Paul Ricoeur: Unraveling Enigmas in Psychoanalysis

Paul Ricoeur found refuge at the University of Chicago in 1971, having fled the student turmoil at the Sorbonne, where he had taught, and at Nanterre, where he was dean.1 At Chicago, he published two major book-length studies associated with psychoanalysis and an essay on establishing psychoanalytic proof (Ricoeur 1970, 1977a,b).

I begin with two vignettes of Ricoeur as a teacher to indicate his character, which was foundational to his thinking and his values. First is a memory I have of a class Ricoeur taught with Stephen Toulmin, a student of Wittgenstein. In that class, Ricoeur could express much with a gesture: his finger scalloping the air in a line, he showed us how various aesthetic genres, despite their diverse, discipline-specific criteria, could nevertheless be connected, if in a subterranean way. For example, architecture might use the proportionate criteria of Vitruvius, or painting the six criteria of Lommazzo; in poetry, Borges's suggestion for aesthetic criteria might be adopted, or in music Leonard Bernstein's six criteria for judging what is good. Each discipline has its aesthetic criteria. Nevertheless, one can sense aesthetic correspondences, a kind of universal synesthesia, across disciplines. Take, for example, Balanchine's choreography for Concerto Barocco: its “look” captures the “sound” of Bach's Double Violin Concerto and its flowing movement. The dancing pair play with each other and contrapuntally against the “continuo” (the corps de ballet) behind them. Ricoeur's scalloped air danced the correspondences.

Second, I recall Ricoeur's trembling reaction to Jacques Derrida, his former student, after the latter's mocking presentation at a conference held at the university in 1979 . This episode showed a different, but related, aspect of Ricoeur's character. Derrida was one of several presenters at the conference, the topic of which was narrative as a