Writinganalgebraforthesocialsciences-DiscourseUnit.docVIP

WRITING AN ALGEBRA FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES: FREUD’S AND LACAN’S MATHEMES Carlos Gómez There was an epistemic revolution at the time psychoanalysis was becoming a field of knowledge. In the middle of the nineteenth century the scientific community was debating the status of what would be called Natural Sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the Sciences of the Spirit (Geisteswisseschaften.) Psychoanalysis was not able to evade this debate at the time Freud was establishing its foundations. Referring ourselves to this debate is not mere entertainment since it is about thinking how psychoanalysis faces social research. Through these lines we will try to show the founding efforts of both Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to give psychoanalysis a rigorous status, particularly in regard of social issues. This is where the emphasis of this article is situated. The two key words in the dispute between Natural Sciences and Sciences of the Spirit are the verbs to explain (erkl?ren) and to understand (verstehen). We know the debate was due to the emergence of Hermeneutics and the argument that scientific strictness in Sciences of the Spirit would be precisely in interpretation and understanding as verstehen. Carl Menger (1990) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1989) are paradigmatic examples of this position. Rickert and Windelband reconsidered this issue as a separation between “Sciences of Culture” and “Sciences of Nature” or as “Nomothetic Sciences” and “Ideographic Sciences.” Years later, Karl Jaspers, a contemporary of Freud, applied such a distinction in his General Psychology to state that the issue in Psychology is to understand/interpret, not to explain (1997.) This debate was contemporary in time and space to psychoanalysis. The question is then: what side should psychoanalysis be on according to Freud? This is where we find Freud’s originality. In his obstinacy for labeling his psychoanalysis as a Natural Science (Naturwissenschaft) he openly avoids the question, he simply ignores