Psychoanalysis? But that's not really research?

The following was written for my university's doctoral school blog competition! :)

Artwork (‘Éluard’s pain, like a little sun in cold water’) by Francesca Towers

I’m nearing the end of the first year of my PhD programme, celebrating a scorching day at a barbeque held by my research Faculty. A group of us are digging into lemon sorbets with little wooden spoons when I find myself entering a familiar discussion with somebody I’ve just met:

“Are you doing qualitative or quantitative research?” They ask me.

“Neither.”

“What do you mean?” Somebody else overhears and joins in.

“I’m studying psychoanalysis. It’s a theoretical project” I explain.

“Just a literature review? But that’s not really research?”

“It’s not empirical research” I say.

“So, it’s not science? Can you do that here?”

The tones are friendly and rounded with genuine surprise. The questions aren’t dismissive; rather, they reflect what many of us have been taught to expect research to look like (or at least those studying in my faculty of “Brain Sciences”).

In the moment, I don’t quite know how to answer. I shrug, make a joke, and we move on. Perhaps one day, I think, I’ll come up with a better response.

This blog post is a belated attempt.

I study at the Psychoanalysis Unit: A pretty unique space within UCL’s broader department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology. You would thus be forgiven for assuming psychoanalysis to be a branch of psychology. And the ‘–ology’ here, we likely associate with a type of scientific study grounded in empirical methods.

But this was not always the case.

Historically, the Greek logos (λόγος), from which the suffix derives, once had a far broader meaning. As philosopher Martin Heidegger has shown us, tracing the verb legein’s (λέγειν) ancient Greek origins, the original meaning is closer to ‘collect’, ‘gather’, and ‘let appear’. Logos was a mode of letting something be seen from itself.

Over time, the meaning narrowed. Contemporary science largely proceeds from the conviction that knowledge must be grounded in observable, measurable evidence. Needless to say, this framework has achieved extraordinary things, allowing findings to be tested, replicated, communicated, and built upon.

But it also entails limitations.

What happens when we are working with clinical phenomena that resist visibility and measurement? For example, when we take seriously an idea of the unconscious?

This is what I prioritise in my research on suicide, framed through the work of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan who approaches humans as parlêtres (speaking-beings).

Suicide is often described as a uniquely human act; however, much of the contemporary research approaches it in ways that risk erasing the human.

The dangers of this are quite apparent when clinical paradigms become subsumed under positivist research, that is, approaches that assume only what can be observed, measured, and quantified counts. Put bluntly, individuals are all too easily reduced to bundles of risk factors and diagnoses. There is something forgotten about the human as she becomes instead an object to be managed, leaving little room for her speech, relationship to suffering, and unique history.

This is not an argument against empirical research efforts. However, when empirical observation is treated as sufficient in itself, something fundamental is missed. As psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe notes, empirical methods are productive only when applied within a determining metapsychological framework (that is, when a conception of psychic life gives meaning to what is observed). Data alone does not produce understanding.

Psychoanalysis has much to contribute here.

What I value most about Sigmund Freud’s work is his ability to hold what is unknown alongside his attempts to make sense of human suffering. Throughout his writings, we see a continual revision of his theories in response to his patients and their speech. He begins from a point of opacity, returning time and time again to the moments where his clinical observations don’t fit existing theory, publishing his failures along the way.

As he states, ‘we will begin by using the situation in order to learn something from it’ (The Question of Lay Analysis, 1926).

In our research, we must acknowledge that there will always remain an element of the human experience that resists knowledge and understanding. And, as Lacan reminds us, parlêtres cannot step outside of language.

When faced with these questions about the position of psychoanalysis in research, I often find myself returning to Fragilités de l’analyse by psychoanalyst Jean Allouch.

Allouch ends his paper by reflecting on a short poem by Paul Éluard titled Inconnue (Unknown).

The poem ends with:

“my pain, like a little sun in cold water”

Allouch writes that we [the psychoanalysts] do not begin by translating a given pain into words. This assumption belongs to psychology, i.e., the idea that there is an inner state first which language comes later to translate.

Psychoanalysis instead begins from the sun in cold water. This is the only given here. The sun in cold water does not represent pain. Pain does not precede language; rather, it emerges from it. As parlêtres, it is language that wounds us. And the work of analysis does not aim to make such pain disappear, but it gives way to a fragility that testifies to the human Subject’s dependence on language itself.

What is privileged in such work is careful listening. Listening without rushing to understand, without forcing coherence where there may be none, and without reducing the individual’s pain to something we think we already know.

In a field like suicide prevention, where the pressure to predict and control is immense and anxieties about liability are heightened, this orientation is easily lost. And yet, suicide so often confronts us with precisely what resists comprehension.

To research psychoanalytically is therefore not to work against what is unknown, but with it. It is to take seriously the fact that we are parlêtres ourselves, dependent on language, marked by inconsistencies and uncertainties. For me, this is not a rejection of scientific research. It is a commitment to a different idea of it: one that begins not from what can be fully measured or known, but from what cannot.