Fictionalism and Psychoanalyzed History

In a discussion of psychoanalyzed history, we can view history from either of two perspectives. Either: We can see it —as we almost invariably do —as something that has somehow been established as a text (for instance, the memories of a patient or the memoirs of Schreber [Freud, 1911]) that (re)presents a past that is pre-formed, as event-filled, and meaningful. Such a past we as analysts, with comparative passivity, simply read and then interpret through the application of our theory. Sometimes we seem to believe we find these psychoanalytic meanings, as though they resided in the very nature of history itself. Or: We can view psychoanalyzed history as a text that we actively invent according to the blueprints of our theory. Here history is the product of a theory-determined process that composes it as intrinsically psychoanalytic. Here interpretation functions both as part of the process of invention and as a part of the revelation of what has been invented. This revelation, however, seldom exhibits the extent to which psychoanalytic theory directs the technique that forges all this history into being. In a sense — that we will eventually have to say more about —this sort of history overwrites or overlays a kind of Nothingness. Occasionally, we utilize