You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This book claims that the nature of science lies in the eternal human quest for the origins of things. It is not just the application of neutral human rationality; there is a deep-rooted motivation to journey to the beginnings of everything. The book argues, too, that in trying to understand the motivation for that quest we need psychoanalysis: we need to know the unconscious roots of our restless searching. In a word, we have to view the vibrant and heady achievements of science in conjunction with the infantile phantasies of the primal scene. A quest in search of anything is, at root, the quest for the origins of life—and that means mother's body.
Figlio further claims that such a penetration is fraught with all sorts of emotionally significant, sensitive and terrifying associations. Not least is the phallic quality of penetration. He describes phallicism as the violating penetration of an object that has had all its moral and emotional significance stripped from it. Phallic masculinity is, however, but a defence—a denial of the importance of father as procreator with mother; and a squaring up to father's power. The distorting, defensive and maladaptive nature of phallicism, as found in the primitive unconscious, creeps into the attitudes of scientists, and the public's expectations of them. Science then becomes embroiled in problematic attitudes, which in turn provoke a reaction. Hence, Figlio concludes, this is ‘why such an obviously reassuring and beneficial activity [science] inflames such passionate rebuke’ (p. 211). Science has the image of a penetrative, corrupting violation of nature; and psychoanalysis can say where that image comes from.
The moment of discovery in the primal scene is a confrontation for the infant. His own narcissism is assaulted. His assumption that he exclusively occupies the maternal body is banished by the new presence of father. It is the end of narcissism. As Freud described in the Wolf Man case, the infant attempts to avoid this end