Introduction: Paradox as a contradiction due to a mistaken assumption
Abstract
This introduction begins with a reviews the history of paradoxes in psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud’s discovery of the unconscious as a solution to the paradox of hysteria. It continues with explaining the presence of paradox as an effect of a false premise, and suggests ways of approaching mental suffering as a paradox that requires a re-examination of assumptions. The classical paradox of the person saying “I am lying” is a paradigmatic example. The last part of the introduction reviews the paradoxes that compose the chapters of the book: the paradoxes of the object existing in its absence, the subject that is anchored in lack, the co-existence of fate and free will, paradoxes that result from ignoring the presence of the desiring subject, paradoxes that stem from the limitations of metaphors, missing dimensions, time and retroaction, and paradoxes that are not meant to be solved.
Psychoanalysis came into being as an attempt to solve a paradox. While Freud’s neurologist colleagues were dismissive of those of their patients who suffered from what they considered sham sensory or motor paralyses, he believed them (Freud 2001 [1895]). In so doing, he agreed to accommodate the tension of holding two clashing truths at one and the same time, without having to reject one of them. He observed that these patients were suffering from paralysis, and yet as a physician he knew very well that there was no neurological impairment. “Glove anesthesia” was one such phenomenon. Here the patient suffers from a motor or sensory paralysis in roughly the area a glove usually covers. Since, however, the nerve runs along the limb, paralysis beginning at the end of the nerve’s trajectory, from the wrist down, is impossible. Freud liked to believe that there were data concealed from both patients and physicians alike: If only he would uncover these, that would undo the paradox. He was right. The third truth, which clarifies the non-contradiction between the two clashing observations, appears when we assume what Freud called the unconscious. If we take it that the human psyche is split between a conscious and an unconscious part, then the symptom does not necessarily deceive. Indeed: the symptom points at a censored truth. On this assumption Freud was able to refer to the symptom as not merely speaking, but telling a truth. In order to solve the paradox, in other words, Freud had to invent the unconscious, and by doing so he gave rise to psychoanalysis. Like him, psychoanalysts ever since have had to wait anxiously, perplexed, their attention floating, as they refrain from rushing into simplistic interpretations. Like him they have had to wait for additional information which the unconscious will provide in dreams, slips, and other expressions of the unconscious, to clarify what it was they actually observed and which basic assumptions they failed to note.
In this book, the concept of paradox I use is taken from the domain of logic, which studies the congruence between assumptions, or premises, and their outcomes. Where there is such congruence, a premise is true, and conversely, when there isn’t congruence, then it must be false. Now, when we find both congruence and incongruence, then what we have is a paradox. In this book, I will therefore recruit the logic of paradox and its solution, to approach and resolve patients’ afflictions. Formulating these afflictions in terms of paradox will enable us to resolve them as we would in the case of paradoxes. We will be guided in this by Freud’s principle as it is reflected in his question What is the hidden element? This would be the element which, once we disclose it, shows that the apparent contradiction behind the paradox is resolved. If paradox manifests itself as affliction or distress, then solving the former is bound to alleviate the latter.
Here is a classical paradox: If all humans are mortal, then Socrates, who is a human being, is mortal too. But, now, if we said that all humans are mortals, yet the human being Socrates is immortal, we would encounter a paradox. For going by our own premises, he cannot be both a human being and immortal. If, however we take into account the fact that it was we, ourselves, who made up the rules according to which these statements are made, then what we have is a kind of set up: paradox here features as a contradiction between statements of our own making. Paradox, in other words, can only emerge where we have statements that can be either confirmed or rejected: it does not occur in the actual, or real, world, only in the world that is constituted by statements. There is a paradox in the statement “A unicorn with two horns” because the statement flouts the premise defining “a unicorn”. The solution is therefore a conceptual one, requiring a change in our basic assumptions.
Wittgenstein considered reality a language game. This enabled him to solve paradoxes by dissolving their underlying assumptions. He claimed that problems don’t get solved but dissolved (Wittgenstein 2009). The reality in which we perceive a problem – or a paradox for that matter – is only one possible language game. If we move to another language game, the problem or paradox is likely to vanish. The solution of a paradox, in other words, is really by undoing it as a paradox. We don’t need to be able to assume that it is somehow possible for a dead Socrates to be alive.
All it takes to see that there need be no contradiction is to widen the lens a little; then there is no clash between for instance the statement that Socrates has been dead for thousands of years in the biological meaning of that word, while in terms of his impact on Western philosophy his spirit is still alive and kicking.
The well-known paradox of the liar illustrates how an erroneous premise results in paradox: When the liar announces “I am lying”, does he speak the truth or is he lying? If it is the truth he’s telling, then his being a liar stands confirmed; if what he says is a lie, then we must conclude that he is speaking the truth.
Figure 0.1: I am lying. Original drawing by the author.
Alt text figure 0.1: A drawing of a person with a speech bubble coming out of his mouth and in it written the text: I am lying
Had, instead, his statement been “You’re lying” – the question of paradox would not have arisen. It may very well be true when he says about another person that he, that other person, is lying.
Figure 0.2: You are lying. Original drawing by the author.
Alt text figure 0.2: A drawing of two persons facing each other. A speech bubble coming out of the mouth of one of them and in it written the text: You am lying
What is the shutter-minded premise that causes the paradox? And what must we bring into our field of vision so that the paradox may vanish? The misleading assumption is that the speaker in the first, paradoxical statement, is one and the same person, in contrast with the speaker in the second, non-paradoxical statement, who is very clearly not the same as the one about whom he states that he is a liar. So the solution to the paradox lies in us making the distinction between the speaker – who says the sentence “I am lying” – and the word “I”, as it appears in the sentence “I am lying”. Had the speaker formulated his statement as follows: “I am telling the truth right now when I say that I usually lie”, the paradox would have vanished. The “I” of “right now” is not the same “I” of “usually”.
Here is how paradox manifests itself through hysterical conversion: A patient does not manage to stand on his feet, though both the orthopedic surgeon and the neurologist have excluded organic causes. He tries to stand but he falls. At night, when he gets up to the toilet, half-asleep, he does not fall. This suggests an enactment of falling. The patient had in fact dropped out of a training program. His official version is that he wasn’t at all sorry about it. The unofficial, unconscious version seems to be that his dropping out expresses itself (unconsciously) in collapsing again and again. Here the paradox is that while he is indifferent to having been unable to continue the training program, he suffers from it at the same time. It is only when we treat these falls as symptomatic that we can resolve this paradox; we can do this because there is no contradiction between the unperturbed position and the aggrieved one, once we think that these positions are held by two distinct functions: the conscious and the unconscious. In so far as it simultaneously represses and expresses the unconscious, the symptom is paradoxical. A symptom appears when the conscious ideal and the unconscious desire are in conflict. It exists only when we do not distinguish between the conscious and the unconscious position.
When a symptom presents itself, its solution will depend on both the analyst’s and the patient’s willingness to see it as one. It is, in other words, only possible to start wondering what it means, and eventually offer an interpretation, provided we perceive a symptom as such. If either the analyst or the patient – or both, and each for their own reason – choose not to investigate the symptom and examine what caused it – then the symptom will continue as before. Knowing that there is something to know doesn't mean choosing to know. This makes a certain sense from the patient’s perspective: Had he been willing to know, he would not have had to produce the symptom in the first place. Interpreting the symptom as “a downfall” or a “dropping-out”, we as it were inviting the patient to make his grief conscious, that is, to undo the contradiction and thereby the make the symptom, which represented the grief, unnecessary.
Like the paradox of the liar, the paradox of hysterical conversion Freud countenanced is clarified once we recognize the presence of splitting. In the former case, the splitting occurs between speaker and the object of speech, in the latter it involves the distinction between conscious and unconscious. The person with hysterical conversion speaks the truth in the conscious when he reports that his hand is paralyzed, and another truth is interpreted by the analyst as spoken by the unconscious insofar as we can take the message – also – to be that his hand is not paralyzed. The statement of the unconscious is that the paralysis of his hand is a metaphor for such repressed drives. So we can think of paradox as a riddle, which takes the following general shape: What is the invisible thing that will make it clear to us that paradox, here, is not inevitable? The answer is the split between the conscious and the unconscious.
The change in – or removal of - basic assumptions this involves can be compared to the experience of awakening: When we wake up, we shed the assumption that what we were just dreaming was real. The information which the dreamer misses as long as she is asleep becomes manifest as soon as she wakes up. In this sense, a paradox is resolved much in the same way as we wake up from a dream. If it’s a nightmare we feel very relieved, like with a painful symptom. Paradox is based in illusion. When we wake up from it, it disappears. It is no coincidence that in all mystical or spiritual traditions personal growth takes the form of an awakening or an opening of the eyes. Meditation, for instance, is often described as an awakening from the dream of reality.
Like a Wittgensteinian approach, a Lacanian perspective has a clear advantage over positivist approaches. Because the former - which takes the concept of reality to be mythical in nature, a narrative made up from figures and images - is radically anti-essentialist it enables an awakening from realities as given. This object is called a table because we have agreed to call it so. If we were employed in a furniture shop, we might have called it merchandise. Every narrative, that is to say, which goes by the name of “reality” comes to support a wishful way of seeing ourselves and the world. If we take the idea that paradox implies a mistake in our underlying assumptions, usually to the effect of losing sight of the larger picture; and if we venture further that healing the pain of the symptom requires setting this mistake straight – then we must ask where the mistake originates.
What causes an error to be a Freudian error is that it is uninnocent; it is the outcome rather of an unconsciously motivated blindness to disregard the full, or fuller picture. Here what it takes to wake from the dream or shed the illusion is for the subject of the unconscious to agree to let go of the intended blindness. The interpretation will function as an invitation to look at the evaded knowledge. The patient will unconsciously choose or agree whether or not to listen. Such agreement will be one step in the direction of healing: Once the patient is conscious of the fact that she ignores the fuller picture, her field of vision will expand. It is due to the patient’s own limited view that error happens: It allows her to cling to a story that depicts a reality full of flattering, reassuring, exciting or pleasing interpretations based on her basic assumptions. All manner of distress and symptoms are the outcome of these paradoxical conditions. The analyst’s interpretation comes to show what the narrative leaves out, an exclusion that results in the symptom. Translating distress into paradox is not a trivial task. Often it is hard to discern which elements are the ones that will expand the picture. By far the most difficult though is to get the patient to realize the virtual nature of her reality: After all, gaining such a perspective will require her to let go of a desire or pleasure which the narrative keeps intact as long as she considers it a necessary narrative.
Albert Einstein believed that the paradoxes in quantum theory were the result of the limited capacities of measurement instruments. Niels Bohr, by contrast, thought that chaos is inherent to the universe on the subatomic (i.e., quantum) level (Kumar 2011). Einstein might have been in thrall to a Freudian error: a refusal to surrender the fantasy of a harmonious universe. A letter he wrote to Freud seems to support this, because there he complains about the lack of harmony among the nations (Freud, Einstein 2001 [1933]). Freud’s reply is level-headed and resembles his stance in Totem and Taboo (Freud 2001 [1912-13] p. ix) where he claims it is only when the sons or brothers join hands that the dictator, who wallows in his unlimited pleasures, can be vanquished. Freud adds that a harmonious reality is not something we should hope for.
Expanding perspectives is not always beneficial as is the case with symptoms. For example, the persistent knowledge that our loved ones may die before us is not beneficial. It can become a true, yet obsessive thought. It is also important to state that not every distress or discontent is fixed by solving the paradox that supports it. There is a moment, in treatment as in life, when we must admit that paradox is inherent to life. We can expand our view up to a point, we can add only so many dimensions. There’s a limit to our ability to apply symbolic logic to real paradoxical phenomena.
I will be looking at some of the key coordinates of Lacanian psychoanalysis through the notion of paradox. For each of the paradoxes I examine I will clarify the associated theoretical psychoanalytical concepts; I will illustrate the psychic problems it generates and propose interpretations and clinical interventions. These interventions come to expose the patient to the possibility of dealing with his distress by formulating it in terms of paradox. This will set him on a search for missing information or a perspective not taken, and lead to a solution as he rejects earlier assumptions which fed into the paradox. Here are the main paradoxes which the following chapters will be discussing:
The object vs existence paradox – the object exists in its absence, that is, it must be absent in order to exist; or in other words: the existence of the object relies on its distinction from its background, a distinction that requires the possibility of its disappearance.
The paradox of becoming – “There’s nothing more whole than a broken heart”; the human subject exists due to what they lack. There are sub-sections to this paradox, all of which point at different modes of subjecthood: (a) The paradox of subject in relation to object; we can formulate the paradoxical relations between object and subject in terms of the joke about the masochist asking the sadist to flog him: with typical sadistic pleasure, the sadist refuses. This response is both gratifying and frustrating at the same time. This double inversion is typical of humans because it is embedded in symbolic language, which uniquely allows for paradoxes like “I feel really satisfied to feel hungry at last”. (b) The paradox of subject in relation to signifier – here the paradox is that the subject cannot be without signifier insofar as the signifier represents the subject. However, this act of representation also erases the subject. A major instance can be found in the compulsive personality structure which resists being reduced to a definition – since a definition is nothing but words – while equally being unable to exist without such a definition, because it is what represents it. (c) The paradox of the subject in relation to the drive lies in the fact that the more she tries to satisfy the drive the stronger it grows, as in the Talmudic saying: “A man has a small limb; if he starves it, it's sated; if he sates it, it is hungry” (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sukka 52:2) which is to say: the more our sexual desires are satisfied, the bigger they grow. (d) The paradox of the ego – “Why is it that I suffer, while I am not lacking for anything?” - though the ostensible reason for suffering is lack, is that often we have a sense of yearning when we don't realize that what troubles us is lacking lack itself - overabundance.
The paradox of freedom of choice versus fate – the more a person is aware of his or her limited freedom, more freedom in those domains in which they are at liberty to choose becomes available. Another way of putting this is: the more aware a person is of being moved by unconscious forces (or in Freud’s word: acknowledging not being the proprietor of his own home) the better positioned they are to identify with their unconscious and thus to perceive the presence of their free will in those things they did not ostensibly choose.
Paradoxes resulting from leaving the choosing subject out of the picture. In the paradox of the liar, for instance, we have the person who articulates the sentence and the person who is the subject of the sentence. Once this is understood, the non-contradiction becomes obvious. Here I will review the developmental aspects of the moment of emerging subjecthood in the child’s life and the moment later on when the subject is erased as desire is repressed together with the desiring agency.
Paradoxes resulting from limited or mistaken use of metaphors, especially metaphors inspired by physics. This covers Freud’s theory of drives which was inspired by thermo-dynamic theory; through the joint uses of paradoxes in quantum theory and psychoanalysis, to superstring theory which solves the contradictions between the theories of general and particular relativity, on the one hand, and quantum theory, on the other, by adding dimensions.
Paradoxes that stem from missing a higher dimension. Shifts from point to line, from line to surface, and from surface to volume can be represented topologically. From this mathematical, abstract perspective, there is an additional, fourth dimension, namely of space – which goes beyond the three intuitive perspectives. (a) While a point does not occupy real space, it has a symbolic existence. Similarly, neither signifier, nor symbol describe real phenomena: they create a symbolic reality. Many paradoxes emerge as a result of our treating symbolic phenomena as though they were real. (b) While the line describes linearity and hierarchy, it fails to capture rhizomatic or circular phenomena. While the former describes the discourse of the authority or master, the passage to the two-dimensional surface describes an analytical and ethico-analytical discourse. This discourse does not accept the authoritarian Other. The unconscious is structured like a language – which unfolds associatively, weblike, rather than in a linear manner. Once the psychoanalyst no longer relates to his patient’s speech as if it was a linear phenomenon, but, setting aside its temporal vector, approaches it like a text that can be read from a variety of angles – this allows him to reveal additional meanings.
(c) This movement from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional topology allows us to think of the subject outside the strictures of the inside-outside dichotomy. We could also call this a passage from seeing the individual as an isolated ego, separate from her or his surroundings, to seeing them as a subject, a figure in a narrative. (d) The fourth dimension of space cannot be grasped intuitively; it is captured in topological formulations and graphs. An example of this is the four-dimensional topological structure called the cross-cap. These topological tools describe situations in which container and contained turn inside out, and are containing and contained at the same time. This is a useful image for our understanding of anxiety which involves an internal and external threat simultaneously. The threat is constituted by unconscious internal contents but at the same time by them in an external, alien form. In his The Uncanny, (Freud 2001 [1919] p. 219, Freud describes this as a turning of the inside out, whereby the deepest internal content is experienced as no less alien than an external threat. Similar inversions occur between the positions of lover and beloved; between identification with a conscious that contains the unconscious or the other way around, an unconscious that contains the conscious. Additional instances are inversions between concepts like the super-ego and id, subject and language, and reality and symptom.
7. The paradox of time – whose foremost representation is in the logic of afterwardsness, referring to a double causality in which hindsight makes the past turn into a cause. This paradox rests in the double function of causality: not only “due to” (linear line from past till future) but also “for the sake of” – with the future constituting the reason for the past. Thus, a linear vector connects between the experience of distress and the need or wish to express or complain about it. Along the vector of afterwardsness, distress is produced in order to express, or complain about it. This makes sense when we think about a past distress which was silenced and which can find expression through the staging of current distresses. Afterwardsness is often at work in psychic life: (a) It can appear in prose writing or in the punchline of a joke: a surprising interpretation can change the meaning of something already said. (b) The subject emerges as a result of the very assumption that it exists. As the parents attribute intentionality to the child they implant an intending identity within her or him. When they interpret a contraction in the child’s face as a smile, they convey to the child that he or she meant to be communicating, to smile intentionally. (c) At the early stages of psychoanalysis, the analyst listens because the analysand has turned to psychoanalysis in order to talk. Later it is the analyst’s listening that becomes the reason for the analysand’s talking. The listening presence of the analyst as well as the emerging transference relations cause the unconscious to produce things like dreams. (d) It is the suffering of the symptom that eventually functions as evidence of the thing which caused that suffering; like the dreamer pinching herself. When I pinch myself and feel the pain, it means that I am not dreaming. (e) While Freudian reconstruction is often perceived as historical in nature, Lacanian reconstruction stresses the rewriting that goes into the patient’s current perception. (f) The present too takes on a different meaning if it is experienced with reference to the future, especially with a view of a final reckoning: “Have you lived according to the desire that is in you?” The implication is that we decide in the present with a view to the question with which choice we will feel more reconciled in the end. (g) The aspect of the future is not only determined by the moment of death but in the symbolic dimension, which exceeds the limits of organic existence. (h) Sometimes the last word tarries, failing to give its afterward-meaning to the first word. The latter stays suspended, without clear meaning. When the psychoanalyst makes a cut by ending the meeting, she does this intentionally at a certain moment: before the patient can say more. This is how she puts an end to the infinite slip-sliding between meanings, forcing the patient to take a position. The déjà vu experience is a special instance of afterwardsness unfolding simultaneously.
8. The paradox of the act describes the situation when a person performs an action and this radically changes her or him. At that moment, the person who performed the act vanishes and instead someone else, who was not there before, appears. In topological terms this can be put as follows: a cut is made across a surface. Is the cut located on the pre-cut surface or on the post-cut surface? The uncut surface was replaced by the cut surface, much like the subject changes in the act, splitting on the temporal axis into the subject-before and the subject-after the act. The act requires the subject to disappear and reappear as someone she or he is still unfamiliar with. Many situations involving anxiety or change aversiveness are well-explained when we consider them in terms of this formulation.
9. There are also, finally, paradoxes that cannot be solved, or that are not meant to be solved and stay that way, unsolved. These constitute states of anxiety, of perplexity, and also of wonder and creativity. Not all of existence is amenable to symbolic logic, to what can be put into words or quantified. This is what in Lacan’s teaching is called the Real.
References Introduction
Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sukka
Freud, S. (2001 [1895]), Studies in Hysteria. The Standard Edition, Vol 2, trans. James Strachey. London: Vintage.
Freud, S. (2001 [1912-13]), Totem and Taboo. The Standard Edition, Vol 13, trans. James Strachey. London: Vintage.
Freud, S. (2001 [1919]), The Uncanny. The Standard Edition, Vol 17, trans. James Strachey. London: Vintage.
Freud, S., Einstein, A. (2001 [1933]), Why War. The Standard Edition, Vol 22, trans. James Strachey. London: Vintage. p. 197.
Kumar, M. (2011), Quantum – Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality. New York: Norton.
Wittgenstein, L. (2009), Philosophical Investigations. UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
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