“Timpanizzare la filosofia”: magia della parola e verità storica nella psicoanalisi freudiana

Abstract

Attention to the linguistic element runs throughout the evolution of psychoanalytic thought and introduces aspects that, as Corradi Fiumara (1985: 11) writes, inaugurate a “listening perspective” on language and interaction – often neglected by the tradition of Western thought, which has been more attuned to the perspective of speaking production. Drawing on a suggestive Derridean expression, Corradi Fiumara sees the need to “tympanize philosophy”, reintegrating the focus on spoken discourse with the inescapable activity of reception that accompanies it. The paper aims to highlight the elements that allow Freudian psychoanalysis to be precisely defined as a “methodology of listening” (ivi: 28), thought an exploration of the discursive dynamics that characterize its technique, and in particular of the activity of reception and interpretation that constitutes its distinctive mark. Beginning with the thematization of the peculiar power attributed to words (§1) – both on a methodological level and within the realm of social reality – psychoanalytic technique emerges as a technique of intersubjective dialogue. Discourse substantiates the clinical method, permeating the dynamics of analysis and care (§2). From this perspective, a crucial point is Freud’s distinction between ‘historical truth’ and ‘material truth’ (§3), which enables a deeper understanding of the emergence of a certain image of the receiving subject and of reception as an activity irreducible to the mechanical counterpart of the speaking subject’s expression. Therapeutic care proves inseparable from the receptive and interpretive process, which restores to the traumatic event its overall meaning only through a negotiation of meaning between interlocutors (§4).