Freud is discredited, so we don’t have to think about the darker strains of unconscious motivation anymore. We know what moves our political leaders, so we don’t have to look too closely at their thinking either. In fact, everywhere we look in contemporary culture, knowingness has taken the place of thought. This book is a spirited assault on that deadening trend, especially as it affects our deepest attempts to understand the human psyche—in philosophy and psychoanalysis. It explodes the widespread notion that we already know the problems and proper methods in these fields and so no longer need to ask crucial questions about the structure of human subjectivity. “What is psychology?” Open Minded is not so much an answer to this question as an attempt to understand what is being asked. The inquiry leads Jonathan Lear, a philosopher and psychoanalyst, back to Plato and Aristotle, to Freud and psychoanalysis, and to Wittgenstein. Lear argues that Freud and, more generally, psychoanalysis are the worthy inheritors of the Greek attempt to put our mindedness on display. There are also, he contends, deep affinities running through the works of Freud and Wittgenstein, despite their obvious differences. Both are concerned with how fantasy shapes our self-understanding; both reveal how life’s activities show more than we are able to say. The philosophical tradition has portrayed the mind as more rational than it is, even when trying to account for irrationality. Psychoanalysis shows us the mind as inherently restless, tending to disrupt its own functioning. And empirical psychology, for its part, ignores those aspects of human subjectivity that elude objective description. By triangulating between the Greeks, Freud, and Wittgenstein, Lear helps us recover a sense of what it is to be open-minded in our inquiries into the human soul.
Jonathan Lear is John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor on the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. His works include Wisdom Won from Illness, Radical Hope, A Case for Irony, and Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life.
Table of Contents
Preface: The King and I
On Killing Freud (Again)
Knowingness and Abandonment: An Oedipus for Our Time
An Interpretation of Transference
Restlessness, Phantasy, and the Concept of Mind
The Introduction of Eros: Reflections on the Work of Hans Loewald
Eros and Unknowing: The Psychoanalytic Significance of Plato’s Symposium
Testing the Limits: The Place of Tragedy in Aristotle’s Ethics
Catharsis
Inside and Outside the Republic
Transcendental Anthropology
The Disappearing We
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
What People are Saying About This
"Jonathan Lear is a superb writer. By playing back and forth between discussions of Plato, Aristotle, classic tragedy, on the one hand, Freud and the psychoanalytic process on the other, Lear has said some of the most illuminating things I have read about a number of the most difficult topics in psychoanalysis--the nature of transference, why it has the central role it does in the process of change and therapy, the relation between the public (the public language and world that analyst and patient share) and the private (the patient's idiolect, her peculiar associative web, her unconscious fantasies.)"
Jennifer Whiting
"Jonathan Lear seeks--through rich and imaginative readings not only of ancient tragedy but also of Plato, Aristotle, Wittgenstein and Freud--to restore the soul, and with it life, to contemporary philosophy and psychology."
— Jennifer Whiting, Department of Philosophy, Cornell University
Harold Bloom
"Jonathan Lear persuasively brings together aspects of Plato, Freud, and Wittgenstein in showing how they sometimes work together in illuminating the psyche. Open Minded is a lucid and humane blend of philosophy and psychoanalysis, learned and perceptive. At a time when Freud is besieged by ignorant armies, Lear's work helps to remind us how absurd it is to undervalue the greatest moral essayist of our century, the era's Montaigne."
Lawrence Friedman
"Based upon a fresh understanding of the Freudian unconscious, Lear presents a startling, new, and profound view of human nature and society, which allows him to move between the intrapsychic and the 'object' world in just the way we have desperately needed. It explains the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis in a clinically convincing fashion. It solves the riddle of what is new and what is old in the transference, and how the two are mediated. It makes practical use of Freud's larger, frequently dismissed, metapsychological hypothesis. Most exciting of all, it stands along as a Freudian alternative to what has come to be known as 'the social construction of reality,' doing equal justice to the public and the private, and showing how Man's creativity implies its own tragic, biological and psychoanalytic constraints. As sophisticated philosophically as it is psychoanalytically, this book offers analysts an extremely rare opportunity to see their concerns in the light of the great philosophical tradition rather than simply as challenged by momentary philosophical fashions (though the recent 'linguistic turn' is also incorporated in Lear's broad sweep.) It is a revelation to watch Lear bring out the psychoanalytically relevant meaning of the classics. Lear's combined macroscopic and microscopic portrait of Man is in the great tradition of Loewald and Ricoeur."
— Lawrence Friedman, M.D., Cornell University Medical College
Marcia Cavell
Jonathan Lear is a super writer. By playing back and forth between discussions of Plato, Aristotle, classic tragedy, on the one hand, Freud and the psychoanalytic process on the other, Lear has said some of the most illuminating things I have read about a number of the most difficult topics in psychoanalysis -- the nature of transference, why it has the central role it does in the process of change and therapy, the relation between the public (the public language and world that analyst and patient share) and the private (the patient's idiolect, her percular association web, her unconscious fantasies.
Robert Michels
"Imagine a dialogue between Freud and Sophocles, and then add Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Wittgenstein, and Loewald. It is wondrous to imagine, but it wouldn't work. They could not understand each other, their theories are based on different assumptions, they start by asking different questions, and they often seem to be talking at cross purposes. But then add Jonathan Lear, a philosopher and psychoanalyst who is familiar with each of them, has studied their ideas, can understand and challenge their conclusions, and can identify the themes that reverberate through their work. Even more, he is someone who can explain to us as he translates for them, and can allow us to join and participate in this remarkable dialogue. We will learn about Oedipus and the contemporary critics of psychoanalysis, who alike in that they need to know so desperately that they cannot tolerate discovering. We will discuss whether love is essential for personal growth, is its greatest obstacle, or both. We will explore what Aristotle meant by catharsis, why Plato discusses both the individual and the state in The Republic, and how psychoanalysis helps us to understand each of these. Most of all, we will be infected by Lear's delight in wonder, in learning and in thinking, and will taste the joyous fascination that comes from the study of questions that link the mind and the soul. This book will bring pleasure to anyone who loves to think and to look again at what they thought they already knew." — Robert Michels, M.D., Walsh McDermott University Professor of Medicine and Pschiatry at Cornell University Medical College, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research
Warren S. Poland
"An understanding, it has been said, is a place where the mind comes to rest. In this remarkable exciting and incisive book, Jonathan Lear confronts accepted understandings of how a mind works, observes that 'we have been living on a restricted diet of questions,"and teases into the open the restlessness at the core of a soul. His passion for inquiry plus his lively style pull the reader into the midst of a thoughtful discussion with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Freud, and Wittgenstein, an engaging debate which Lear not only brilliantly and lucidly moderates but to which he offers his own original contributions. Indeed, his consideration of Oedipus--man, myth, drama, and complex--is wise enough to integrate the irony of Sophocles' theme of fate's dire inevitability with Freud's recognition of an individual's unconscious responsibility and broad enough to expose the farce that accompanies the tragedy. How uncommon and how pleasing to open a volume and find oneself engaged in a conversation. For Lear is a professor of philosophy, practitioner of psychoanalysis, exemplar of clear thinking, and master of lucid writing. He has given us a volume rare for its genre, one which we regret coming to an end"
— Warren S. Poland, M.D
Janet Malcolm
"When this book's second chapter--a defense of psychoanalysis against its recent critics--appeared in The New Republic in 1995, there was an almost audible sigh of relief among those who had found the attacks preposterous, but had figured out no way to answer them. Jonathan Lear's brilliant examination of the radical character of psychoanalysis provided the answer required. Since his essay appeared, talk about 'the death of psychoanalysis' has noticeably subsided."
