Abstract

Recognition theory has engaged psychoanalysis primarily for its developmental theory and realistic philosophical anthropology. In this paper, I elaborate a third way of bringing psychoanalysis and recognition theory together. Can the concept of recognition clarify what is distinctive in our relationship to psychoanalytic theory, insofar as we are at once readers and authors of the theory and the theory's object? I will argue that psychoanalytic theory calls for what I call an epistemology of recognition. In full, it is not sufficient theoretically to understand the theory; we must be able to recognize ourselves in the theory and find ourselves recognized by the theory. Just as recognition theorists have argued that a detached or purely theoretical relationship with other persons or ourselves is insufficient, so too, I argue, a detached or purely theoretical relationship with psychoanalytic theory is insufficient. The twist is that in theorizing the unconscious, psychoanalytic theory seems to present it precisely as we do not and perhaps could not “recognize ourselves.” Thus, I must explain how these two aspects hang together: if psychoanalytic theory presents us as, at least in certain respects, strangers to ourselves, what would it mean to recognize that picture? (This paper develops ideas from my 2022 Die Seele abbilden. Über Freuds Methodologie und Metapsychologie)