Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2017, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (2): 133-165.

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Freud's Theater of Case History: Confessor and Life World (II)

SUN Feiyu   

  1. Department of Sociology, Peking University
  • Online:2017-03-20 Published:2017-03-20
  • Supported by:

    This paper was supported by the project "New Schools of Phenomenological Sociology and Its Applied Study on Grass-Roots Society"(13CSH005),which was sponsored by the National Social Science Fund.

Abstract:

This paper is a sequel to A Genealogy of Modern Confession:Confessor and Life World (I). Upon the theoretical framework laid out in the previous paper, the author selected five case histories of Freud's psychoanalysis as the focus of this study. Through an analysis of John O'Neil's work on Freud, the paper places psychoanalytical confession and its theory within the tradition of classical social theory and western civilization. The question of reason and being in the life world is the focal point of the discussion. Treating the five cases as one body, the author looks into the various aspects of this "body with its history" in Freudian confession:beginning and rapture, travel and return, classification of civilization, existence and sacredness of the life world. Freud's basic assumption is that every important topic of civilization in human history is most concretely expressed by the confessing body and everyday life stories. Finally, the author argues that, in line with Hegel, reason must first fall onto the Da-sein and then the life world. With regard to confession, there are two kinds of reason:reason as "form of being" and reason as "will of life." The later derives from the state of Da-sein and is probably the truly difficult part of reason. From this point of view, what Kant hoped for the Enlightenment might be possibly achieved by the Freudian clinical techniques.

Key words: confessor, life world