On the Mythematic Reality of Libidinality as a Subtle Energy System: Notes on Vitalism, Mechanism, and Emergence in Psychoanalytic Thinking

In the pluralistic field of today's psychoanalytic psychologies, Freud's notion of the libidinal energy economy is often entirely abandoned or its significance for praxis misunderstood and demoted. This paper mounts a defense of libidinality. Freud's ideas about the libidinal economy are reviewed, and their connection with traditional teachings about subtle energy systems, especially as deployed in nonwestern modes of healing, is then briefly discussed. The central argument— that the notion of libidinality both is necessary to comprehend the dynamics of repressive/derepressive processes and vindicates Freud's assertion that the free-associative method is the sine qua non of psychoanalytic science—is then presented. That the notion of the libidinal energy economy has been criticized as an exercise in myth-making is less concerning than is often supposed inasmuch as all depictions of psychic life involve allegorical theorizing. In this context, it is shown that contemporary neuroscientific accounts of the emergence of the representational world from its neural substrate are equally mythematic. Moreover, they fail to account for the dynamic contradictoriness of the repression barrier that is discovered through free-associative discourse. Although the specifics of Freud's characterization of the energy economy need to be rethought, the notion of libidinality remains both legitimately scientific and necessary to account for the healing properties of the free-associative method, which involve derepressive processes.