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Unrequited Narcissism:
Metcalf, Robert
Metcalf, Robert
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Abstract
In this passage from The Interpretation of Dreams[1], Freud directs our attention to the interweaving of shame, phantasy and anxiety—a complexity whose theoretical clarification attracted his energies, as it should ours. While Freud's approach to these matters remains controversial among academic philosophers in general,[2] his influence on moral philosophy has grown considerably in the last two decades, in large part because of the thoroughgoing naturalism offered by his theory, as well as its ability to explain various moral pathologies.[3] A Freudian approach to shame is especially promising, since shame, more than guilt, appears to lend itself to naturalistic explanation—as Bernard Williams argued[4]—and presents a variety of pathologies familiar to us from our literary tradition.[5] Furthermore, as the quotation above suggests, Freud's approach may serve to illuminate some of the oldest cultural narratives through which we understand shame, such as in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden. Philosophers from Augustine to our own contemporaries have continually gone back to the Genesis account to raise the question of shame's origin and moral significance.[6] Yet, if the content of the story is itself the product of phantasy, as Freud asserts, our philosophical interpretation of it may fail to go beyond this "mass-phantasy" and thus fail to arrive at a true account of shame.[7] To be sure, a Freudian approach may in the end only substitute different phantasies for the traditional ones—as Freud explicitly acknowledged in his analysis of religious ideas as "illusions"[8]—but even this may amount to progress of sorts, as some phantasies are, philosophically speaking, better than others.
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2006
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With permission of the license/copyright holder