Omnipotence or Fusion? A Conversation between Axel Honneth and Joel Whitebook

Psychoanalysis and critical theory: A new quarrel about revisionism?

“…So much about the antisocial self, it practically comes down to the idea that all that there is of antisocial drives in us and the many different forms it takes, and the many reminiscences this has for the life of the adult can be best explained in my view—when we take all the empirical research about early development into consideration—by these early experiences of being fused with, and the anxiety stemming from being confronted with the experience of the independent other, be it now the primary caretaker or other persons with which the early infant, and probably even the growing infant, feels him or herself fused in specific moments. (Honneth & Whitebook, , p. 176)…”

“…They are so important because that means that the experience of separation or of loss of that fused primary object is accompanied by feelings of anxiety, sorrow, panic, which are therefore refused. (Honneth & Whitebook, , p. 175)…”

“…Adopting this psychoanalytic perspective earned Honneth his share of criticism. Joel Whitebook, for example, reproached him—as he did Habermas before him—with “domesticating” psychoanalysis (Honneth & Whitebook, ; Whitebook, ). According to the American psychoanalyst, the core postulate of the intersubjective turn—which comes down to founding the process of subjectivation on the original sociability of the human being—omits the Freudian discovery of the individual's constitutive associability.…”

“…He currently champions the axioms of the relational outlook once used to refute Mahler's arguments. The adherents of the relational school consider that empirical research in child psychology—in particular Daniel Stern's work on the early capacities of interaction—has definitively debunked the hypothesis of a phase of primary undifferentiation (Dornes & Laplanche, ; Honneth, ; Honneth & Whitebook, ). Such research thus supposedly refutes the notion that there is a period of infantile fusion and omnipotence.…”

“…The clearly stated choice for a revised version of the Freudian theory—as it happens, the theory of object relations—and for an intersubjectivist approach has nonetheless earned him some criticisms, notably from American psychoanalyst Joel Whitebook. Exchanges between the two authors (Honneth, , , ; Honneth & Whitebook, ; Whitebook, ) have taken the form of a real controversy in which different psychoanalytic concepts are contrasted and evaluated in the light of their capacity to explain irrational motives and the antisocial nature of human behavior. This debate renewed the interest for psychoanalysis among social theoreticians, a subject that had fallen somewhat out of favor during the Habermas era and the boom years of the cognitive revolution.…”