Comments on Levin's “A Shift in Psychical Accent”

In his illuminating reflection on an important and currently neglected work of Freud's, Charles Levin exposes the gulf between current modes of thinking, even in psychoanalysis, and Freud's outlook. In our contemporary culture, described by Levin as technocratic and utopian, and in much current psychoanalytic thought, we have succumbed to a romanticism that posits liberation and resolution of conflict as distinct from Freud's profound sense of our “human malaise” as creatures caught in perennial contradiction. At best, Freud holds out a hope for achieving a kind of “economical balance and parsimony, making the best of an inherently corrupt situation.” Whereas we tend to think of humour as “an unequivocal sign of health,” Freud views it as “also a symptom of our profound malaise.” Rather than describing social adaptation as a desired therapeutic outcome, Freud emphasizes its brutal imposition. “Comic levity reminds [Freud] of how deeply we are at odds with ourselves.” For him, “human life will always remain a fit subject for jokes.” In our training programs we avoid the Witz not merely because there is so much else to read but because “its portrait of ourselves is too recognizable, too realistic. It is difficult to distance oneself from Freud's portrait of the laughing animal.” We avoid the Witz because “we are inclined, whenever possible, to avoid seeing ourselves as we really are.” Here Levin provides us with an accurate picture of Freud's outlook and insightfully shows how far our current habits of thought have strayed from it. It is not Freud's drawing attention to sex and aggression that troubles us, but rather his revelation of the unavoidable presence in us of inhibition and defence. The Witz is anti-romantic, challenging our culture's notions of emancipation and cure when for Freud the most we can hope