The importance of technique within psychoanalysis and Heidegger’s criticisms of this reductionist technicism of Dasein

Abstract

We will show that Heidegger’s criticisms of Freudian theories and even of psychoanalytic methodology stem from a certain lack of knowledge on the part of the philosopher that Freud is dealing with the phenomenon of the analytic setting and this is imposed as the fundamental element of psychoanalysis. The improvement and refinement of technique is the ultimate goal of psychoanalysis. The mechanical reductionism of psychic phenomena is based on the fact that psychoanalysis is, necessarily, a praxis. We argue that the Heideggerian construct Dasein incorporates a new way of thinking about man and his world. The concept of being-in-the-world reworks the position of the human being, consequently modifying the concepts of psyche, psychology and consciousness. This will give greater support to Freud’s important work of questioning the limits of the concepts of pure and sovereign logic. But at the same time, it opens the field of possible deconstruction of the objectification of the psyche. Deconstruction also reaches the possibility of rethinking the entire metaphysical mythology present in Freudian metapsychology. We propose that there will be a meeting of both authors who wander through different paths. Freud questions the primacy of logic and its limitations, by proposing the functioning of the logic of the unconscious. Heidegger also questions this current logic, going so far as to reformulate the very paradigms that support both metaphysics and scientificity. The conclusion presented here would be that both authors think critically about the human psyche and consciousness. Freud starts from his clinical work, from the need to deal with the phenomenon of the unconscious and to theorize concepts and a method to deal with it. Heidegger, from the other extreme, sets out for a critical reformulation of the entire field of psychological phenomena: consciousness, healing, illness, etc. However, he avoids falling into a reductionism of these phenomena, as happens when they are manipulable objects in the mechanics of psychoanalytic technique.