Jung vs. Freud - Undermined by Winnicott (Science vs. Mysticism; Materialism vs. Spiritualism; Practice vs. Theory).

Introduction

Jung and Freud discourse pops up now and again on Twitter. The discussion is tired - mysticism vs. scientism, etc., Buried beneath this uncharitable interpretation and its stale caricatures of the Jung and Freud story is a more interesting one waiting to be told. 

It is a story of how at times our theoretical models or practical programs accidentally achieve the opposite of what they set out to achieve; a story of how at times a narrative is constructed that hinges upon a thinker that is often at odds or in tension with how a competing narratives makes use of that same thinker. 

For example, Deleuze and Guattari frame Jung as a thinker grounded in the 'outside,' culture, history, i.e., a champion of esoteric yet epistemologically sound materialism, etc. With this gesture they oppose him to Freud, a thinker they understand as unwittingly mired in the epistemological error of cognitive bias, filtering all his data through a predetermined theory with a predetermined conclusion - in this case  the patient's personal history, thereby severing the ties to the greater world and thus turning away from scientific-materialism and instead towards a personal psychologism. 

Here, Jung is on the side of the revolutionary, the schizoanalyst, etc. while Freud is on the side of a reconstruction of human behavior and thought that only benefits the hegemonic power, i.e. the state, the family, etc. If we've read D and G, we all know the argument. And yet Jung himself is rightly criticized by others for committing the same error as Freud, the error of venturing into the inside - a personal psychologism -  only to fail to connect internal experiences with the outside, to fail at a materialist project. Similarly, Freud is viewed as reclaiming materialism by rooting thought in behavior, personal or cultural, in the body, and is championed - if not critically - by the left. 

 How can Jung be both a revolutionary materialist whose answer to Freud's epistemological errors of personal psychologism was to venture into the outside and also be guilty of turning to personal psychological explanations that appear to be grounded in history but lack any connection to the material, i.e. somatic realm? How can Freud be an epistemologically erred thinker relying on personal myth and hegemonic concepts and also a true materialist co-opted by the left's attempts at materialism?  These are questions this essay explores - I aim to say we simply can't have it both ways for both thinkers!

The short answer, for now, is a reworking of the old 'if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear' question: If a theoretical model gets it wrong and there's no other model around to see it, does it still make an error? In a Kuhnian (and somewhat Zizekian sense - i.e., dialectical or Parallax process), theoretical models require one another to see one another and between their scopes and their tensions come some semblances of 'truth.'

To go Further Still: Winnicott and Jung

The the analysis of Jung that most exposes his error of personal psychologism - as far as my own research goes, which is admittedly accidental, and lacking in methodological rigor - starts with renown British pediatrician, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott's review of Jung's autobiography. 

I think its important to note this document and include it in the Jung vs. Freud discussion for two reasons; 1: I'm willing to bet most people haven't read this one off book review from 1964, so it's new literature in an old discussion, and 2: it's authored from someone deep within the high ranks of psychoanalysis, a true practitioner who did not engage in any theory that was not simply derived from or confirmed by direct patient experience; Winnicott's not a academic with an abstract bone pick, or a political activist with an agenda to push, he's an analyst doing what analysts do best - analyzing.

In his review of Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections (D. W. Winnicott, Review of Memories, Dreams, Reflections - International Journal of Psychoanalysis 45, 1964: 450-455)Winnicott makes a handful of succinct comments that reach far beyond that of a simple book review; as he comments on Jung's thinking and writing and the ruptured past of psychoanalysis (Jung vs. Freud, self-psych, ego-psych, drive theory, object relations, etc.) he also, unbeknownst to himself, anticipates the field's then future criticisms and derivatives, mainly that of Lacanian-Maoist/Marxist psychoanalysis and Schizoanalysis. In other words, here Winnicott provides a purely clinical take on what Deleuze and Guattari later approach from a theoretical angle (even if Guattari is a practicing analyst, and their theory is a theory of praxis).  

Winnicott is generous and charitable in his analysis of Jung, describing him as an analyst and thinker who should be read and understood; a complex man who is not to be reduced to a mystic, nor stripped of his status as a psychoanalyst. At the same time he understands Jung as a recovered childhood schizophrenic whose return from the realm of psychosis both allowed him deep insights into hidden truths about the world and also prevented him from reconciling his creative and destructive impulses, and, more importantly, prevented him from connecting these deep truths meaningfully to his own development and growth as a material body in space. 

This, Winnicott believes, is the main contributing factor to the break up of Jung and Freud, as well as the inability for 'classical' (i.e., Freudian) psychoanalysis to properly 'treat' schizophrenics. Freud was categorically incapable of understanding Jung's psychotic genealogy, Jung incapable of understanding Freud's neurotic genealogy. It's important to note I use this word 'categorically' deliberately in a Kantian sense as Winnicott in this text describes an unbroachable epistemological gap between Jung and Freud, 'Jung and Freud as two sides of the same coin, connected but unable to see one another' (an example reminiscent something out of a Zizek book or lecture on Parallaxism...). I.e., Winnicott is not speaking in superficial terms about two people misunderstanding one another, he is making an epistemological claim about discrete models of understanding distinct ways of being in the world related to ontological development (the way bodies and minds develop along certain paths determined by outside forces). 

This etiology of Jung can be easily dismissed if we consider it as a purely academic of theoretical gesture. It is far from this and should be viewed only from a practical perspective.

To illustrate, in analyzing one of Jung's famous dreams (the underground tomb) presented in the autobiography Winnicott writes the following:

"When Jung contemplated the idea of the erect penis in the place of the king on the throne in the underground chamber of his dream as a four-year-old he did not connect this with, for instance, a projection of his own phallic excitements. He seemed to fear that...an analyst would insist that he had seen an erect penis somewhere, but the thing an analyst would find lacking is any attempt to relate this with the four-year-old Jung's instinctual life..." 

Similarly, in analyzing a series of "thoughts" and "ideas" (really psychotic thoughts or fantasies) Jung reports about God shitting on the roof of a church destroying its walls, Winnicott writes 

"...again...Jung does not go one step further back and relate this to his own destruction of beauty. We could not expect to find Jung feeling God to be a projection of his own infantile omnipotence and the shitting as a projection of his own hate..."

For Winnicott this all culminates in Jung's search for "the center of the self" and his interest with the mandala which Winnicott understands as "a defense against spontaneity... a failure to come to terms with chaos... a flight from disintegration."

In what sounds like it could be a line straight from Deleuze and Guattari's work, Winnicot summarizes his position on Jung and selfhood: "the center of the self is a relatively useless concept. What is more important is to reach the basic forces of individual living..." As Deleuze and Guattari remind us, what are concepts but tools to be used in practical ways (the self = a drawing, the force of living = a map)? We will come back to this.

For Winnicott, Jung's work is the product and outcome of a body healing itself from the 'pathological' (life obstructing as opposed to life affirming) aspects of schizophrenia. It is therefore a flight from schizophrenia and the body as a reaction to first hand experiential knowledge of schizophrenia and the body (a turning away from the face of God in fear of annihilation) as opposed to Freud's flight from schizophrenia which was a reaction to a lack of first hand experiential knowledge of schizophrenia (for those who are curious, this is the psychoanalytic understanding of the difference between anxiety and fear: anxiety is fear of the unknown or the fantasy of the known, true fear is the recognition of a real object or internal object of an known experience; I am anxious about an upcoming exam, and I am fearful of the animal that will kill me, etc.). 

For Winnicott, Jung fails to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time - that his visions are universal in a sense, tapped into deep cultural and historical stories, from the outside, the result of noumena colliding, and also still necessarily  incredibly local, bound to his body and originating in his body, and subject to those metaphysical limits. Because of this Jung's thinking therefore remains incomplete (Kant here resolves Jung vs. Freud - his entire body of work can be viewed as synthesizing the outside world, the inside of the body, and the presence of God; a meeting of theology and behaviorism, i.e., psychology - the ghost in the machine). Only radical connection with the body, and rooting / grounding thoughts, fantasies, dreams, and visions - no matter how 'real' and worth investigating they may be in there cultural spiritual sense - to the base material of body makes them whole and actionable in a practical sense. 

For example, as an analyst, if a patient were to share with me a dream and describe for me how it relates to a fairy tale from the 18th century, I would express excitement, but wonder what it means that this patient dreamt the dream at this time in their life, reported it to me in this way, and what relation it has to his life, and what he may be hiding or unaware of given he has not explored this himself, etc. The question is not if dreams can accidentally or coincidentally synchronize with fairy tales, or even historical events of past or future, but why these tales or events were revealed through a dream at this very moment. For fun, in theological terms: it's not a question of 'does God exist, and does thou really, from time to time, choose a human to be thou messenger?' the question is - and this is the hero's question of film and myth - 'why me...why did God choose me?' 

But back to psychology - Deep history internalized in the body requires something actionable, otherwise it is an avoidance of the outside. Jung looked deeply inside himself to avoid seeing his true self in the outside (what practitioners will know in practice as the patient using insight as an avoidance strategy). 

This is all to say, reminiscent of Deleuze and Guattari's now beat to death phrase about 'the process,' Winnicott urges Jung to go further still. 

Similarly, Baudrillard reminds us that "Reality itself is too obvious to be true." We should remind ourselves frequently that "exploration of the self is too obvious to be exploration of the self." 

Going Further - Trouble in Schizoanalytic Paradise: Jung and Guattari (and Deleuze)

Winnicott's analysis of Jung exposes some tension in this all too-ready-made dichotomy between schizo-hero Jung and Oedipalizing Freud. This tension would be relatively insignificant if not for the following facts:

1. Winnicott is the most cited psychoanalyst in all of Felix Guattari's published notes and texts - even more than Lacan (I can find the exact source for this if pressed, at this moment of writing it escapes me and you'll have to accept the following: My own research shows Winnicott's name appears the most, and Fadi Abou-Rihan's book on D and G and Psychoanalysis may also corroborate this!)!
2. Jung, though not mentioned nearly as much as Freud in A Thousand Plateaus, plays a significant role in D and G's framing of the problems of psychoanalysis in that he is the thinker most explicitly opposed to Freud, and therefore opposed to the Oedipal structure D and G are critiquing. In fact, one could go as far to say that Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus champion Jung as an early schizoanalyst whose goal was to 'open up' analysis to the radical outside, the an-oedipal, the cultural, etc., whereas Freud wanted to reroute everything through the Oedipal and individual structure. 
3. It is well documented in autobiographies and academic texts that Deleuze read, researched, and was influenced by Jung.

So Deleuze read Jung and Guattari read Winnicott. This means they should know better!

I have no proof, but I'd like to imagine Guattari read Winnicott's review of Jung. Not just because Guattari clearly read Winnicott and Deleuze read Jung, but because both Deleuze and Guattari and Winnicott discuss the infamous '2 skulls' dream Jung presented to Freud; the dream that Freud interprets as Oedipal despite Jung feeling it to be about his inevitable break with Freud. And both D and G and Winnicott  treat the dream as an example of Freud's inability to understand schizophrenia. 

Whether Winnicott's critique of Jung was read by D and G and overlooked for not fitting the narrative, or perhaps was never read at all, the text still poses questions I believe the two thinkers would surely need to consider and mindfully respond to. 

Conclusion - Similar Narrative Tensions within Psychoanalysis

I've argued the basic evergreen, collegiate position that when a new piece of literature is added to a discussion it disrupts preexistent narratives and provides a potential space for new thought. Someone else will have to come up with the new thought. The only 'conclusion' I have here is the cliché that we should be careful about pitting thinkers against one another for philosophical or political arguments, as they are often more multi-faceted than they initially appear, and a true exploration of a thinker often undermines one's position.  

For now I want to point out one other place where narratives in psychoanalytic politics and political psychoanalysis can and should be disrupted, that of  the relationship between Lacanianism and Marxism / practice and theory.

Lacan almost never wrote about case studies, endorsed a purely theoretical model of analysis, and strove to shake off  concepts of measurability and replication as criteria for psychoanalysis being confirmed as a science (variable length sessions, variable pay, not using insurance, undermining institutional authority by granting degrees at a whim, allowing students to self-determine when they graduate as an analyst, etc.). As a result, the effect of Lacanianism on the world has largely been an academic one, not a practical one. There are far more psychoanalytic training institutes that are non-Lacanian than ones that are Lacanian, and far more practicing analysts that are non-Lacanian than there are ones who are Lacanian. There are many psychoanalytic academics and philosophers who do not see patients (Zizek being the most famous) who are Lacanians and few academics and philosophers who are non-Lacanians who do not see patients. We could go on with the permutations, but we get the idea. Lacanianism seems to find its place in pop-culture (seen in films, TV shows - most recently White Lotus). Lacanianism is the vehicle of pure theory and yet, building on Marcuse's Freudo-Marxism that looked to understand political behavior in terms of Freudian biologism, Lacanianism was esteemed in high regard as a true science by a Marxist thinker and has come to be tightly bound with many Marxist positions that endorse 'praxis' or practice as the main goal of intellectual theory. Clearly this is a tension. Lacanianism is not as 'praxis' oriented or critical as it thinks it is.

I don't meant to say any of this is 'bad.' I have some good Lacanian friends - some who practice analysis, some who don't; I enjoy some Lacanian literature, and I myself am a petty pop culture enjoyer! 

The real point is this - Winnicott's analysis of Jung somewhat disrupts the Deleuzo-Guattarian framing of opposing Jung to Frued, but what document(s) will help disrupt the narrative that Lacanianism is Marxist practice when in many ways it returns to abstract, theoretical and academic discussions - or worse, pop culture clichés  - that have little practical effect on people?

I don't know the answer to this question. A job for someone else.

But to return to the tree in the woods - 'if a theoretical model gets it wrong and no other model is around to see, does it still make an error' - question: Freud, Jung, Deleuze, Guattari, Lacan, Zizek, - they all need eachother. Concepts are tools, thinkers too. It's foolish to pick a favorite tool in your box when they all serve a purpose.