Abstract:
This essay compares Freud’s and Heidegger’s concept of Angst. Heidegger’s and Freud’s interpretations are guided by different aims: A) in “Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety” Freud tries to define the concept of anxiety as a main element in neurosis; B) Heidegger’s notion plays a major role in gaining the existential meaning of Dasein. Despite the differences, this essay claims that it is possible to discover a common anthropo-existential interpretation. Anxiety marks the anthropological and existential passage from the non-distinction of the pre-subjective life to the distinction that emerges from the progressive differentiation of the subject from the world. From such a distinction originates the conflict between the tendency to regain non-distinction (as a pre-birth condition) and the necessity of multiplicity. In Freud, anxiety is the price for the renunciation of indistinction; in Heidegger, anxiety is encountered when this price is recognized as unavoidable. This is the core problem that this study takes into account in order to show the existential and anthropological role of anxiety. I will proceed with an analysis of Freud’s interpretation of anxiety, and then with the Heideggerian notion. The third part points out the affinity between them. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the dis-chronic temporality that characterizes the trauma of birth. In order to show the latter, we compare the temporalities of trauma and aesthetic experience. To perform this temporal analysis, the text adopts a phenomenological viewpoint (especially from Husserl).
Keywords:
Angst, Freud, Heidegger, trauma of birth, subjectivity, existence, temporality
How to cite:
Mauri, Martina. “Dis-chronic Experience of No-thing: Existential Analysis of Freud’s and Heidegger’s Concept of Anxiety.” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 4, no. 2 (2020): 52-69. https://doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2020.0016.
Author:
Martina Mauri
FINO – Northwestern Italian Philosophy Consortium
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9699-8842
martina.mauri01@universitadipavia.it
References:
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of the Space. Translated by Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.
Binswanger, Ludwig. Being in the World. Selected papers of Ludwig Binswanger. Translated by Jacob Needleman. New York: Basic Book, 1963.
Brenner, Charles. An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. International University Press, 1973.
Carel, Havi. Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger. Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2006.
Erwin, Edward, ed. The Freud Encyclopedia. Theory, Therapy, and Culture. New York – London: Routledge, 2002. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203800997.
Fink, Eugen. “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild: Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Unwirklichkeit.” In Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930-1939. Vol. 21, Phaenomenologica. Nijhoff, 1966. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6422-1.
Fletcher, John. Freud and the Scene of Trauma. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823254590.001.0001.
Foucault, Michel. Dits et écrits (1954-1988), tome I. Paris: Gallimard, 2001.
Freud, Sigmund. “Early Psycho-Analytic Publications.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume III. Edited by James Strachey. London: Hogart Press, 1962.
Freud, Sigmund.. “The Ego and the Id.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX. Edited by James Strachey. London: Hogart Press, 1961.
Freud, Sigmund.. “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XX. Edited by James Strachey. Hogart Press, 1959.
Freud, Sigmund.. Interpretation of Dreams. Translated and edited by James Strachey. New York: Basic Book, 2010.
Freud, Sigmund.. “Lecture XXV: Anxiety.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVI Part III. Edited by James Strachey. London: Hogart Press, 1963.
Freud, Sigmund.. “Some Character-types Met with in Psycho-analytic Work.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV. Edited by James Strachey. London: Hogart Press, 1963.
Gabbard, Glen O. Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, 5th ed. Arlington: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2014.
Giberti, Franco, and Romolo Rossi. Manuale di Psichiatria. 3rd ed. Padova: Piccin Nuova Libraria, 1986.
Goldstein, Kurt. The Organism. A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man. New York: Zone Book, 1995.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. New York: State University of New York Press, 1996.
Heidegger, Martin. “What is Metaphysics?” In Pathmarks. Edited by William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812637.
Heidegger, Martin. History of the Concept of Time. Translated by Theodore Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
Heidegger, Martin. Zollikoner Seminare. Protokolle-Gespräche-Briefe. Edited by Medard Boss. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1987.
Heidegger, Martin. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 2010.
Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917), Husserliana X. Translated by John Barnett Brough. Kluwer Academic Publishers 1991. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3718-8.
Husserl, Edmund. Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory (1898-1925), Husserliana XXIII. Translated by John Barnett Brough. Springer 2005.
Laplanche, Jean. “Note on Afterwardsness.” In Essays on Otherness. London: Routledge, 1999.
Laplanche, Jean, and Jean-Bernard Pontalis. The Language of Psycho-Analysis. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: W.W. Norton, 1974.
May, Rollo. The Meaning of Anxiety. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1950. https://doi.org/10.1037/10760-000.
Mazzarella, Eugenio. “Psicoanalisi, antropoanalisi e ontologia nei Seminari di Zollikon di Martin Heidegger.” In Esperienza della soggettività e trascendenza dell’altro. I margini di un’esplorazione fenomenologico-psichiatrica, 501-518, edited by S. Besoli. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2006.
Moran, Dermot, and Joseph Cohen. The Husserl Dictionary. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012.
Oyebode, Femi. Sim’s Symptoms in the Mind: Textbook of Descriptive Psychopathology, 5th ed. Saunders Elsevier 2015.
Rank, Otto. The Trauma of Birth. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1929.
Open Access Statement:
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Submitting a text to Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture means that the author agrees with the general conditions of this license. The author does and will maintain copyrights and publishing rights for his/her article without any restrictions.