Psyche’s Speculative Figure: Freud – Derrida

Abstract

In the Interpretation of Dreams Freud presents the unconscious as the figure of a threshold, oscillating between pleasure and unpleasure, form and content, effectiveness and non-materiality. In further texts, speculative concepts answer these oscillating moments, and thus psyche unfolds as a speculative figure. The main question of this article is then: How can philosophy be able to grasp psyche’s speculative body? One decisive attempt is Derrida’s answer to psychoanalysis. Deconstruction attempts to reconstruct psychoanalysis as the other to philosophy, but also deconstructs the possibility of the other as such. Thus, deconstruction rejects psychoanalysis as an ‘other’ and insists on its own sameness, but is incapable of upholding this distinction. As a consequence, philosophy is situated at the place of a structural impossibility; it produces its own loss, while becoming infinitely similar to psychoanalysis.