The Unconscious, i.e. Affectivity as a Matter

The problem of affect and affectivity plays a significant role in psychoanalysis, both at a theoretical and therapeutic level. In Freud’s first interpretation of hysterical symptoms affect is considered as a certain amount of energy, and this already mirrors its aporetic intertwining with the ‘reali...

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Main Author: Vinicio Busacchi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: UNICApress 2023-01-01
Series:Critical Hermeneutics
Online Access:https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/view/5442
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author Vinicio Busacchi
author_facet Vinicio Busacchi
author_sort Vinicio Busacchi
collection DOAJ
description The problem of affect and affectivity plays a significant role in psychoanalysis, both at a theoretical and therapeutic level. In Freud’s first interpretation of hysterical symptoms affect is considered as a certain amount of energy, and this already mirrors its aporetic intertwining with the ‘reality’ of the unconscious. On the one side, it is true that, in his Metapsychology, Freud identifies the charge of affect with instinct and explains that only ideational representation, not the affection, is found at the unconscious level. This means that affectivity is something concerning the preconscious and conscious psychic life. However, on the other side, the existence of a ‘representative’ dimension within the unconscious opens the way of a dual or bifacial re-reading of it, beyond the biological-organic constitution Freud assigned to the Unbewusst. For Paul Ricœur, Freud’s psychoanalysis has a double, irreducible theoretical-procedural register, energetistic and hermeneutical; and his research about the unconscious reality reveals the significance and consequences of this double/dualistic approach. A combination of Husserl’s phenomenological and Ricœur’s hermeneutical approaches helps to find a “third, mediative way”, in which the unconscious can be reinterpreted as a “affective matter”, that is a mid-way reality placed between corporality and non-corporality, body and mind, natural causality and experiential/existential meaning.
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spelling doaj.art-5655ae7db9cc44adbfea952498f5e9252023-09-03T10:59:30ZengUNICApressCritical Hermeneutics2533-18252023-01-016210.13125/CH/5442The Unconscious, i.e. Affectivity as a MatterVinicio Busacchi0Università di CagliariThe problem of affect and affectivity plays a significant role in psychoanalysis, both at a theoretical and therapeutic level. In Freud’s first interpretation of hysterical symptoms affect is considered as a certain amount of energy, and this already mirrors its aporetic intertwining with the ‘reality’ of the unconscious. On the one side, it is true that, in his Metapsychology, Freud identifies the charge of affect with instinct and explains that only ideational representation, not the affection, is found at the unconscious level. This means that affectivity is something concerning the preconscious and conscious psychic life. However, on the other side, the existence of a ‘representative’ dimension within the unconscious opens the way of a dual or bifacial re-reading of it, beyond the biological-organic constitution Freud assigned to the Unbewusst. For Paul Ricœur, Freud’s psychoanalysis has a double, irreducible theoretical-procedural register, energetistic and hermeneutical; and his research about the unconscious reality reveals the significance and consequences of this double/dualistic approach. A combination of Husserl’s phenomenological and Ricœur’s hermeneutical approaches helps to find a “third, mediative way”, in which the unconscious can be reinterpreted as a “affective matter”, that is a mid-way reality placed between corporality and non-corporality, body and mind, natural causality and experiential/existential meaning. https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/view/5442
spellingShingle Vinicio Busacchi
The Unconscious, i.e. Affectivity as a Matter
Critical Hermeneutics
title The Unconscious, i.e. Affectivity as a Matter
title_full The Unconscious, i.e. Affectivity as a Matter
title_fullStr The Unconscious, i.e. Affectivity as a Matter
title_full_unstemmed The Unconscious, i.e. Affectivity as a Matter
title_short The Unconscious, i.e. Affectivity as a Matter
title_sort unconscious i e affectivity as a matter
url https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/view/5442
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