insight and rigourinterpretation is derived from psychoanalytic theory, philosophical aesthetics or some
other discourse is immaterial. in this regard, i would take issue with Joan mullin’s
affirmation in this volume, of the value of ‘a rhetor/artist’s toolkit that contribute[s] to
their own professional productions – critiques, analyses, interpretations’ (Chapter 9).
mullin claims that such an auto- critical stance, can accompany the aim to ‘create an
edginess, dissonance or cohesion in an artefact’, whereas from a Freudian perspective,
these two aims are incompatible.
at the beginning of this chapter, i made the claim that the only properly
psychoanalytic view in research is not the view from a theory, but the view from a subject
position that has inaugurated the investigation. This may enable us to understand
why some proponents of applied psychoanalysis in art and design can nonetheless see
psychoanalysis as offering only potential, rather than actual, rigour:
i have to admit that i find it [psychoanalysis] less active as my work goes on.
perhaps i’m affected by the insistent abuse of psychoanalysis in the culture at
large. i think there is a real difference between the situation in the states, and
the situation here and in mainland europe. in the states, psychoanalysis fled
to the academy and died there! But for all its abuses, intellectual and cultural,
as with marxism, it’s a rich set of tools if they are used effectively, properly ... i
tend to think about ‘the right tool for the job’ – there is a pragmatics of theory
... i’m not a member of a sect.
(Foster in grant 2008: 105)hal Foster’s assertion that he is ‘not a member of a sect’ may be a way of asserting that
he is more interested in the freedom to use psychoanalysis as a tool for interpretation in
the context of other possible tools, rather than as something that acts as the origin and
limit of an investigation. nonetheless, the tangible but elusive rigour of psychoanalytic
research that he describes, is only available as the rigour of the researcher, and not
as the rigour of method, which can hardly be said to exist in psychoanalysis. Freud’s
scattered commentaries on technique are far less precise than his definition of the
subject position and investigative orientation of the analyst. as hal Foster’s insistence
on a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude to psychoanalysis may indicate, the application of
psychoanalytic ideas to art and design objects often arises from the assumption that the
interpreter and the object of interpretation both inhabit a domain of life experience
that guarantees psychic freedom. one way to approach this assumption is through the
paradox of ‘free association’. ‘Free association’ in psychoanalysis is not equivalent to
psychic freedom, rather it is a specific technique designed to help the analyst to identify
facts of utterance, which do not depend on what either the analyst or the analysand
believes the correct interpretation of the utterance to be:
i beg you to respect it as a fact that that is what occurred to the man when
he was questioned and nothing else. But i am not opposing one faith with
another. it can be proved that the idea produced by the man was not arbitrary
nor indeterminable nor unconnected with what we are looking for.
(Freud 1963 [1915]: 106)