Autocommunication as a critique of contemporary philosophical psychoanalysis

Abstract

Contemporary philosophical psychoanalysis is increasingly turning to mythological stories in order to explain the phenomenon of autocommunication as a constant loss of self and encounter with self. The relevance of the article is determined by the complex superimposition of such mythological plots, requiring the involvement of certain interdisciplinary instruments of analysis in philosophical research. In the Lacanian tradition of psychoanalysis, we suggest that the story of Eurydice serves to explain Dora’s case and substantiates the autocommunicative core of experience. This plot allowed us to criticize both positivist and economic (investment, fetishism) aspects of classical psychoanalysis and to show the epistemological potential of autocommunication as overcoming the totality of the uncanny and returning «to one’s home». The aim of the article is to investigate the epistemological potential of autocommunication, to which psychoanalysis gives a narrative dimension, and the modern philosophy of the self and the alien – an axiological meaning; the task is to clarify, using the example of the newest psychoanalysis’ work with the uncanny, the limits of autocommunication as a mechanism of both seduction (Sirens) and the return of all participants of future communication to themselves (their own mind). The main method of the study was a metacritique of psychoanalysis from the perspective of general notions of the structure of experience and encounter with the other across generations. The main results of the study are that, contrary to the models of the uncanny as fear of encountering oneself or one’s place in the world, another understanding of the uncanny is possible as a choice that all people face in the continuation of the human race. In this case, the happiness of continuation of the species or creative self-realization overcomes the initial impulses of creative temptations, turning reasoning alone with oneself into a mirror of communication with others that has already taken place. The newness consists in the fact that the paper solved the main contradiction of the theory of autocommunication, which is divided into two parts: the illusion of the desire to communicate and the imperative encounter with one’s speech as a stranger, creating a situation of joint communication. It has been shown that, contrary to the common view in philosophy, this joint communication is socially determined and not at all an extension of the internal topology or structure of thought. The contradiction can be resolved by adopting the concept of «the gift of time» (Derrida), which overcomes the antinomy of exchange and gift. Directions for further research on the basis of this work imply the development of a consistent theory of autocommunication that does not reduce it to individual cases of finding the self or postulating the other and that takes into account the social framework of any communication.

Keywords

• psychoanalysis
• lacan
• bracha ettinger
• barbara cassin
• autocommunication
• gift
• exchange
• philosophical imaginary