LOUIS A. SASS
We now have a
theory.
..
but it does not present itself to us as a the–
ory. For it is the characteristic thing about such a theory that it
looks at a special clearly intuitive case and says
"That
shows how
things are in every case; this case is the exemplar of
all
cases." "Of
course!
It
has to be like that" we say, and are satisfied. We have
arrived at a form of expression that
strikes us as obvious.
But it is as
if we had now seen something lying
beneath
the surface.
593
Although Wittgenstein warned of the dangers of unrestrained cravings
for generality, it should not be thought that he was an enemy of general–
ization itself. He knew perfectly well that there is no thought, no
explanation, and no understanding without generalization of some sort. He
was also aware (rather more than Bouveresse acknowledges) that his own
method of philosophical criticism-which depends on an ability to dis–
cern recurrent patterns, offer similes, and hypothesize orienting "pictures"
underlying modes of thought (such as the Cartesian picture of thoughts or
sensations as inner objects)-bears more than a passing resemblance to
some of Freud's own proclivi ties. Actually, Wi ttgens tein and Freud have
an important common ancestor in the Romantic organicism of Goethe,
whose approach to such topics as botany, color perception, and compara–
tive anatomy was based on an estheticized, intuitive discernment of subtle
physiognomic similari ties taken to indicate the
Urphilnomen-the
primary
phenomenon or prototype supposedly underlying all instances of a given
type.
It
was Wittgenstein, however, who seems to have had greater critical
distance from this intellectual ancestry.
Serious problems arise, in Wittgenstein's view, when a theorist's crav–
ing . for generality conspires with the natural human tendency to ignore
one's own role in interpreting the world; when, for example, the psychoan–
alyst (or the philosopher or would-be scientist) forgets how preoccupation
with certain models can cause one to
fix
on particular aspects of a given
symptom or event and to ignore all other features-to forget that, as
Wittgenstein put it, "there are certain differences you have been persuaded
to neglect." This is what occurs when the unconscious is treated like a per–
son or a place--and also when unconscious processes are seen as having
much the same kind of meaningfulness, deviously strategizing intentionali–
ty, or even logical articulation and coherence as may characterize our more
lucid moments of conscious awareness (as in Freud's theory of the "per–
fectly rational dream-thoughts" that supposedly underlie the manifest
dream-content). In the latter case, Wittgenstein wrote, psychoanalysts seem
to be "misled by their own way of expression into thinking... that they had,
in a sense, discovered conscious thoughts which were unconscious": that is,
