Freud and Science

Abstract

This article is a translation of Jacques Nassif’s 1968 article “Freud et la science,” which appeared in Cahiers pour l’Analyse. Nassif assesses the compatibility of the psychoanalytic theory of repetition with the concept of the epistemological break. If epistemological breaks are ruptures with the past, then how does that apply in the case of psychoanalysis as both a general science and a clinical practice? As Nassif notes, the concept of repetition is fundamental to both registers of psychoanalysis: as a behavior outside the clinic and as an instrumental phenomenon within the clinic. Given the fundamentality of repetition, what is the status of the break in the field and function of psychoanalysis? Nassif’s answer is that psychoanalysis breaks with the past by virtue of a repetition of a previous series of breaks in the psychological sciences. This series of breaks appears across the works of Jean-Martin Charcot, John Hughlings Jackson, Hippolyte Bernheim, and Josef Breuer. After a close-reading of Freud’s engagement with Charcot’s work, an examination of his tutelage under Charcot, and an assessment of the novelty of Charcot’s methods and theories, Nassif suggests that epistemological breaks imply a subsequent “repetition of the break” [répétition de coupure]. However, how Freud makes his own inaugural break through the repetition of a previous series of breaks remains to be elucidated. Nassif’s article thus attempts to “repeat” the origins of psychoanalysis, and to shed light on the applicability of the notion of the epistemological break in contested “sciences,” like Marxism and psychoanalysis. The article ends with a note that a sequel is to follow. Nassif later incorporated the material from this article into his major 1977 book Freud, l’inconscient.