Psychoanalysis as Askesis

I have introduced askesis, a Greek word, into my title because, in the first place, it implies that I have in mind an unfamiliar approach to my subject. It is also a word derived from classical Greek philosophical use, and in this article I shall situate psychoanalysis within the long classical and humanistic tradition that had its beginnings in ancient Greece and that, together with traditions derived from ancient Israel, forms the foundation of our spiritual, cultural, and moral life. Askesis is variously translated as “exercise,” “practice,” “discipline,” or “training.” None of those words is innocent of applications foreign to my purpose, but all of them taken together will, I hope, enlighten my remarks. I need to caution against the risk that our only English derivative of askesis, namely “asceticism,” be given precedence here, although, like the translations I have given, it too is pertinent when we reflect on the technical rule of abstinence.

The word askesis appears in many classical authors, but Plato uses it in a variety of pertinent contexts: the training of athletes (Laws, 840 a4; Republic, 404 a9), the comforting of fearful infants (Laws, 791, b7), the training of soldiers in manoeuvres (Laws, 625 d4), and in learning right action (Gorgias, 509 e2). In the Republic (518 e1)1 he says of the “virtues of the soul” that “where they do not pre-exist, they are afterward created by habit and practice [askesis],” an idea taken up in different words by Aristotle in the second book of his Nichomachean Ethics. I shall use the word askesis frequently, but with neither the hope nor the fear that I shall have added a neologism to our already overloaded jargon. Perhaps