Original Articles

Some Reflections in Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis

Published in: Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology
Volume 8 , issue 1 , 2008 , pages: 1–9

DOI: 10.1080/20797222.2008.11433958

Author(s): Hsiang Hsu [B0001]

Abstract

This paper examines the origin of phenomenology, and delineates several of its significant developments and refractions, in order to arrive at a renewed conception of phenomenological theory and practice: a future phenomenology that can, it is argued, articulate productively with certain grounds opened up by psychoanalysis.

It is possible for the process in the Ucs [Unconscious] to come to an end, either after the fury has spent itself, or after the object has been abandoned as worthless. (Freud, 1915/1957, p. 257)

The history of psychoanalysis is not finished – although it is possible that it may finish sooner than we think. (Castoriadis, 1978/1984, p. 103)

Socrates: Does not what you have been saying, if true, amount to this: that there must be a single science which is wholly a science of itself and of other sciences, and that the same is also the science of the absence of science?

Charmides: Yes.

Socrates: But consider how monstrous this proposition is, my friend!

(Plato, 380 BC/1871 (trans.), Charmides, 167c)

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