Psychische Realität und klinisches Vorgehen

If we want to take the great importance of psychic reality seriously, as did Freud and Jean Laplanche, then technical considerations follow. The psychoanalytic method would then have the task of enabling the patient to explore that psychic reality where this inner “foreign body” is. This is so that the patient can visualize and assess this with respect to both the coherence of the speech and also with respect to the intersubjective and personal historical (infantile) reality in general. When the patient becomes aware of a possible “illogicality” of this psychic reality, the path opens up to a critical exploration in order to arrive at a new, more appropriate, more bearable translation. Such a translation is a dynamic process in the life of the individual, as Freud already emphasized in the early days of psychoanalysis: we do not have memories from the past but form memories about the past. A new formation, i.e., a new translation, in different stages of life then becomes conceivable, especially as the human being is a “self-deprecating, self-theorizing subject” (Laplanche). We need to move from a logic of states to a logic of change, and if transformation is not possible, the insight into that which cannot be cured can make it possible to live with what will always remain a foreign body (especially in cases of psychoses and after sexual abuse).