Although the infant-narcissist’s characteristic ‘megalomania and [… ] diversion of interest from the external world’ cannot be heralded as a straightforward cultural virtue, psychoanalysis recognises the importance of narcissism for defining an ethical position in the world (1914a, 74). For example, we can note how narcissism permits the imaginative identifications that are the prerequisite of human compassion and fellow feeling; as Freud observes, the narcissistic origin of compassion is evident in the etymology alone — the German Mitlied, meaning to suffer with. In the case of the ‘Wolfman’, written in the same year as ‘On Narcissism’, he evidences ‘the narcissistic origin of compassion’ with reference to his patient’s identification with his father’s potential suffering (1918 [1914], 88). In his recollection of the primal scene, Freud’s patient asserts that ‘he had observed the [father’s] penis disappear [in the act of copulation], that he had felt compassion for his father on that account, and had rejoiced at the reappearance of what he thought had been lost’ (88). The Wolfman’s narcissistic identification in the primal scene — his capacity to ‘suffer with’ his father — which is formative in the development of the subject’s ‘character’ points up the motivation of infantile self-interest in the most noble and seemingly altruistic of human capacities.
As Freud’s only child analysis, the case history of ‘Little Hans’ provides us with a summative example of the cultural and psychoanalytic
investments in the site of childhood; moreover, it illustrates the social effects of infantile self-interest. Alongside Freud’s research into the child, it will become clear that he is equally interested in the child as an active researcher. When Freud admires the extent to which Hans’ self-belief underwrites his sapere aude spirit, he is touching on the profound metapsychological concern regarding the relation between self-love, self-knowledge and self-possession that we began to consider in Chapter 1. We shall see how the theory of narcissism (as a theory of self-love) comes to frame this relation and inform Freud’s ambition towards scientific impersonality (or analytic research). Freud’s early concept of Wissbegierde2 — the drive to know, or the research instinct — will be central to our discussion because it speaks to the narcissistic child’s passion for knowledge (to know himself) and interrogates the role of personal interest and personally motivated illusion in the impersonal accomplishment of knowledge. In later chapters we shall see how narcissistic love and cultural impersonality, which in our reading of Little Hans are increasingly tied together, become outright opposites in the work of Richard Sennett and Christopher Lasch. With this in mind we can hardly overestimate the importance of Hans’ educational failure; his failure to be acculturated into an objective reality through the work of analysis. It is precisely this failure to achieve objective reality which changes the focus of Freud’s analysis from correcting an ‘epistemological deficit’, to appreciating the dynamics of resistance and erotic transference which propel Hans’ continuing project to know.
Wissbegierde as the passionate desire for knowledge is given a primacy and an ontological significance in Freud’s thought; it is also surely the motor-force of scientific enquiry. And yet Freud tells us that science, which is positioned as one of man’s highest achievements, entails ‘the most complete renunciation of the pleasure principle of which our mental activity is capable’ (1910b, 165). Moreover, science is to be extolled for its ‘passionless impartiality’ (1915a, 275). If there is a tension here it is one that seems to be discharged by the concept of sublimation; science can retain its libidinal investments (and the researcher his passion) once we recognise that scientific activity is a substitute satisfaction that can heighten the yield of pleasure available from the sublimation of the instincts. Perhaps, then, the problem of reconciling the passionate desire for knowledge that Freud identifies as the hallmark of a great researcher — as in his ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ study for example — with the idea that science must be passionless is not so problematic after all. But this understanding of research as the product of sublimation may not be entirely satisfying if we consider the extent to which Freud will incorporate the process of idealisation (which we recall is distinct to sublimation as it maintains the promise of sexual satisfaction) in the work of science.
This is the problem that Rachel Blass (2006) pursues in her reading of Freud’s Leonardo study. Blass is committed to rehabilitating Freud’s concept of Wissbegierde in order to engender an epistemological stance for psychoanalysis that ‘focuses on the necessary involvement of passion rather than detachment’ (1259). She highlights the problems that core psychoanalytic concepts pose for a more expansive treatment of the research instinct, pointing in particular to Freud’s theory of motivation as the principal barrier to an understanding of Wissbegierde that would accommodate desire as ‘both refined or sublimated and as qualitatively subjectively passionate’ (1268). The either/or that Freud’s apparatus sets up is ‘if passionate, then libidinal; if sublimated, then detached and neutral’ (1268). Acknowledging these structural difficulties, and the fact that Freud’s explicit treatment of the research instinct is short-lived (appearing predominantly throughout his writings of 1908-1915), Blass is clear that a passionate desire to know, existing independently of the self-serving satisfactions that knowledge can bring, is one of the ‘foundational yet unarticulated’ ideas in Freud’s corpus (1272). Ultimately, in order to mobilise a Freudian Wissbegierde that is non-derivative, she aligns the research instinct with Eros. Her thesis is that, ‘we can desire truth passionately without it serving some need or wish and without it distorting our perception of reality because Eros is striving towards a unity that is universal and does not necessarily seek personal gratification’ (1272). By placing Wissbegierde under the sign of Eros, Blass can conclude that ‘the act of researching itself, the act of seeking to know, like the act of love, is in itself a valuable state of being’ (1273).
The risk with this conception of the research instinct, as I see it, is that its necessary emphasis on striving for unity under Eros may derail Freud’s stringent advice to the analyst-as-researcher. A clear example of Freud’s expectations in this area can be seen in his paper ‘PsychoAnalysis and Telepathy’ (1941 [1921]) where he draws a stark distinction between a sort of anti-Wissbegierde of the occultist who looks only for confirmation of his faith, and the Wissbegierde of the analyst. Here is Freud on the latter point:
Moved by an extreme distrust of the power of human wishes and of the temptations of the pleasure principle, they [analysts] are ready, for the sake of attaining some fragment of objective certainty, to sacrifice everything — the dazzling brilliance of a flawless theory, the exalted consciousness of having achieved a comprehensive view of the universe, and the mental calm brought about by the possession of extensive grounds for expedient and ethical action. In place of all these, they are content with fragmentary pieces of knowledge and with basic hypotheses lacking preciseness and ever open to revision. (1941, 178-179)
Leaving aside the thought that the analyst, thus conceived, is the researcher of Freud’s fantasies, the point to raise here is that the unifying drive of Eros appears at odds with the analyst’s commitment to the resolutely provisional character of that which can be achieved through analytic research (and analytic treatment). Which raises the question, is Freud’s exaltation of the fragment (‘fragmentary pieces of knowledge’) undermined once the research instinct is aligned with Eros’ drive for unity? We shall come to see how this vital tension, which inheres in the structure of research itself, can be illuminated through the figure of the narcissistic child.
John Farrell (2007) puts forward a more critical exploration of what he takes to be Freud’s problematic opposition between ‘the repressive, detached outlook of the scientist and the passionate interest of the artist’ (245). Like Blass, Farrell identifies the figure of Leonardo da Vinci as Freud’s scientific hero for whom ‘inquiry takes the form of a passion’, and more broadly, points up the centrality of Eros in Freud’s ‘hope for a passionate science’ (245; 250). Farrell identifies narcissism as the integral theoretical construct that grounds the work of the intellect under the aegis of Eros. He observes that in the narcissistic stage of psychic development, ‘thought has not separated itself from fantasy’ (which is to say that the pleasure principle has not given way to the reality principle). Thus, by highlighting the narcissistic root of intellectual activity, Freud ‘endowed all of humanity with a state of being, located in the infantile past, in which thought and desire are one’ (249). We might add that it is not simply that this narcissistic stage is a necessary developmental hurdle to be transcended by the achievement of object-love, but rather that the narcissistic formation of early infancy continues to haunt the possibilities of intellectual organisation. The importance of narcissism for an understanding of the relation between Eros and the work of the intellect will prove productive to our discussion, particularly when we come to focus on Freud’s theorising of infantile sexuality. The problem that Wissbegierde poses for the order of the instincts — can there be a desire to know that exists independently of the sexual instincts? — is implicitly challenged by the theory of narcissism. Yet crucially, the theory of narcissism was not fully established throughout the period in which Freud’s thought on the research instinct was most pronounced (1908-1915). One of the many significant contributions which Freud’s theory of narcissism makes to the metapsychological project is that ‘it reveals the roots of logos in eros, without reducing the former to the latter’ (Alford, ix).
I have precised Blass’ and Farrell’s accounts of Freud’s integral positioning of passion in the field of scientific investigation for two reasons. First, they highlight a crucial qualification to the idea that Freud’s most significant cultural legacy has been to democratise artistic genius. It is widely regarded that by illuminating the extraordinary operations of the unconscious, Freud gifted a poetic faculty to the ordinary man. Through positioning as central to Freud’s cultural legacy the figure of the researcher alongside the more familiar and culturally approved figure of the artist, Blass and Farrell remind us that Freud embeds within his model of the mind the activity of research alongside the creativity of art. Whether via the primary and passionate placement of Wissbegierde as an independent instinct (Blass), or via the permanent trace of the narcissistic unity of thought and desire (Farrell), an alliance between imagination and enquiry is forged which restores to the figure of the researcher a status which might ultimately challenge the culturally upheld distinction between science and art. The second reason for referring to these two accounts is to open the way for my own thoughts on the notion of Wissbegierde, which will look to the hermeneutic work of analysis itself to suggest an alternative reading of how the prospects of (self)love, (self)knowledge and (self)possession might coalesce in the activity of psychoanalysis. As suggested, research for Freud is not exclusively the activity of the scientist. Freud is equally assured in speaking of the researches of historical man, the analyst, and of course, the child. Indeed, in their readings of the Leonardo study both Blass and Farrell demonstrate how the genealogy of genius — artistic or scientific — is located by Freud in the prototypical researches of childhood. Bearing in mind the time period in which Wissbegierde featured in Freud’s writings, we may expect his contemporary work on the subject of childhood and child-analysis to prove instructive to this topic.
My presentation of Little Hans’ interest to the concept of Wissbegierde will also draw from Freud’s open letter of 1907 ‘The Sexual Enlightenment of Children’ (1907a), his paper of 1908 ‘On the Sexual Theories of Children’, and an amendment made in 1915 to his ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’. Taken together, Freud’s writings on infantile sexuality of this period demonstrate how the site of childhood was gaining stature as an object of scientific research, and how the figure of the child was itself being situated as a paradigmatic researcher. Moreover, these complementary papers reveal something of Freud’s ethical recommendations on childhood and infantile narcissism as a cultural problematic.