kingdom. As a young man Richard felt a deep attraction to what psychoanalysis seemed to promise. His first analyst in Dublin, Ireland, was Jonathan D Hanaghan (1887-1967)..... known affectionately as "Jonty". This gentleman had a practise which to moderns will seem quite curious, if not downright esoteric. Biographical material for his early life is scarce. Nevertheless oral recollections recall how his first practice was based close to his home town of Birkenhead. This is a large city situated on the banks of the Mersey opposite Liverpool.
Birkenhead was home to a predominantly working-class community heavily dependent upon industrial shipbuilding for its livelihood. Later this community was to be ravaged by structural unemployment that persevered well into the twenty-first century. It was therefore a very different place to the usual haunts of English analysts or new emigres who naturally gravitated to the more fashionable areas around the capital city like Bloomsbury or Hampstead.
By modern standards Hanaghan, the author to be of such works as Eve's Moods Unveiled, The Courage to be Married, Freud and Jesus, and The Beast Factor, seems an odd concoction of psychoanalysis, religion, prophecy, and politics. Nevertheless several other contemporary UK Freud sympathisers and analysts, believed psychoanalysis and religion to be good for each other. This upbeat assessment of a revised religion informed by psychoanalysis echoed idealist hopes of the interwar years; and once more after 1945 with expectations of a new European polity of peace and prosperity. Like many UK analysts Hanaghan had never been a medic. His very first written communication to Ernest Jones expressly formulated his desire to become a lay analyst. Jonty's own analyst was to become Douglas Bryan MD -a highly valued practitioner at the time. Bryan, with an address at 72 Wimpole Street, London W1, served as unpaid secretary of the British Psychoanalytical Association during the 1920s. He was recommended to Hanaghan by Jones. Bryan himself was one of the earliest UK analysts that could boast of a personal analysis with Freud. Hanaghan's own analysis with Bryan began in the summer of 1923. If one were to measure analytic authenticity from time spent by an original subject on Freud's couch to successors, Richard's pedigree is immaculate: Freud-Bryan-Hanaghan-Richard Klein.
 |
| Bratach na hÉireann: the tricolour flag of the Republic of Ireland originally said to represent catholicism (green), protestant supporters (orange), whilst white was supposed to represent an enduring truce between the two. In other interpretations of the white central portion are the middle & professional class, more recently secular liberalism Over its history it has signified armed revolt, ideals of unification, and state identity. Representation in the public domain |
Richard keenly recollected how Jonathan was a good and loyal friend to Anna Freud.This can be verified by documentary evidence. Anna doubtless remembered another religiously-oriented analyst from her childhood and youth, namely Pastor Oscar Pfister, who was one of the few males to retain a life-long friendship with Freud which lacked any animosity. Pfister's mix of analysis and liberal christian religion then was not a problem for Anna Freud: neither had it been so for her father. This same Hanaghan -according to recollections form Richard Klein and others- was once actively cherished by Ernest Jones, who encouraged if not morally obliged, Hanaghan to move to Dublin during the 1920's. Apparently Jones felt Ireland needed somebody with at least a gaelic sounding name if psychoanalysis were to ever establish itself there. Jonty himself hailed from Scots-Irish stock. After moving to Dublin his first job in the Republic was that of a stage hand. Later, as far as Dublin was concerned, it could be said that Hanaghan was the leader, transmitter, and training analyst par excellence. enjoying much esteem throughout the fifties and sixties. He even owned his own publishing house.
But then there were Jones' politickings and regular duplicities. Documentary evidence suggests Hanaghan became extremely wary of Jones and vice-versa. First of all it seems to be the case that Jones withdrew support from the Irish venture within a few years; and that despite continued backing from Anna. Jonty in response, increasingly distanced himself from Jones -both personally and politically -due to organisational innovations Jones was pushing forward. Hanaghan's take on Jones' presidential innovations was that they compromised the legacy of both Freud and Anna. He had some justification for this. Without Freud's fury and scolding, a solo Jones certainly lacked restraint. In short Hanaghan and his Monkstown colleagues were only reluctantly tolerated -if at all; it is unclear to me whether the Monkstown people were recognised by any official association for psychoanalysis. Though he remained an analyst working in Ireland, Jonty was successfully side-lined and no longer trusted to transmit analysis within the British Association or in any future Association for that matter. He was tinged with a sort of "wild" aura . His analysis with Bryan seems to have been discounted by the very man who suggested it: Jones. By the time of his death, only half a dozen or so practising analysts remained.
Along with his commitment to non-ritualistic religion resembling that of the Quakers -a radically idealist group of believers- Jonty espoused pacifism which had become a politically sensitive and problematic position within the United Kingdom -but less so in Ireland. Nevertheless Hanaghan was not alone in this conviction. At Cambridge, for example, during the nineteen twenties and thirties a number of bright scientists had been initially educated in Quaker schools. They retained pacifist sympathies during their undergraduate years and beyond. Several were openly supportive of Freud's therapy as well. Hanaghan himself visited Cambridge for unofficial and informal seminars to an association of friends who called themselves The Neurotics. He found a sympathetic audience there. Jonty seems to have been a big hit amongst the students and others attending these meetings.
Hanaghan regularly received charismatic status from his auditors. So as well as creating individual transferences, he attracted groupies both in England and Dublin. His move to Monkstown -an auspicious signifier for the home of this new Dublin headquarters- soon became a regular gathering place for group meetings and sympathisers. It is quite likely these group meets at Monkstown were similar to those at Cambridge, where he was once described
as a sort of maverick missionary with a considerable load
of what, in those early days of Freudian enthusiasm,
passed for Freudianism.... A whole lot of us gathered for
what one could almost call, I suppose, a species of
prayer meeting where this strange, rather magnetic man,
Hanaghan, addressed us on the basic problems of what, as far as I can recall,
were the relationships between the sexes , which we
found very encouraging and mostly set us,
as it seems to me now, on the right path
at an early stage.
By contrast, to people like the young Richard Klein, with his avowed secular outlook, this cocktail of psychoanalysis and christian religiosity was somewhat heady and challenging, if not a little perverse. Soon Richard came into contact with Jesuit academics in Dublin for whom he had an abiding respect. He thought that all Jesuits were really radical atheists in disguise. For that reason he greatly rejoiced at the election of Pope Francis whom Richard imagined to be left wing, as well as an atheist!!
Although it might be tempting to dismiss Hanaghan and his small groups -only half a dozen of his Monkstown group were functioning around of his death- it is noteworthy to recall that one of the noted British analysts was inspired by him. Arthur Hyatt Williams (1914-2009) was a noted analyst and psychiatrist who worked with offenders and wrote Cruelty, Violence and Murder: Understanding the Criminal Mind in 1998 and worked closely with Leo Abse to abolish the death penalty in England. Williams was also born in Birkenhead and in adolescence attended regular meetings at Hanaghan's house with the likeminded youths. His obituary in the Independent newspaper noted how it was a scholarship that enabled him to study medicine at university.
From medicine he went on to train in psychiatry, and then at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. He was Melanie Klein's last patient before her death. His original inspiration to study psychoanalysis was Jonathan Hanaghan, Dublin's first psychoanalyst, who had earlier lived on Merseyside and who held evening discussions on the subject at his house, which the young Williams attended. There, an inner course was set that led to a career that spanned 60 years of exploration of the disturbed mind. Williams influenced a great many clinicians and psychotherapists working with pre-psychotic and highly disturbed adolescents, in addition to his work in the forensic clinical field.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/dr-arthur-williams-psychiatrist-and-psychoanalyst-noted-for-his-work-with-offenders-1799230.html
Williams called his first son "Jonathan" in honour of Hanaghan. There were probably many more individuals inspired by Jonty who are now forgotten.
Meltzer and more training effects
In the fifties it was still an unwritten policy of most psychoanalytic groups that analysands capable of studying medicine should be encouraged to do so. Though British psychoanalysis had more than its fair share of so called "lay analysts" including a high proportion of renowned females, Hanaghan would doubtless welcome some medical prestige for his nascent Irish institution. So Richard embarked on a psychoanalytic formation that had once been classical. It demanded ongoing analysis, attendance at papers, medical training, followed by internships in psychiatry. Finally, another analysis geared to "control" or supervision was deemed essential. Eventually this led to full membership of the analytic community -including profitable training, pecuniary, and leadership prospects. One need only to recall the career paths of Meltzer, Lacan, or Bion to appreciate the commitment demanded from these medics. Several renowned analysts who completed this obstacle course had deep discontent with their analytic formation.
Significant opportunities beckoned when Richard Klein became a general practitioner in Oxford. There his professional circle embraced colleagues from local psychiatric institutes like the Littlemore Hospital and the Warneford Clinic as well as numerous friends, gps, and erstwhile political comrades,. He attended discussion groups with such figures as Isaiah Berlin and Terry Eagleton. John Bowlby, himself ostracised by British psychoanalysis, valued his medical consultations.
Despite witnessing the sidelining of Jonty -along with his supporters and analysands- by the complex manipulations of organisational machinery, Richard's commitment to psychoanalysis remained surprisingly unwavering. Soon he decided more analysis was in order. The analyst he next chose was originally an American psychiatrist who came to England and underwent an analysis with another Klein. This time it was Melanie. Donald Meltzer (1922-2004) was a name to be reckoned with. Author of numerous scholarly articles and books with an international reputation, Donald was a member of the Kleinian stream in British Psychoanalysis......for quite a while. Meltzer also enjoyed the reputation of working successfully with challenging conditions such as autism. Strangely enough, like Richard's previous analyst, Meltzer's training role within the BPA became untenable. During heated debates about training and transmission throughout the 1980's Meltzer decided to opt out of institutional transmission. After resigning from the British Association of Psychoanalysis, Meltzer forged ahead with his alternative and highly innovational model for the formation of analytical practitioners.
To my way of thinking Meltzer's new development is even more important and viable in the twenty-first century than it was in the 1980s. The "atelier" method involved groups of professionals working and learning together. These ateliers occurred in the larger cities of Italy, France, and Argentina. Rather than any official syllabus to be followed by every "candidate", each group became responsible for discerning its own training needs and finding individuals to assist with that task. Additionally there was another astounding innovation that was quite revolutionary at the time. Meltzer implemented a new model for psychoanalysis itself. Becoming increasingly suspicious of fables about psychoanalysis being some sort of science, any scientific model was firmly rejected by Meltzer. In its stead an alternative paradigm proposed that analytical work was more like art appreciation or interpretation than some sort of scientific venture. There were rumours that even Bion was keen to involve himself in this artellier movement. Had he done so, a Bion-Meltzer partnership would have represented a formidable threat to the existing institutional set-up in England.
Unfortunately the analysis with Meltzer did not work at all well for Richard. He felt Meltzer was highly suspicious of him- particularly because of his political and social values. Meltzer for his part wondered whether Richard was psychotic -according to an associate of Meltzer's. What the word "psychotic" may have meant for late Kleinians like Meltzer is far from straightforward. In private conversations with me, Richard later could laugh heartily at this interval with Meltzer and its peculiar diagnosis of Richard's condition. At the time however, that particular analytical encounter seems to have been somewhat stressful. In addition it has become crystal clear to me only recently, that "psychotic" in psychoanalytic parlance does not necessarily refer to a psychiatric condition. Rather, when used to refer to another analyst, psychotic had precisely the same connotations as wild. In modern times we might prefer to use other -more managerial norms of censure- like "non-registered". Though calculated to have a similar branding effect as "psychotic", contemporary nomenclature may only seem less judgemental!
During his formative years, Richard witnessed at first hand the vagaries and shifting demands of psychoanalytic training organisations and trainers. Like Lacan, Meltzer, Jonty, Allouch -and countless others- he was aware how destructive the institutionalisation of trainings could become for individuals and organisations alike -whether they be devoted to a Freudian, Kleinian, Lacanian or independent orientation. The notion of a psychoanalytic university or even the whiff any such proposal -like an academic department of psychoanalysis- were utterly anathema to Richard for much of his career.
De-Klein with Lacan
After finishing with Metzler a new psychoanalytic dawn eventually arose for Richard in the form of Lacan whom he heard speak at the Maison Francaise in Oxford. It is beyond the scope of this essay to consider Richard's career after Oxford -his time in France, an analysis with Miller, participation in lacanian seminars, cartels, and study groups as well as the many years of fruitful practise in London.
I once asked Richard why Lacan? It was lacanian musings about signifiers that captivated him. In this judgement I concur. One of the great contributions to twentieth century analysis was his signifiers. This elegantly replaced a whole machinery of conceptualisation stemming from English translations of Freud, especially words like "representation". Signifiers also captured something of the fluidity in Freud's free association.
Richard's own surname occurs quite regularly, if not prominently, in the annals of psychoanalysis. There might then be something attractive or auspicious about being a medic and an analyst called Klein. Imagination could get truly wild, if not manic, with this idea. Nevertheless Klein in German means small, tiny, insignificant, or little like a child .....as in Freud's famous case history of Haenschen klein. As well as offering glowing prospects for a career in psychoanalysis, this common German word might simultaneously cut them down to size. As well as giving or promising life, the signifier cuts, mortifies, and kills. It announces its own decline.
Notes and Afterwords
Jonty and Co: R. D. Hanaghan 1883-1967
Most of his books were published by his own press and are still available second hand. Written information is sparse but worth consulting is Ross Skelton Jonathan Hanaghan: The Founder of Psychoanalysis in Ireland. See the Crane Bag (Vol. 7, No. 2, 1983): The Forum Issue: Education, Religion, Art, Psychology pp. 183-190. Lacunae Issue 22 was devoted to papers largely debating differences between training and formation in psycho-professions, but also about the founding of psychoanalysis in Ireland. Freud in Cambridge by Forrester & Cameron CUP 2017, has several pages about Hanaghan's activities in Cambridge. My quotation about impressions he made in Cambridge come from this source. Elsewhere Jonty's non-dogmatic religiosity is occasionally claimed to be important and innovatory for the cultural and religious history of the Republic, where catholicism functioned as a state religion enjoying massive political influence. See further J Valentine 2017 Psychoanalysis in Ireland: Ireland in Psychoanalysis www.academia.edu/42029393/Psychoanalysis_in_Ireland_Ireland_in_Psychoanalysis. Oral information about Hanaghan came from Richard Klein himself and various colleagues in Dublin whom I met following meetings or seminars chaired by Cormac Gallagher.
Donald Meltzer 1922-2004
His published works number some forty books or so. Many of these are published by the Harris Meltzer Trust. Meltzer's final position regarding analytic formation was this: the practice of psychoanalysis can only be learned through ongoing individual and group supervision. When he conducted group supervisions he preferred people to speak from notes, rather than reading out well crafted essays. For this reason a good place to start is Supervisions with Donald Meltzer: The Simsbury Seminars Routledge 2003. Also published by Routledge in 1994 was Sincerity and Other Works: Collected Papers of Donald Meltzer. This book contains a paper about his proposed atelier system, as well as contributions dealing with aesthetics and conflict.
Richard Klein's Papers
Richard claimed his psychoanalytic papers were never written for publication. He wrote them to help himself work ideas through or to serve as guides for his many addresses. Nevertheless he later hoped their publication online would validate his Lacanian credentials amongst wider audiences. Though I responded positively to his requests to edit and comment on many papers, I did not keep any. Topics of training and transmission appeared regularly; see for instance Training Effect dated 2002 available on line at www.londonsociety-nls.org.uk/Publications/psychoanalytical-notebooks/010/Klein-Richard_Training-Effect.pdf Similarly Lacan's notion of absolute difference makes regular appearance in Richard's writings -as in Hostages to Identification published by The Candidate Journal volume 6, 2015 and available online. A small collection of his papers is due to be published 2022 by the tiny Freudian letter group in Cyprus.
On Philosophies, Reasoning, and Psychoanalysis.
Is there one Philosophical Method for reasoning?
In a recent seminar, one member believed my contributions favoured Nietzsche. During the very same seminar another participant claimed my exposition was decidedly Jungian. Though grateful to Nietzsche for his fine book about tragedy, the vast remainder of his works for me are somewhat repetitive, dull, humourless. I find too, there is an earnest narcissism -which is almost messianic- throughout his work, which I find both annoying and a little tedious. Books by Bernard Williams (especially Shame and Necessity University California Press 1993) encouraged me to reconsider the value of Nietzsche's philosophical writings. In retrospect it was more Williams than Nietzsche that I came to respect. Jung is an author I dip into from time to time. Most recently I checked his writings for comments on schizophrenia which in his earliest works are well thought out and rigorous. Though psychosis was still a something of terminal diagnosis for psychoanalytic treatment, Jung was a little more optimistic than Freud about using psychoanalytic interventions for psychosis. Nevertheless it would be highly incongruent for me to call myself a follower of Jung. I could never become a Jungian and advocate his mythologies. It eventually dawned on me that the "Nietzsche" or the "Jung" I was being allied with, were simply disapproval signifiers or word associations, at once symbolic, moralising, and imaginary from my colleagues. Both were calculated to express some sort of disapprobation.
It could be said that the search for one unified system of thought is a bit like trying to discover the woman of ones dreams. I suppose the greatest legend about a female philosophy figure comes from Socrates. In the Symposium a woman called Diotima taught him about love, which was neither earthly or divine, but a διαμον. Her mythology of love was only semi-oedipal because Ερws two parents were "resource" and "poverty". Eros indeed is a drive, that both pushes and pulls humans towards beautiful bodies. It is essential for reproduction. Additionally Diotima believes there to be a hierarchy of beauty. Instead of conflict and castration there is order and progression. Valued above beautiful bodies are beautiful souls. The erotic life becomes an ascent, whereby wise people learn to love philosophy. At the summit maybe there is beauty itself.
She (φιλοσοφια) -the ideal or the one philosophy- has received many compliments during the millennia . For example she might be the ideal of beautiful rationality; more disparagingly the one philosophy a tempting seductress promising all sorts of intellectual jouissances. At the base of this descent she will become an apocalyptic whore of Babylonian whose function it is to lead people into some alien conceptual landscape. Here philosophy becomes a satanic demon -tempting wisdom-seekers to deviate from the ladder which leads to the unified truth with its promises of correctness, beauty, or goodness. Those who are imagined to follow this necessarily errant philosophy become dangerous morally as well as academically. They are apostates, wilful rebels or -at the very least gullible thinkers. Philosophy can indeed mean love of wisdom or other, but not love for a particular philosophy, style, or system.
Censures, name-calling, hating, and suspicion attach them selves to people who are unable to accept doctrine of a unified field in logic, mathematics, or even psychoanalysis for example. Nevertheless both sex workers and wild people should never be discounted -ever.
The Distribution of Registers
Though once an urgent concern, contemporary philosophies rarely sell themselves as systems of therapy calculated to make conceptual problems disappear or to introduce some ease into emotional conundrums . The most academic philosophies nowadays have more modest aims namely, clarification by rearranging conceptual conflicts, ignoring them, or utterly reformulating them. For classical generations by contrast, philosophy was supposed to be some sort of guide (see Martha Nussbaum's book about Hellenistic Ethics below)
most recent edition (2018) in the public domain
Any tri-registered system of classification like Lacan's invites challenges at once both simple and profound How does one decide what belongs to the real, imaginary, or symbolic? Most likely there will be as many permutations of the three as there are subjects. Clinically it was one of the great perplexities I first experienced in Lacan. Colleagues seemed so certain as to what should be classified as real, imaginary, or symbolic when presenting their cases. Yet there seemed no rule, order, or law as to what one puts into this taxonomy. Perhaps there are rules for this which I have not been able to discover. But then again distributions could well be ad hoc -dependent on the exigency being discussed. More prosaically, distributing concepts, behaviours, clinical phenomena, amongst the registers might well be influenced by ones one particular delights, prejudices
For example to which register might an ideal belong? If it is inserted into the imaginary, the ideal might morph into pantasy-like discourse, utterly discarding its ethical signals and moral contents. Placing ideals within the registry of imaginary items or concepts, will therefor often result in a facile reductionism, though one can well understand why a Freud might regard victorian ideals as being akin to phantasy formations or deathly harbingers of some super-ego. For Freud all philosophy (like some music) remained a suspicious sphere of intellectualised paranoia. A sort of 'witches brew' as it were.
Even if one accepts the tri-register classification, there is a question about the relative weighting of each register. Throughout his long career, Lacan himself changed the relative weightings of his triad: so towards the end of his teaching "the real" enjoyed preeminence over the other two registers. This led to amazing speculations about psychosis.
Some sense of a psychoanalytical imaginary might be gained from reading Melanie Klein's famous case history of Richard. Therein the child-subject constructs a rich tapestry of images, drawings, diagrammes, verbal associations, or actions, all to which the adult adds her own imaginative associations, that are organised. Presumably Lacan's point is that it is language -by its talk and its concepts- brings some organisation, some structure to this discourse. For Melanie Klein, however, this imaginary world -including its symbols and concepts- was frighteningly real to her analysands. Towards the end of her life she was also inventing her own version of "holes", "gaps," or "lacunae" which she found alluded her. The obvious point is that contents of an imaginary register are unstable. But the same is true of any symbolic item: elementary acquaintance with philosophies of mathematics should suffice to question whether there is a unitary symbolic order and the degree to which any symbolic ordering can be termed a structure and enjoy some form of permanence and priority. I doubt too whether there can be any logic in the real of Lacan. As far as I am able to understand it, a system of logic always belongs in the ideal.
It should be patently clear that shuffling or distributing concepts, behaviours, or ideals around a privileged number of registers of necessity involves skewing behaviours, concepts, values or sentient beings preferentially. It successfully allows one to ignore or discount the possibility of other registers.
The number of registers.
Anyway why shouldn't there be more than just three registers available to psychoanalysis? For example in a seminar devoted to The Object Relation (translated by Price, edited by Miller 2020) Lacan offered a profound discussion of Little Hans and a transition the boy negotiates from imaginary to the symbolic register. (page 267) Interestingly enough, this shift occurs with the help of play-like activity involving tactile manipulation of manufactured material. In this case paper. Then there is a determined destroying of these creations. Little Hans here uses his own somatic energy to deconstruct dramatically the very materiality of his created object. Myself -I would prefer to canvass a view that Hans shifts from the imagery to the symbolic through a register of 'the tactile'.
There might well be four, seven, or any number of potential sets available for registering the deeds, behaviours, languages, and longings of complex human subjects.
To summarise: maybe it is the case that human beings find it impossible to live without some notion of ideals -including psychoanalysts like Richard Klein. Perhaps he was devoted to his own ideal representation of an analyst -in a similar way that a medieval knight might be devoted to his courtly mistress. Maybe his own ideal coupling could have successfully transformed itself into a new conceptuality that was non binary. Perhaps intersex and self re-assigned subjects might have received a hearty welcome here.
Other classifications/operations: splits.
Psychoanalysis adopts other central concepts which depict human subjects as split -between un/conscious for example. To his great credit, Lacan realised that such a split did not imply the two components were symmetrical binary concepts. Nor were there of necessity why a split should involve just two items.
Human subjects may well be split; but why only into two components such as conscious and unconscious? Freud regularly distributed divisions and splits into three. I refer again to the remarkable shifts made by the very young Hans. For arguments sake, allow me to assume that as well as Lacan's three registers, there is another register called "tactile". Furthermore, if "the tactile" were somehow "split" off from other registers and less available to him, his necessary transitions in life would in all likelihood be negotiated very differently. For example, he could have become autistic or inter-sex. For such hypothetical people a vitiated unconscious might be a like haptic, vibro-tactic, sensory system.
Long before virtual realities became popular and everyday experiences, English-writing novelists like say, like Iris Murdoch, who was strongly influenced by both Plato and Sartre, depicted subjects living in worlds with many intersecting dimensions. It was not just Joycean literature that single-handedly invented a modernist sensibility. There are, whether one likes it or not, multiple realties in life, that demand recognition, conceptualisation, and negotiation.
Holes and Chasms
a black hole maybe
from references cited in The Times below
Words like holes, splits, or chiasms are incredibly metaphorical and gloriously difficult to define. Especially in natural sciences. Take the words "black hole" . At the time of writing (2022) scientific and conceptual explorations of black holes continue to fascinate. The science correspondence for the UK Times sported a large headline
Black holes belch like babies after gobbling stars
The science correspondant continued
The researchers draw an analogy with the human digestive system. Babies frequently burp while drinking milk, while adults can hold in a belch for a longer period. As black holes mature, and become more massive, they undergo a similar change. Rhys Blakely The Times Friday August 13 2021
The reporter is well aware of the variety of black holes and how their scientific properties vary. This is one of the great scientific and conceptual adventures of the era. Fortunately or unfortunately, the language used to communicate with the reading public is mixture of analogy and metaphor. It is imprecise language and definitely not calculated to propose the universe resembles a massive alimentary canal, though that view indeed might well be attractive to some. More recently another scientific correspondent of the Times reported:
Scientists say they have solved a paradox that has alarmed physicists for 50 years, by showing that black holes are “hairy”.
The inverted commas signal a warning and declare something is going on with language here. They signify that the adjective contained between "....." is being used both imprecisely yet simultaneously informatively. Apparently Stephen Hawking believed that human beings who fell into black holes remain eternally mute and invisible. Hawkingsian black holes were collapsed stars that have become so dense that nothing -not even light- can escape their gravitational pull. “In space, no one can hear you scream. In a black hole, no one can see you disappear.” Now, apparently, this was misleading because
anyone who plunges into a black hole may leave behind some trace of their existence after all: an “imprint” in the gravitational field around the black hole, described as “quantum hair” by scientists in Britain, Italy and the US. Kaya Burgess, The Times March 17, 2022.
The theoretical implications of quantum hair are massive. It is said, for instance, quantum hair might offer some realignment between quantum theory and general relativity, as well as questioning Hawkins' cosmology. However, this need not deter us further.
When analysts suggests there to be "holes" in everyone, the noun hole -whether singular or plural- does not imply that all holes are identical, that every hole is the same, or that every hole has to be different. For example there might well be degrees of similarity and dissimilarity, as well as an absolute difference. Different holes might have different properties too. This reminds me of a career development officer who once quizzed a young woman working in a laboratory. Her speciality was investigating "bubbles" or flaws that sometimes appear during industrial glass making. He enquired whether she found her job boring. "Why should I?" was her immediate response. "Every bubble is different".
Maybe it is the case that human beings find it impossible to live without some notion of ideals -including psychoanalysts like Richard Klein. Perhaps he was devoted to his own ideal representation of an analyst -in a similar way that a medieval knight might be devoted to his courtly mistress. Maybe his own ideal coupling could have successfully transformed itself into a new pluralised reality that was non binary but involved some revolutionary third factor!! Perhaps intersex and self re-assigned subjects might have received a hearty welcome here.
Internal relations: knots and the failures of calculus.
A colleague, who wrote a graduate dissertation on Hegel and eventually became a professor of medicine, once told me how his life was far too short and busy for reading Lacan with its intellectual puzzles, knots, and idiosyncratic logics and algebra. This same colleague did however enjoy the paper on young children and mirrors. I would like to contextualise and reformulate my colleague's criticisms.
There were once passionate debates about internal and external relations that animated in British philosophy in the early twentieth century. England had its own, more tame, version of Hegelianism in the guise of F H Bradley. Like his contemporary Neo-Kantians in Germany, systems like his enjoyed cultural and academic acclaim before the First World War. Bradley and colleagues had three main beliefs. In the first instance there was the notion that entire sweep of reality (and by and large these thinkers believed there to be only one reality) could be intellectualised and presented in one philosophical system. Next there was another belief about the way the world works and how people get to know about this world. Apparently it operates in such a way that no part can be known without the entire caboodle being known as well. Third this one-world-reality resembles a leibnizian subject for whom all thoughts, figures, symbols, concepts, and imaginaries are inter-related. The nature of this interrelatedness however is highly specialised. Why? Because they cannot be understood, represented, or accurately conceptualised by anything external to itself. In other words, though a subject and its concepts might seem related to some reality outside itself ( like a language, some maths or physical humanoid being-like objects) this is only apparent. Once something becomes known by a subject "the known" become entirely subject-bound and internally related to all its "other knowns". This subject here is like a Hawkins hole. It ingests and traps everything that falls within its power; but there is no real relation to an outside -which remains unknown.
This is a set of truly incredible beliefs. Lacan indeed supposed there to be some external real, whether it be beneficent, harassing, fun, psychic, neutral, or material which is available for intellectualisation. Yet once that real (whatever it/they may or may not be) is internalised or known or symbolised by a subject. That very Real is, as it were, gobbled up by a Subject. The former real is now ingested and forever known only internally from that subject's own viewpoint and conceptualisations. So a subject, with its internalised realities, cannot ever be made into any generalised scientific or philosophical system. Even when it speaks to its analyst, the one supposing to listen, this listening figure is transformed by the Subject into a patsy, scarecrow, ideal, temporary adjunct, or even a distorting mirror.
a straw man??
scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz (public domain)
