Part I
15–17 November 2023

After attending one of the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Lou Andreas Salomé wrote in her diary: “Freud sat me at his side and made a very sweet remark. He gave the paper. During the discussion we talked quietly together on various matters. I was surprised how readily he acquiesced to a view of neurosis as a conflict between libido and ego instead of proceeding unilaterally from the libido. When I commented that it read otherwise in his books he said, ‘My latest formulation’.” For Freud, theory was by no means hidebound, as Salomé soon came to realise. Committed to empiricism, he rarely hesitated to replace his previous “latest formulation” with a new one that was more in tune with the observed material. However, as all schismatics have learned sooner or later, there are formulations in Freud that are not merely the latest, but also the last: final, definitive and irrevocable. Far from having been developed independently of the realm of the empirical, they are precisely those that have arisen through the purest form of observation. What characterises this pure form? How did it develop? And what are the initially provisional Freudian postulates that constitute the least of psychoanalysis, its minimal definition, or rather the disposition of psychoanalysis?

To Be Continued?... Philosophy and Psychoanalysis Today Part II 16–18 April 2024

Part I 15–17 November 2023

Info, Index

Tadej Troha (ZRC SAZU)

The Latest, the Last, and the Least: Remarks on the Freudian Method

To Be Continued?...
Philosophy and Psychoanalysis Today

Part II
16–18 April 2024

Part I
15–17 November 2023