Self-Seeing: The Place of Freud in a Psychoanalyst’s Development

Freud’s onetime prominence in psychoanalytic education has dwindled in recent decades as the field and its priorities have moved away from his foundational contributions. This paper argues against that trend and for a vital place for Freud in psychoanalytic education, particularly by virtue of the generative encounter with one’s own unconscious that a deep engagement with his work has the potential to facilitate. The author sees this fundamental value as transcending debates about the disciplinary essence of psychoanalysis and the necessary elements of psychoanalytic curricula. Drawing on Proust and Freud himself, the author makes this case through a self-analytic elaboration of his own 20-year relationship with Freud’s work, and illustrates how this evolving relationship now informs his approach to teaching Freud to candidates today. Specifically, he draws a distinction between “Teaching Freud” and “Freudian Teaching,” the latter of which promotes the sort of encounter with the unconscious theorized throughout the paper.