LOUIS A. SASS
Surface and Depth: Wittgenstein's
Reflections on Psychoanalysi s
To learn from Freud you have to be critical;
and psychoanalysis generally prevents this.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein was of two minds about psychoanalysis, as he was
about many things. Though generally dubious about the worth of psy–
chology, Wittgenstein made an exception for Freud, whom he considered
one of the few authors truly worth reading: "Here at last is a psychologist
who has something to say." In the 1940s he went so far as to speak of him–
self as a "disciple" and "follower" of Freud. Yet, all the while,
Wittgenstein remained sharply critical of Freud's way of thinking, and
concerned about the harmful cultural effects psychoanalysis was likely to
have. Freud he considered more clever than wise, a man of formidable
intelligence and imagination but also of "colossal prejudice," "a prejudice
which is very likely to mislead people."
Whereas Freud was always emphasizing the resistance to his theories
about sexuality and the unconscious, Wittgenstein was far more impressed
with the meretricious attraction such ideas are likely to have: involving the
"charm" of the forbidden and of discovering things hidden, as in an
underworld or secret cellar; the mythic appeal of seeing present events as
repetitions of "something that happened long ago"; and the attraction of
debunkingly reductionistic explanations which say that "this is really only
this." Wittgenstein was willing to acknowledge the pervasiveness of sexu–
al motives, and our powerful need to hide them from ourselves, but he was
also acutely aware of the potential for banalization inherent in psychoana–
lytic accounts. "Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because
they are brilliant) perform a disservice," he wrote in 1946. "Now any ass
has these pictures available to use in 'explaining' symptoms of illne s." He
considered the seductiveness of Freud's style of thought to be extremely
dangerous. Though potentially a way of enriching human existence, psy–
choanalysis had too often proven itself an enemy of the two things
Wittgenstein held most dear: clarity of understanding and a sense of awe
about the world.
