EDITH KURZWEIL
27
how many more dancers can possibly fit onto the proverbial pinhead - as
they multiply, fall off, get on, and jostle each other. This presents prob–
lems for the uninitiated, and often for Freudians and feminists as well.
That Freud himself was a product of modernism and that Lacan is
said to represent postmodernism makes for many complications. For of–
ten both of their ideas of psychoanalysis are incorporated by psychoana–
lytic feminists without such distinctions. And if, as both Freud and Lacan
assume, the unconscious is individual as well as cultural, and therefore
timeless, then we cannot regard psychic matters as modern, postmodern
or traditional, or as anything else that is temporally bound - whatever
label we pin on our era. Both Freud and Lacan placed the individual -
men and women - at the center of art and social life. And because Freud
analyzed fictional characters and literary figures, Lacan felt justified
to
do
so by focusing on the language of literary texts, and his followers felt
free to speculate further. The perceived shift from modern to postmod–
ern conditions - which are said to question everything modern - does
create new problems. For the actual fusion in the unconscious of time
and space and of fantasy and reality cannot be replicated in applications
of psychoanalytic thought to feminist practice.
My own view is an extension of my argument in
The Freudians. A
Comparative Perspective
(1989), where I indicate that every culture creates
the psychoanalysis it needs. Hence I believe that feminists fashion their
means of liberation in response
to
their local, intellectual surroundings. I
support the application of Freudian and Lacanian ideas to the extent
that they link up with actual women's needs and desires and thereby help
foster women's autonomy. But I am critical of fanciful , abstract con–
structions that claim political currency but ultimately will be proven in–
valid and unfeasible: these are built on ideological quicksand and thus
may endanger the enormous strides (variously oriented) feminists have
made.
To be sure, psychoanalysis is on the decline everywhere: the discovery
of the unconscious has proven more elusive than Freud at first assumed;
the therapy has become too expensive emotionally and financially. But
this does not mean that it will not survive as the clinical forerunner of
quicker and simpler therapies, as a means of training the best of clinical
practitioners , or as the actual (unconscious) liberating force for women.
However, this is yet another cultural phenomenon rooted in the individ–
ual and the cultural unconscious - and in politi cal and institutional con–
ditions - that require further inquiry.
