Psychoanalysis as Hermeneutic Reverie and Critical Theory1

The discovery of the unconscious, understood as the dimension of that which cannot be discovered, is, along with a writing that does not speak, one of the principal steps toward liberation with regard to the theological.

From its very beginnings, by modeling it on hypnosis, Freud conceived of psychoanalysis as a psychotherapy. Over time, it has developed richly as a therapeutic technique, a theory of clinical observation, and an ontology or psychology of the subject, depending on whether we emphasize its speculative or scientific aspects. At the heart of therapeutic action lies interpretation, which reasonably brings the new discipline close to a hermeneutic enterprise, but whose “text” is the therapeutic relationship. By its very nature, the theoretical aspect cannot be separated from the practical one.

That said, empirical elements cannot provide direct proof of theories. For example, statistical research on treatment outcomes is useful, but we should not be so naive as to believe it can unequivocally “demonstrate” anything. This is merely one kind of “argument” among others — and moreover, it is not derived from the direct observation of analytic facts. In the end, theories, ideas, proposals, and hypotheses are evaluated and more or less accepted by a community of scholars who share the same field of observation. This does not mean that the paradigms that emerge as more persuasive or seem to have