Content area
Full Text
Michael Billig
Freudian repression: Conversation creating the unconscious
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 290pp.
At present the humanities and the sciences constitute two different worlds, with virtually no intercourse between them. Here I will review a book that suggests art might be of service to the social sciences, and social science, in turn, to literary scholarship.
The biologist E.O. Wilson (1998) has called for 'consilience' (the interlocking of perspectives) between the realms of knowledge. He points out that many of the current advances in the physical and life sciences have been due to the integration of disciplinary frameworks, as in biophysics, biochemistry and astrophysics. Wilson also remarks that such integration is notably absent in the social sciences and humanities. Each discipline goes its own way, usually ignoring or denigrating the contributions of the other disciplines.
Although biological psychiatry now dominates the field of mental illness, the conjunction of biology and psychiatry is not consilient in Wilson's sense of the term. Biology offers many robust theories, but psychiatry and psychology do not. Rather there are hundreds of specialized viewpoints, each organized around one or two insights, but with little or no integration with the insights of other viewpoints.
Psychoanalysis is a case in point. As Billig points out, Freud had two sides, one artistic, the other scientific. Billig goes on to make clear that Freud's artistic vision still has much to contribute, but his scientific, his metapsychology, very little. It should be noted, in connection with the book to be reviewed here, that Wilson strongly urges a meeting between humanities and science.
Such a meeting will be difficult because of entrenched attitudes on both sides. Scientists pride themselves on their logical approach, artists on nonlogical intuition. Pascal noted that the first approach is based on what he called system, the second, on what he called finesse, that is, intuition. He also noted that one can be an ordinary scientist using only system, or an ordinary artist using only finesse. But he went on to say that to be a great scientist or artist, one must use both.
Advances in science require not only number crunching, but also intuition. We know from studies of computer simulation and artificial intelligence that there are severe limitations to systematic approaches....