Self-interpretation in Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. Notes on Wittgenstein and Freud

Wittgenstein's well-known criticisms of Freud are all, in my opinion, attributable to a general critique of scientific self-interpretation in psychoanalysis: that is, to presenting the status of psychoanalysis as a science which reasons from causes. What is less discussed are Wittgenstein and Freud's convergences on the concept of image and the picture theory of language (Bildersprache), and on the idea that the symbolic has a configurative character. In this paper, I shall touch on the following two themes: Wittgenstein's discussion of «analytic mythology» on the one hand, and the recognisable correspondences in certain texts by Wittgenstein and Freud between the experience of artistic creation and the epistemological structures of analytic experience. The two themes will give an opportunity to reflect briefly on the scientific status of psychoanalysis.

In a conversation about Freud with Rush Rhees in 1946, Wittgenstein speaks of psychoanalysis as a myth. He says for example, «What he has done is to propound a new myth» (Wittgenstein, 1967, 51; cf. Borutti, 2005). It is relevant to reconstruct the use which Wittgenstein makes of the semantic field evoked by the word «myth» as a definition of the Freudian theoretical field (bearing in mind the fact that Freud himself often referred to the metapsychological themes as its own mythology (Freud, 1933). Returning to the theme of myth, Wittgenstein accuses Freud of adopting the epistemological ideal of a science which formulates laws on the basis of experimental evidence, and of claiming to have found a causal explanation for psychic phenomena, whereas he had actually only found myths: that is, essentialist causes not supported by experimental proofs. «Take Freud's view that anxiety is always a repetition in some way of the anxiety we felt at birth. He does not establish this by reference to evidence-for he could not do so. But it is a highly attractive idea. It has the attractiveness which mythological e