For this first session we invited professor
José Martinho, who is simultaneously, a philosopher
and a psychoanalyst. I suppose everyone read
the small curriculum we divulged; I'm not
going to repeat what's in the curriculum,
I'll only thank the fact that he has accepted
the invitation, and mention the pleasure we
have in having him here. The title of the
communication, of the conference, as you have
seen, refers to the Unconscious, and the theme
of the Unconscious is, precisely, a part of
the matter we have been addressing in classes,
the best we know, obviously, but today we
will be able to learn a little more. I don't
even know if it was the correct way of approaching
the theme, the one we chose: we centred on
three of Freud's texts on the subject: the
article from 1915, The Unconscious, a chapter
of the essay The ego and the Id, and the 31st
lesson of the New Conferences on Psychoanalysis,
in which appears a famous phrase that those
who know German are aware of the difficulty
of translating, Wo es war soll ich werden,
which I translate savagely as: "Where It
was, must the I be". There are other possibilities
besides this one.
I would give the word to our guest, right
away.
José Martinho
A very good afternoon to all, I thank you very much for you presence.
I would like
to begin by telling you how I understood the
invitation that was addressed to me. I didn't
get to talk in person with Dr. Morujão, we
just exchanged a few rather synthetic e-mails
- that was it, we didn't get to talk? -, but
I understood -- well, it appears normal to
me, to the lovers of Philosophy -- that there
was an interest in what it is, to think. It
seems normal that the friends of wisdom, the
philosophers, think, and that we question
ourselves, for example with Heidegger, about
"what does it mean to think?" I don't
know if you are familiar with this text in
which Heidegger says surprising things, for
example that Science does not think. But independently
of this interrogation about what it signifies
to think, it also seemed to me that there
was a doubt, or not, about if the thought
has to be forcefully conscious, that is, if
there aren't unconscious thoughts. In any
case, this doubt presents itself, even in
Philosophy, as a resistance -- I could cite
several names -, as philosophers have a tendency
to resist, not only to the concept of the
Unconscious, but even more, to that unconscious thoughts may exist.
Well then, departing from these two problems:
what is it to think and if there are or there
aren't unconscious thoughts, and if there
are, what novelty does that bring, I decided
to begin by reminding you how the question
of the thought is placed to the Moderns -- by
convention, the "Modern Times" refer to:
not to what is happening today, here and now,
but to something that began in the seventeenth
century -- more precisely, how is the question
of the thought placed after Descartes.
Descartes has radically distinguished, thinking
from what is thought, cogitare, to cogitate,
from what is cogitated, cogitatum. The problem
is, that he also believed there was a subject
behind the thought, an ego or an I, that thinks,
the denominated ego cogito, the thinking subject.
This supposition in particular has made him
cut in half the old unique Substance of Aristotle.
He divided this Substance into a thinking
substance, res cogitans, and into an extensive
or material substance, res extensa.
I'm seeing a blackboard here as I haven't
seen in centuries, with chalk and everything.
Is there any light above? I can see there isn't.
To simplify the cartesian dualism, I'll write down the list of cartesian bipolarities:
 
The subject and the object, mostly on the
level of what is the theory of knowledge,
the subject that knows and the object he knows.
This little philosophical playing -- well,
I don't want to get into detail, but arriving
to this wasn't easy
it was a really radical turn in the history of Philosophy
But what is then programmed, are these oppositions
that are, somehow, going to organize a lot
of what we say and think henceforward.
The debate with Descartes, on his thought, the work of Descartes, is a current debate which
is far from being finished. Even the so called
"Postmoderns", who dreamt of having surpassed
the Cartesian Modernity, have already retracted
-- now they are no longer called "Postmoderns",
but many other things -, they didn't exit
this problematic.
This debate exists not only in Philosophy,
which interests you in particular, it also
exists in Psychology, I don't know if we have a psychologist here, it also exists in the Cognitive Sciences,
of which I think you have already spoken of,
and it exists today, with special importance,
I'd say, in Neurobiology, in what is called
the "Neurobiology of the mind".
A lot of what the thought was, of what Psychology was, is today being
subsumed by the Neurobiology of the mind,
a science full of promises, with great future,
at least that's what I wish it. For example,
in the area of Psychology, where I teach,
the psychologists that up until a recent date
had a formation inspired on experimental and
scientific Psychology, the so called Cognitive-Behavioural
Psychology, are all moving to Neuropsychology.
The areas connected to neuropsychology appear
to be the future of Psychology.
In spite of this fact, I don't want to simply
talk about the past. Psychoanalysis is not
dead; it's alive and kicking.
Dualism?
There is a postulate today, and two theses
follow this postulate and inform the Neurobiology
of the mind. This postulate has already been
part of a song, I will say it in English,
because when said in English we can immediately
see where it comes from: no brain, never mind.
Is it necessary to translate? No? Everyone
speaks English. If there is no brain, there
is no mind.
Well, I am here at Universidade Católica(Catholic
University), I don't know my audience, but,
evidently, if we believe in God, in the immortality
of the soul, this appears to be a fantasy.
Believing in God suffices to believe in the
immortality of the soul, that there are souls
about. This is not a scientific problem; in
any case science hasn't yet took account of
this kind of problems. I'll leave aside all
of those that still believe, not all of those,
but the arguments of those who believe in
the immortality of the soul, in the existence
of some ether or some divine breeze, of something
ethereal. I will restrict to, what is called
these days, the Neurobiology of the soul,
let's put it this way.
So, departing from Descartes, and from the
current postulate, there are two major theses:
one that says, all right, no brain, never
mind, but, "brain is not mind", the brain
is not the mind. We must distinguish it. I
usually say to my Psychology students: "you
have an interest in defending this thesis,
because if you say that the mind, the psychism,
is cerebral then leave Psychology and go practice
Neurobiology, as there is no point in being
interested in something that doesn't exist."
But in the Neurobiology of the mind there
are also those who defend that, for you knowledge,
that
the brain and the mind are not the same thing.
These are the Cartesians. These are those
who defend the dualism of the body and of
the soul, or of mind and matter, the neural
matter. I could give you several names; the
most renowned is a certain Fodor - funny name
- who entitles himself as "neo-Cartesian".
There is no doubt that he defends that idea,
even if in 
a more current vocabulary, that the brain
is sort of a machine, of hardware, and the
psychism would just be the software, that's
the metaphor of the computer-brain. So we
have the cartesians in the domain of Neurobiology
and of the influence it has on philosophical
reflection and others.
And then we have the anti-Cartesians. Descartes
continues to be crucial. The anti-cartesians
are not dualists, but monists, they believe
in an unique substance, again. What does this
mean? That, effectively to them, mind is brain,
meaning that there is nothing about the mental
activities, including those who are connected
to the most elevated stages of conscience
as the social and moral conscience, that can't
be explained, today or tomorrow, by neurobiology,
and, therefore there's no need to distinguish
the body from the soul, hardware and software,
it's the same Substance. The most famous example
of this thesis is the one of António Damásio,
our compatriot. That's what he swears on joined
feet(on his life). He became world famous,
at least outside his laboratories, by publishing
a book entitled Descartes' Error. Descartes
is still a hinge in this discussion.
Well, this is the thought as it was placed
to the Moderns departing from Descartes, and
just how he, in the present, still agitates
contemporary debates. How are we going to
place Freud, the name who baptises Psychoanalysis,
on this debate? And Lacan? I don't know if
you have already heard of, since it's rare
in Portugal to have an interest in this gentleman
who is already dead, and perhaps it will take
another hundred years to speak about him.
I don't know if you know, but he is a psychoanalyst
of first importance in the History of Psychoanalysis,
that has cut that history in half, to the
point that psychoanalysts are either Lacanian
or non-Lacanian, there's nothing else. It's
something of this order. The reading Lacan
did of Freud is crucial to enter this debate.
You can't have this discussion with other
psychoanalysts. Those who aren't Lacanian
are not interested in this.
So, to tell you how I introduce Freud into
this debate, I will refer, not to those texts
Dr. Morujão has cited and that you seem to
have worked on, but only to two indications
of Freud, given even before the date of birth
of Psychoanalysis, that we may situate around
1900, which is the date he chooses to the
publication of the Interpretation of Dreams,
a book he had written a little earlier, but
he then asks the editor to publish it on that
date that marks the beginning of the century.
Freud thinks that Psychoanalysis was to be
born with the sex ("sexo" -- slip), with
the century ("século"), and that it would
last, dominate throughout the twentieth century.
The first indication of Freud is from 1890,
ten years before the Interpretation of Dreams,
and appears on an article called The Psychical
Treatment or Soul Treatment, in which Freud
begins by saying that "words are the main
instrument of psychic treatment". In the
full panoply of instruments, in all the methodologies
that can be used to that so-called "psychic
treatment", the word is predominant. And
five years later, in 1895, the moment in which
he distances himself definitely from what
he was, from the point of view of his academic
studies -- and what was he? A medical doctor
and a scientist - he distances himself because
he will never practice medicine again, he
will never conduct research in Neurophisiologic
laboratories again, but he also moves away
from what the different "psychotherapies"
are, they didn't exist at the time, therapies
of the soul he practised until then: hypnosis,
suggestion, catharsis; he steps back because
he was able to read, to recognise the value
of something that was said by a patient, who
wasn't even his, but that of a colleague with
whom he worked, the designated "Anna O.",
clinical name, who explained him and his colleague
Breuer, that what they were doing and the
results they obtained, came from what she
called, in English, a talking cure, a cure
through the means of the talk. It wasn't immediate,
but some time after -- Breuer pulled away
for several reasons -- that Freud took the
due conclusions, and henceforward Psychoanalysis
became a talking cure. He installed himself
as a psychoanalyst, that is, someone who made
people talk, who was there to listen, and
all the previous therapeutic methods were
cast aside. He changed his laboratory; he
installed the new laboratory in his consultation
room.
I could develop this much further for you
to understand it better, but I would simply
say that these two indications, that words
are the main instrument of the psychical treatment
and that the practice of Psychoanalysis is
a talking cure, are sufficient to understand
that Freud introduces, in the previously reffered
dualism, a third term which is the word. The
word has predominance over the soul and the
body.
We have the psychism, either on the level
of the psychic apparatus or on the level of
mental functioning. And we have the body,
which is a complex thing because, for instance,
the body is not the organism. Psychoanalysis
does not operate, does not befall on the organism.
Freud speaks of a "spiritual organism"
therefore there would be a physical plus a
psychical organism.
Let's maintain this difference to emphasize
that what Freud tells us is that in Psychoanalysis,
if we want to have an effect upon the soul
and upon the body, we have to start from the
word:
Freud doesn't quote, but he could have quoted
Aristotle when he says that the specific difference
of the human gender is precisely language,
Logos, even if it has a wider definition.
What characterizes Man is being an animal,
surely, but an animal that goes against nature,
exquisite, bizarre, because it speaks, it's
the only one that speaks and is spoken by
others. And that's why he gets organized
politically, and is capable of doing Medicine,
Philosophy, etc, etc.
Freud doesn't put things this way, that
language is the constituent factor of being
itself or human existence, not of the animal,
the animal constitutes itself in another manner,
but as stated by Phenomenology, there is a
difference between life and existence. To
live and to be are two different things. Life
is a common phenomenon to every living creature.
To be, or to exist, is something else. In
a certain way, only man exists or is.
What Freud tells us, is that the human being,
the human nature depends precisely on the
word. He counts on the word not only to approach
human nature, which is a cultural, historical
nature, etc -- he counts on the word in his
psychical apparatus theory -- besides, in
his first approach of the questions of the
psychism, which is related to aphasias, which
are language disturbances, he uses the expression
"language apparatus", and not psychic
apparatus -, but he counts on the word at
this time for what he calls the cure -- it's
not him that names it, but the refered patient
who started to feel relieved, getting better
-, all in all to transform the representations
that affect the patients, the human beings,
to their utmost intimacy, to that which, in
a certain way, remains more occult. That most
intimate is what Freud will call the Unconscious.
And what does he say about the unconscious,
namely on the book about the dreams? He says
they are thoughts. They aren't the cartesian
thoughts, they are thoughts that unroll, using
a Fechner's expression, in "another scene"
of the psychism other than the conscience,
they are thoughts that escape conscience,
will, intentionality. They are unconscious
thoughts.
It's through these unconscious thoughts,
that unroll what he calls the "unconscious
formations"; that's what he presents in
a first moment through the dreams, the lapses,
and the slips of the tongue. This aspect is
illustrated by three essential texts, The
Interpretation of Dreams, which has presently
an excellent Portuguese translation, which
has even won a translation prize last year,
from Relógio d'Água (there was a previous
one which was rather poor); Psychopathology
of Everyday Life, which is also translated
in Portuguese, a rare thing; the third book
is not translated to Portuguese, we may call
it O Dito de espírito (The Said of wit),
or the Chiste (Joke), as the brazilians say,
the thing that makes us laugh, but in it's
relations with the Unconscious. Those who
said before that laughter was proper of Man
hadn't thought about this.
This kind of formations are the things that
make us commit an error, that make us dream,
which Freud analyses precisely on this side.
And on the other side, on the body level,
the word has also an importance, because the
incidences of the word on the physical and
psychical organism, are the ones who will
in a certain way redesign, not only the anatomy,
but also certain body functions, and produce
something never seen before which he names
the "drive" and it's "vicissitudes"
(there's a translated text in Portuguese
with this title):
Therefore we have, the formations of the unconscious
and the vicissitudes of the drive. He discovers
for instance that the hysterical anatomy isn't
the same that the anatomopathology's anatomy.
It's a different anatomy, governed by other
designs, the drawings imprinted by the word
not only on the thought but also on the body.
Henceforward we see -- and that's what
I want to emphasize, in a certain way -- that,
would there be a model that Freud could provide,
it would be a non cartesian model, but it
wouldn't also be anti-cartesian, in the
sense of the monism; it's not a dualist
model, it's not a monist model, it's a
trinitarian model, a model that comprehends
a third element, that escapes that problematic,
or, when it doesn't escape, as it happens
sometimes in the Neurobiology of the mind,
language appears as an object of Neurobiology,
and from that moment on all is lost. There's
a deviance in the apprehension of what language
is.
Here, language functions as in Aristotle;
it's a principle, a principle that we could
almost say metaphysical, a principle for what
we think and for how we are going to behave
in function of what we have in our head. For
instance, if I believe in God, I will attend
the mess. But if I don't believe in God,
I won't do it. That's how I'll behave.
Our attitudes, behaviours, our relations depend
greatly on what is in our head, and because
of that, our body transports what we are,
over here or over there, which is, finally,
what we think.
So, here we have a trinitarian model, in addiction
to the dualist or monist model. But I would
say, that's not enough. This is one of the
things Lacan brought to psychoanalysis, without
straying away from Freud, but as he says,
returning to Freud. Not to be stopped on Freud,
but to re-depart from there, because, psychoanalysts
at that time were no longer reading Freud,
or didn't read much Freud.
Lacan says there is a remainder. The word
interferes with the soul and the body, but
something surpluses, a remainder, which Freud
names the symptom.
If we take on account the dimension of the
symptom properly said, we are now on the level
of a quadripartite structure, not only ternary,
but quadripartite; there's a fourth element
that is somewhat heterogeneous of what is
happening here, the symptom, that which brings
people to analysis.
People have symptoms. But it's not enough
to have a symptom to seek a psychoanalyst.
We often limit ourselves to complain about
our symptoms, to go see the doctor, the psychologist,
eventually the astrologist. Other times we
stay alone with our symptoms. We leave the
others, but what happens as well, generally,
is that our symptoms get in the way, they
complicate our life, and we don't know how
to deal with them. They get in the way, more
or less, but there are symptoms that complicate
our lives a lot, for instance, which may provoke
suicide and things of that kind; there are
others, for instance, that make us wash our
hands every five minutes; some others don't
allow us to go outside because there's an
animal we are afraid of. There are countless
symptoms that get in our way. Sometimes it's
as if something has meddled with the logic
of our conscious thoughts, rational ones,
just like the phobia of an animal that doesn't
hurt a soul. Some psychologists even say:
- do you want to see how harmless it is? Come
here, close to the puppy... Pet him... He
won't byte. In fact the animal doesn't
hurt a soul, in its objectivity, but there
is something, on the thought's level that
causes anguish, panic, escape, that keeps
the subject away from that animal.
I intended to return to the initial problem,
but as I already mentioned Lacan, I would
say the following to simplify things: in the
beginning of the 50's, when he commences
his true teaching, I mean, his true teaching
as a psychoanalyst -- he was a psychiatrist
before -- and someone who knew, was related
and had an interested on artists, namely the
surrealistic ones, but also on philosophers;
he knew Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, etc. In the
beginning of the 50's, after having read
Levi-Strauss, the founder of modern, structural,
Anthropology, he says that, to understand
the human phenomenon, but also to understand
anything about psychoanalysis, it convened
that we could relate each object, each event
with three dimensions he calls: the Imaginary
(I), the Symbolic (S) and the Real (R):
The symptom appears in the final part of his
teaching; many years later he will write it
using the Greek letter Sigma, S:
I won't have the time to talk about this,
it's just to give you an idea. So, in the
50's, we can see what it's about: the dimension
of the Imaginary, that's where Lacan places
the thought, the soul and the body:
Monism and dualism, they operate on the Imaginary
level. What is the Imaginary? We can say it's
the relationship that each one of us, the
human being has with images. With images that
already exist, with images that are formed,
the real images, the virtual images, etc.
There's a whole optic that explains these
things. The image as such is the constituent
of human reality and psychic reality. Besides,
why do we have these debates to know if it's
bad for children to watch too much TV, or
to play a lot of computer games? There's
that idea that images influence the children's
minds, and not only those minds. Lacan's
thought is of the Imaginary order. If we introduce
a notion of knowledge, which is even more
imaginary; this year we are working on one
of Lacan's Seminars in our group, in which
he speaks of the "metaphor of knowledge"
