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Freud, Piaget, and Jargon, Part II


 Yesterday, I discussed a certain passage in Anna Aragno's contribution to an anthology about Psychoanalysis and the Mind-Body Problem, a book published by Routledge last year. 

I'd like to discuss something that bugs me about that contribution a bit more here. 

Aragno has written the book's chapter nine, entitled "A Revised Psychoanalytic Model of Mind and Communication in Body-Mind Continuity." The essay begins with a quote from Freud dated 1937, "For in the psychical field, the biological field does in fact play the part of the underlying bedrock."

That sentence does support Aragno's general argument, as I laid it out yesterday. It supports it so conveniently that I naturally want to pursue the matter. 

Unfortunately, the source of that quote is not obvious. Aragno's endnotes reference five works of Freud, none of which was published (or translated into English) in 1937. So she has created a bit of a mystery. 

Googling the quote got me no result, except references to this particular use of the quote in the 2022 book. 

So: let us look at this from a different direction. Did Sigmund Freud publish anything in 1937, two years before his death? After a cursory search, I have found no book, no case history, and no article that can be assigned that as a year of publication. 

Sloppy scholarship, I have to infer. Heck, Freud was under a lot of pressure in 1937. Germany had taken over Austria, they were consolidating power, and matters were getting more difficult by every week that passed for prominent Jews in Vienna. Freud might well have thought of this as a good time to go meta in his own self-understanding. 

But I'd like the source of the quote. Piaget, anyway, would expect no less of me.

ADDENDUM: Subsequent to this posting, Henry Cohen, a friend of mine and a frequent commenter on this blog, sent me an email providing the source of the quote. It is Analysis Terminable and Interminable, and in fact it was published in 1937. It is still annoying that Aragno did not provide that information in her own endnotes.

But this terminates my analysis of the matter.  


Analysis Terminable and Interminable.  Standard Edition Vol 23 p. 252.


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