Adolescent Psychoanalysis

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Adolescents Hang Out With Plato, Aristotle and Kant

Chapter 8

What is the essence of the adolescent? What makes a person what he/she is- whether adolescent or adult?  These are the questions philosophers have pondered for centuries.  In philosophy, this realm is called “metaphysics”.  The importance of this question to the psycho-analyst, is the idea that the psycho-analyst can know the patient’s mind.

(authors note:  in this chapter I refer frequently and hopefully not confusingly to Immanuel Kant, amongst other philosophers.  I give particular importance to one of Kant’s seminal contributions- the ‘thing in itself’ and its representation to us (Critique of Pure Reason). To get to Kant, I am going to progress from Plato to Aristotle, to Kant.  As I have indicated earlier, I am no philosopher, so I hope that understanding patience will be extended to me by the reader.  If the reader can bear with me, I think the partial understanding of Kant and the relationship of his contributions to our field will be evident, both as theoretically important and practically useful.  Later, these findings will be applied to further clinical material.  Further, please remember that the meaning and possible usefulness of these discussions is realistically confined to psychoanalysis, especially the analysis of adolescents)

In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato explained that what we see of an object is an incomplete representation of the object.  He equates this to seeing shadows in a cave where the actual object is what causes the shadow and that we are only able to see the shadow. It is only through enlightenment and study, could we know the object as it is, and not simply as it appears.  His answer to ‘knowing the actual object’ has to do with ‘coming into the light’, bolstered by enlightenment and study.  Hence, according to Plato, we are able to know the mind through rigorous study.

Aristole, Plato’s student, conversely claimed that the essence of an object is unknowable. What we know of the “essence” is only what can be experienced/discovered from the individual object. All objects have a ‘form’ in which is contained its essence.  For instance, Chester the cow has properties which are found in the ‘form’ of what it is derived from - “cow-ness”.  However Chester the cow, like every other cow, is a mere representation of the ‘form’- “cow-ness”, not the essence of what it is to be a cow. An additional example is the scientific naming of objects or things.  Similar characteristics can be identified among the species, Sapien.  But knowing the characteristics of a Sapien will not tell you all there is to know about the genus Homo.  Hence for Aristotle, the only thing we can know about the mind is what we can experience from it and products of the experience.

Similarly to Aristotle, Kant believed that we can only know an object by its secondary qualities or manifestations – how it represents itself.  For Kant, “no concept is related immediately to an object, but to some representation of it”.  Kant has no ‘forms’.  There is only the ‘thing in itself’.

As an aid to understanding Kant, consider the following model. This model consists of a circle and lines emanating from the circle, much like drawings of the sun that children make.  Inside the circle is a person, with all the elements of that person— mind, body, and soul.  Everything.  The ‘thing in itself’.  Emanating from the circle, the ‘thing in itself,’ represented by a series of lines, are secondary manifestions of the ‘thing in itself’(e.g. height, weight, feelings, actions, etc.).  According to Kant, Aristotle and others, we can never penetrate this circle.  The best we can do is to investigate the ‘secondary’ manifestations, the lines.

Judgement is the representation of the representation of the object.  A patient says “my mom is a whore.”  Our judgment/agreement/disagreement with the idea of the patient’s mom, her being a whore, is irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is the adolescent’s representation of his mom, “my mom is a whore”. The patient’s reason for stating that she is a “whore,” is a representation of what he believes a “whore” is, or even what a “mom” is.  This is yet a perfect example of importance of understanding any patient’s use of words.  Words can be very deceptive. The patient’s definition of the word “whore” or “mom” will be different than ours and idiosyncratic. That adolescent’s meaning can only be determined based on questioning.  An additional example, is you ask a patient if he would like some water.  The patient shakes his head from side to side, usually an indication of “no”, but at the same time, says “yes.”  Obviously a question arises as to whether the patient wants water or not.  Again, this discrepancy can only be determined by inquiry.

Assuming that the ‘thing in itself’ cannot be known, the question may arise as to whether the thing in itself is able to know itself?  Surely a thinker should know itself; its motives, beliefs, likes, dislikes, feelings, etc..  Intuitively and empirically, we know this to be false.  We constantly discover things about ourselves.  According to Kant, the thinker suffers the same problem as the outside observer. The thinker is affected by itself and therefore appears to itself not as it is. Again, intuitively and empirically, we know this to be true.  We are able to believe ourselves to be, or lie to ourselves about who we are, what we are, etc..  Subjective validity and objective validity are not always the same.

As psycho-analysts, we all know that we can never ‘know’ the totality of one person, let alone groups of people.  Our formulations, however, purport to both understand and deal directly with the unknowable being in the circle, the ‘thing in itself’.   If we are able to step away from our prejudices, we know that we are unable in any way to know the ‘thing in itself’  (e.g. mental functioning, etc.) of any person. We further know, via our experience, that mental functioning, emotions, etc, ‘secondary manifestations’, change constantly.

In our work we build upon our version of the unknowable ‘thing in itself’, insisting that we know ‘it’ and construct our formulations accordingly.  We use ‘secondary manifestations’ incorrectly to tell us the ‘thing in itself’, a person(s). With that ‘knowledge’ we form our theories about how the mind works, doesn’t work, etc, and how to correct its deficiencies.  The concept that there is an infinite progression of facts about andchanges in the unknown ‘thing in itself’ is not part of our understanding. Our theories do not allow for the expected unexpected. We often make an empirical observation (at best a ‘case study’), generalize it and call it a theory- generalizable and predictive.

To make matters even more complicated, ‘things in themselves’ are not static, but ever changing, thus changing their ‘secondary manifestations’. Psychoanalytic concepts such as depression, anxiety, omnipotence, etc., all fit neatly into this Kantian concept. These are not ‘things in themselves’.  Therefore, they must be investigated as ‘secondary manifestations’. An example is this. An adolescent says to one of us, “I am depressed”.  That statement is meaningless unless we can determine the patient’s meaning of ‘depressed’.  By analyzing that, we will often discover what the patient means by that word.  We won’t find our meaning, but theirs.  We will have discovered a bit of the essence of that adolescent.

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