who preceded us? Some who went from psychoanalysis to Heidegger never came back (Laing 1961; May 1958; Boss 1963). Others took what they could and returned, faithful to their analytic identity (Loewald 1980; Leavy 1988; Rycroft 1966). Loewald, who studied with Heidegger personally, candidly acknowledged his debt to his former teacher (1980, viii-ix) and Leavy, in a recent article (1989), explored Heidegger’s influence on Loewald’s thinking. Leavy (1980, 1988) has also discussed his own debt to Heidegger’s thought. That influence is as apparent in Leavy’s compelling style as it is in his clinical theories. On the other hand, R. D. Laing and Rollo May, both of whom trained as psychoanalysts, turned away from and abandoned their principal identities as psychoanalysts (though not entirely) in order to pursue more freely an Heideggerian and existentialist path—a path, nonetheless, significandy indebted to Freud. The British analyst Charles Rycroft—who was, coincidentally, Laing’s training analyst—was also influenced by existentialism, yet chose to stay in the mainstream of psychoanalysis. Still, Rycroft eventually resigned from the British Psychoanalytic Society, feeling that his attempts to broaden analytic dogma never made an impression (Rycroft 1985, 198–206).
Obviously, there were other analysts interested in and indebted to existential philosophy—Ludwig Binswanger (1963), Alfred Adler (Van Dusen 1959), Paul Federn (1952), Angelo Hesnard (1960), Jacques Lacan (1977), Erich Fromm (Burston 1991)—and many psychiatrists who were interested in both—Paul Schilder (1935), Viktor Frankl (1968), Erwin Straus (1966), Henri Ey (1978), David Cooper (Laing and Cooper 1964), Ludwig Lefebre (1957). All of them owe a debt to Heidegger in important ways, and all of them discovered that the respective thought of Heidegger and Freud was mutually beneficial. None, however, to my knowledge, has explored their respective views on truth and reality in the context of analytic technique. Perhaps Heidegger’s conception of truth might open the way to a reappraisal of this question and help us, in turn, learn something about the psychoanalyst’s experience of reality, its truth, and the nature of his endeavor.
6 Heidegger’s Conception of Truth
Heidegger’s concept of truth is alluded to throughout his writings, but the ones that occasion his most extensive arguments are his classic, Being and Time (1962, 225–73), and a shorter essay, “On the Essence of Truth” (1977a, 113–42). The question of truth isn’t merely a preliminary to Heidegger’s philosophy; this question is his philosophy in its entirety. His approach to this question startled and even dismayed many members of the European academic community. With the publication of Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) in 1927, Heidegger abandoned the conventional approach to this question that had been preoccupied with scientific applications. Also unsettling for many was the literary manner in which Heidegger chose to write his magnum opus. It was almost impossible to decipher. Heidegger believed that contemporary European society had lost its way and had strayed from its essential nature. He blamed this to some extent on the direction science had taken, a direction obsessed with technology and its potential for “protecting” mankind from the fears inherent in everyday living. To suggest that Freud was captivated by this “scientific spirit” may be unfair, but we can assume he didn’t share Heidegger’s skepticism about the course science was taking. Of course, the problem with modern culture—a problem many would argue is even more evident today—wasn’t created by contemporary society. Heidegger argued that its seeds were sown in ancient Greece. Heidegger did believe, though, that the problem had gotten out of hand with the technological revolution and that we’re now in danger of completely forgetting what our nature really is. Our attitude about truth, Heidegger insisted, is at the heart of man’s nature, which we’ve apparently repressed.
What is this nature? What do we think truth is? The conventional attitude about truth is that if is something that is so. If I were to say, “I am truly enjoying this moment,” I would mean that I am actually enjoying myself, that I’m accurately describing my feelings. In other words, it’s my statement that is true, because my statement conforms to how I feel. But we also talk about truth as some thing as well as a statement about that thing. For example, it’s possible to distinguish between true gold and false gold. True gold, actual gold, is genuine. It really is gold. It’s real gold. Does that mean that false gold isn’t real? After all, it really is something. It’s something or other, though it may not be gold. I don’t hallucinate false gold. It—whatever “it” is—actually exists. So wouldn’t it be true to say that although it’s false, it’s still real? This is why something can be actual yet false. Whatever it is that’s true about real gold can’t be demonstrated by its actuality. So what is it that we mean when we say something is genuine or true? Genuine gold is gold that is in accord with, that corresponds with, what we understand as gold. False gold is something, but it isn’t the thing that we know as gold. We’re still talking about a statement that concerns gold, not gold itself. The statement, “this is gold,” is true or false. So, the statement is either in accord with this thing, or it isn’t. Thus, you can’t reduce the genuineness of something to the thing that it is; you can’t omit the statement or proposition that something is what it is. In a psychoanalytic session, patients are declaring that something is true every time they say something. But how do we know that what they say is really so? Isn’t this principally what the psychoanalyst is trying to determine? According to Heidegger,
The true, whether it be a matter or a proposition, is what accords. . . . Being true and truth here signify accord, and that in a double sense: on the one hand, the consonance of a matter with what is supposed in advance regarding it and, on the other hand, the accordance of what is meant in the statement with the matter. . . . This can be taken to mean: truth is the correspondence of the matter to knowledge. (1977a, 119–20)
The problem with this approach to the problem of truth, though if’s true as far as it goes, is that propositional truth relies on material truth, thus whether or not the proposition, “This thing is gold,” is true, is decided, in the end, on the thing that is gold. The truth of a declaration depends on whether it’s correct, which depends on the thing the statement is about. According to this definition, a truthful statement is nothing more than a factual statement about the thing the statement depicts.
Heidegger isn’t suggesting that this theory about truth is necessarily wrong. It just doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. Where did that theory come from? We would have to start with Aristotle, whose correspondence theory was gradually adopted by Jewish and Arabian philosophers, then by Christian medieval thinkers, then the scholastics, and now us. It was during the medieval period, however, when Heidegger thought this theory had its biggest impact. According to Christian theologians, whether or not a statement was so depended on whether that statement was faithful to a corresponding idea in God’s mind. This is the mind of the God who created human beings, the world, and everything in it. If a statement conformed to God’s intentions, then that statement was true. Humankind’s capacity to gain knowledge and wisdom was presumably bestowed on human beings by God Himself. “If all beings are ‘created,’” says Heidegger, “the possibility of the truth of human knowledge is grounded in the fact that matter and proposition measure up to the idea in the same way and therefore are fitted to each other on the basis of the unity of the divine plan of creation” (1977a, 120).
In other words, truth, according to Christian philosophers, implies conformity to God’s plan and His intentions. People could determine what was true by making sure their beliefs corresponded to the “order of creation.” But hasn’t this way of thinking become archaic? Can we now be accused of relying on a “preordained” plan that is supposed to justify our beliefs? According to Heidegger, the answer is yes. “But this order,” he warns,
detached from the notion of creation, can also be represented in a general and indefinite way as a world-order. The theologically conceived order of creation is replaced by the capacity of all objects to be planned by means of a worldly reason which supplies the law for itself and thus also claims that its procedure is immediately intelligible (what is considered “logical”). That the essence of propositional truth consists in the correctness of statements needs no further special proof. Even where an effort is made—with a conspicuous
