The Choice of Neurosis

Charcot and Freud

Abstract

The article approaches Freud’s concept of the choice of neurosis (Neurosenwahl) through Jacques Nassif’s 1968 essay “Freud and Science.” In this text, Nassif focuses on the ways in which Jean-Martin Charcot influenced the development of Freud’s thought, highlighting in particular Charcot’s decisive gesture of isolating neurosis as a purely psychological affection. The article accordingly proceeds from the hypothesis that the repetition of the break—which Nassif identifies as the central methodological gesture of psychoanalysis— takes place here in the form of a repetition and radicalization of Charcot’s “choice of neurosis.” In other words, the problem of the choice of neurosis could be posed only on the basis of Charcot’s prior gesture, and if Freud wished to remain faithful to this gesture, he had to articulate the choice of neurosis as a speculative, metapsychological concept. The article shows that the choice of neurosis functions as a nodal point between empiricism, psychoanalytic technique, and metapsychological speculation, and, on another level, between ontogenetic and phylogenetic approaches: a constellation that becomes particularly clear in the analysis of the initially lost and later rediscovered twelfth and final metapsychological essay, “Overview of the Transference Neuroses.”