Time and World in the Thought of Hans W. Loewald

IF WE ENTER ANY FIELD OF THOUGHT, A POINT OF VIEW IS NECESSARY AND inevitable. Total innocence, meaning mere observation without applying references already present in the observer's mind, if it existed, would be totally unproductive. This has nothing to do with an idealistic denial of the independent reality of the external world. It does mean that for the psychoanalyst everything, even the most objective brute fact of experience, needs to find a place in the intricate network of meaning that is unique for every individual. I understand that I have thereby stated a point of view and have thereby revealed an aspect of my own position toward the analysis of experience, affecting all that I bring to bear on the words I hear and the actions I witness in the consulting room. It would be incorrect, however, to name the sum of all constituents of a point of view a "philosophy"; philosophy is a rational discipline, not just an attitude toward life or psychology. There may be hidden philosophies in many points of view, affecting the process of discrimination of observed facts through the structures of thought that they uphold. These philosophies may actually be concealed by more common, even trivial attitudes: for example, to say that we regard everything we hear from our patients as true in some fashion, or that everything said is a distortion of something unsaid, are both bits of analytic folk wisdom which may be based on more fundamental and rational positions genuinely philosophical in nature.

All this applies equally to psychoanalytic theory and practice. It has always seemed to me to have been a serious loss for psychology in general and psychoanalysis in particular that it was cut off from its philosophical underpinnings. In William James, on the contrary, we see the value of the constant critical engagement of a philosophical mind with psychology. Even the limited uses to which logic may be put serve as beneficial pruning actions on the efflorescences of p