Maria Balaska, 'The talking cure and meaning what we say: on Cavell and Freud'

This talk brings together Freud and Cavell to argue that paying attention to the meaning of our words plays a central role in self-becoming. In particular, I make use of a Cavellian perspective to understand two Freudian ideas: the psychoanalytic aim of self-attainment, as expressed in the injunction that ‘We’ should become where ‘It’ was ('Wo Es War, Soll Ich Werden'), and the idea that self-alienation is characterized by a disconnection between emotion and thought. I argue that emotion and thought can come together when we undertake to mean what we say (Cavell), and show that in order to know whether we mean what we say we need more than introspection, namely we need to turn our focus towards our shared criteria for understanding.