From: antonio callari (antonio.callari@FANDM.EDU)
Date: Tue Dec 20 2005 - 06:03:06 EST
Hi all: Freud used the concept of overdetermination in his Interpretation of Dreams. As I read that text, the operational content of overdetermination is given by the processes of condensation and displacement--and it is in that context that, I believe, it makes sense to read Resnick and Wolff's usage of overdetermination (my claim, not theirs). Freud's text was devoted to the interpretation of dreams: there certainly is an ontology there, the biology of the brain, in which is included the idea that dreams (most of them) camouflage themselves. But, beyond that very general causal iddentification, the point of the book--at least as I remember it, is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to have a pre-given interpretation of a dream (a model), that one cannot know the meaning of a dream except through the process of reading it (free association), in which any images/memories, even if they seem insignificant, may hold a key to an interpretation. There is no one dream image that can be said, in a priori manner, to be more important than others. That is because, if anxiety about a relationship (X) attaches itself to a dream, the dream process is one in which: characteristics of X will be displaced unto some seemingly unrelated object; and characteristics from X will be condensed, together with characteristics from other relationships (Y, Z ..) into yet other objects. There is no telling what the dream means for a patient without teasing it out of the process of open interpretation; there is no model for sorting out the meaning of a dream. Nor, since there is no underlying ontology to the dream (only an underlying general process), can there be any expectation that the dream is reducible to a (one) meaning: different interpretations can end up producing different meanings. This has all sorts of analogies to the use of overdetermination in its appropriation in Marxist thought. It means that, while there is a specification of general social process (that there are various processes: cultural, political, economic, etc.) in the constitution of a social body, when we interpret that society, (if we are using the mode of overdetermination) it is not possible to fix the meaning of a social event/process in an a-priori way, according to any one fixed model of social relationships. The meaning emerges only out of a particular process of interpretation and pertains to that process of interpretation (there can be no ontological proof/status to it beyond the general social process). Of course, there can be different processes of interpretation, and this is where Resnick and Wolff's idea of an "Entry point" comes: for a Marxist interpretation of society, "Class" is the entry point into the process of interpretation. I'll leave it at this: I will add a few notes. 1) This approach is not reducible to "anything goes." it is, if anything, understandable more as implying that "anything may turn out to be important." (a very important principle for the process of scientific discovery, not less important than the process of already known/seen regularities, even in the physical sciences). 2. This approach is not reducible to "there is no reality out there, only interpretations." It is, if anything, understandable more as implying that "reality is complexily constituted and that the human part in it--interpreting, working, playing-- is part of that constitution" (something with scientific pedigree: the uncertainty principle; and Marxist pedigree as well: human beings make the world under conditions larger than themselves: the creation of class consciousness, the creation of a class in itself, the creation of socialism/communism). >Hi Howard, > >One small observation regarding overdetermination and Freud. Freud >made enormous strides in ontology. He began as a kind of >neuro-physicist, but rejected the idea that what we can see when we >open up brains exhausts the ontology of the mind. His creative >modelling efforts to identify an embryonic information processing >level of description (id, ego, super-ego, libidinal energy etc.) that >attempts to explain various clinical phenomena, such as repression, >are not only quite brilliant, but also primarily about conjecturing >the existence of underlying mechanisms to account for visible >behaviour, the stream of events. Freud's methodology and work is not >at all connected to the idea of "constituitive causality", if that >means there is no depth, no levels, no enduring dispositions and >essences. One of his great scientific achievements was precisely to >posit a hitherto hidden depth and verticality -- the unconscious, a >collection of hidden agencies responsible for various surface >phenomena. > >-Ian. -- Antonio Callari Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman Professor of Economics F&M Local Economy Center P.O. Box 3003 713 College Avenue Lancaster PA 17604-3003 e-mail: acallari@fandm.edu phone: (717) 291-3947 FAX: (717) 291-4369
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