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Gunnar Karlsson has an idea that phenomenology might be of some use to psychoanalysis. He does not approach his topic by way of the seminal encounters between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. For instance, there is no mention of any of the following: Merleau-Ponty's (2010) Sorbonne lectures of 1949 to 1952; Abraham's (1995) papers dating from 1948 on rhythm, affect and intentionality; Henry's (1993) ontology of the ‘psychical unconscious’ and ‘pre-intentional consciousness’; or Ricoeur's (1970) unrivalled attempt to reconcile demystification and restoration as opposing dispossessions of consciousness. To pass over this remarkable dialogue in silence seems like a missed opportunity. Furthermore, Karlsson makes it clear from the opening chapter of Psychoanalysis in a New Light that he is not interested in an eclectic hybrid of phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Sceptical of the attempts at synthesis along the lines of existential psychoanalysis (Sartre, 1943) or Dasein-analysis (Binswanger, 1975), Karlsson is “anxious to keep the boundary between phenomenology and psychoanalysis clear” (p. 18).
The anxiety of demarcation plays out in interesting ways here. While emphasizing the different preoccupations in the work of Husserl and Freud, at the same time Karlsson attempts to bring phenomenology to bear on the epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis. Although it is not set out explicitly in this way, the book divides roughly between a critique of scientific reason and a reformulation of the theory of primary and secondary processes. It may have afforded greater clarity had these two lines of inquiry been made more explicit.
Firstly, the critical import of Karlsson's argument rests on a phenomenological theory of knowledge. This, at least, is how he presents things in his