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Psychoanalytic Review, 99(3), June 2012 2012 N.P.A.P.

FREUDS PHILOSOPHICAL INHERITANCE:

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche

in Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Robert Grimwade

This essay explores the possible significance of Freuds references to

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. It attempts

to reveal two sides of Freuds philosophical inheritance and explores thestructure of Freuds ambivalence toward his intellectual predecessors.

I see that you are using the circuitous route of medicine to attainyour first ideal, the physiological understanding of man, while Isecretly nurse the hope of arriving by the same route at my ownoriginal objective, philosophy. For that was my original ambitionbefore I knew what I was intended to do in the world.

Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, 1896

Are not Freuds repeated declarations of indifference to questionsof priority and originality simply, in fact, so many negations whichserve to conceal his fantasy of mastering his predecessors? A fanta-sy which concurs with the fantasy of the whole of western meta-physics since Aristotle. Sarah Kofman,Freud and Fiction

What did Freud inherit from philosophy? And what effect has

this inheritance had on the relationship between philosophyand psychoanalysis? In To Speculateon Freud in The PostCardDerrida (1980) draws our attention back to the overwroughttopic of Freuds troubled relationship with Schopenhauer andNietzsche. According to Derrida, Freud disavowsSchopenhauerand Nietzsche:

No more than to Nietzsche, nothing is owed to Schopenhauer. Assuch psychoanalytic theory owes him nothing. It has no more in-

herited from him than one can inherit conceptual simulacra . . .Schopenhauers and Nietzsches words and notions resemble psy-


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360 ROBERT GRIMWADE

choanalytic discourse to the point of being mistaken for it. Butthey are lacking the equivalent of a content proper to psychoanaly-sis, which alone can guarantee value, usage, and exchange (p. 266).

Why did Freud disavow the philosophies of Schopenhauer andNietzsche when these texts contain formulations that are so simi-lar to those of early psychoanalytic thought?1In 1925 in An Auto-biographical Study, Freud finally explained why he had beenavoiding philosophy proper for so long, while simultaneous de-nying that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche had any influence on theunfolding of his thought or upon the birth of psychoanalysis:

I have carefully avoided any contact with philosophy proper. Thisavoidance has been greatly facilitated by constitutional incapacity.. . . The large extent to which psycho-analysis coincides with thephilosophy of Schopenhauernot only did he assert the domi-nance of the emotions and the supreme importance of sexualitybut he was even aware of the mechanism of repressionis not to betraced to my acquaintance with his teaching. I read Schopenhauervery late in my life. Nietzsche, another philosopher whose guessesand intuitions often agree in the most astonishing way with the la-

borious findings of psycho-analysis, was for a long time avoided byme on that very account; I was less concerned with the question ofpriority than with keeping my mind unembarrassed. (pp. 5960)

If Freud had found semblances of psychoanalytic concepts inSchopenhauer and Nietzsche, why didnt he investigate them?

Was it simply a case of theoretical hygiene: a question of purity?As Derrida (1980) suggests, Freuds ostensible logic for avoidingphilosophy is rather bizarre: What is closest must be avoided, by

virtue of its very proximity. It must be kept at a distance, it must bewarned (p. 263). If Freud really wanted to keep philosophy at adistance, then why are his texts littered with references to Scho-penhauer and Nietzsche? Why do Schopenhauer and Nietzscheappear at decisive moments in the dynamic unfolding of Freud-ian thought? And why do these repudiated specters seem to ap-pear during the many historic ruptures between Freud and someof his most highly esteemed disciples?

At the height of his speculative enquiry in Beyond the PleasurePrinciple,Freud (1920) passively refers to both Schopenhauer andNietzsche. In chapter 5, while discussing the possibility of death


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FREUDS PHILOSOPHICAL INHERITANCE 361

drives he writes: There is something else that we cannot remainblind to. We have unwittingly steered our course into the harbor

of Schopenhauers philosophy. For him death is the true resultand to that extent the purpose of life, while sexual instinct is theembodiment of the will to live (pp. 4849). In chapter 3, whilediscussing repetition compulsion, he refers to the eternal recur-rence of the same (p. 22).2Are these ostensibly passive and indif-ferent citations entirely devoid of significance? Are they mereslips of the pen?

According to Derrida (1980), Freud disavows the illegiti-

mate or counterfeit economy of philosophyas Freud sees it,this economy of ill-gotten gains deals in simulacrabut these dis-avowed philosophies return in his texts, penetrating and sur-rounding his entire corpus. Philosophy is operating behind thescenes in Freuds writings, framing the unfolding of psychoanaly-sis from its origin. In Beyond the Pleasure PrincipleFreud is specu-lating. He is traversing the very boundary he established betweenphilosophy and psychoanalysis. But rather than admitting thatthe official boundary has been transgressed, Freud insulates a

purely scientific psychoanalysis from purely speculative meta-physics.3Isnt this boundary, which seems to remain impermeablein Freuds self-understanding, actually much more porous thanFreud would have liked to believe?

Guided by the work of Alan Bass, Jacques Derrida, and SarahKofman, this essay suggests that buried within Freuds ostensiblypassive references to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Beyond thePleasure Principle are many tortuous and dizzying questions that

open up psychoanalysis to an integral part of its philosophical in-heritance. Following Derrida, I argue that there is more at stakefor Freud than merely justifying his own supposedly nonphilo-sophical attempts to speculate. I further suggest that Freud not onlyattempts to hide the speculative and illegitimate origins of hisnew Wissenshaft,4but that he disavowsboth Nietzsche and Schopen-hauer by inheriting their concepts and giving revisionist readings oftheir philosophies that seem to annihilate all trace of influence

while simultaneously invoking the authority of their faded signa-tures. What are the hidden dimensions of this disavowal? Whatspecters of philosophy haunt psychoanalysis from birth? Perhaps


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362 ROBERT GRIMWADE

most importantly, what can these disavowed philosophies tell usabout the metaphysical presuppositions of psychoanalytic metapsy-

chology that frame the opening and unfolding of Freudian thought?

THE HARBOR OF SCHOPENHAUER

The Freudian summary is not solely designed to refresh the read-ers failing memory, but has a very specific methodological func-tion: it is the condition of possibility of the interpretation at thesame time as being its product. . . . more than being detailed inter-pretations of a text they leave intact, they are in fact the constructs

of a completely different text; rewritings which weave the thread ofthe elements in the original text into a completely new tissue, in-volving them by displacement in a completely different play.

Sarah Kofman,Freud and Fiction

Freuds relationship to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is disturb-ingly paradoxical. When Freud mentions either Schopenhauer orNietzsche he seems to distort the meanings of their texts, effacingthem in such a way as to disavow the inheritance that he has takenup, and yet there is little doubt that Freud is an heir to bothScho-penhauer andNietzsche. In other words, Freud denies and sup-presses his philosophical heritage while taking up its guidingquestions and profiting from its resources. He recontextualizesthese appropriations while involving them in a completely differ-ent play. This activity does not seem to be the effect of a consti-tutional incapacity for philosophy (Freud, 1925a, p. 59), but, rath-er, following Derrida (1980), it seems to stem from Freuds

ambivalent desire to be the hero-founder of a new Wissenschaft, apure creator without inheritance, the great father of a new line.

As Kofman (1974) suggests, Freud, by leveling-down and appro-priating his predecessors, seems to be repeating one of the funda-mental gestures of Western metaphysics since Aristotle: a mode ofinheritance that suppresses difference by extracting a kernel ofso-called truth, but always leaves behind an excessive contextualremnant that can neverbe appropriated. But Freud was also con-

cerned with the remnant left behind in the unconscious, the traceinexorably inscribed in the archive of the psyche. The repressedleaves its mark in the unconscious and determinesthe course of life


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from a beyond inaccessible to retrospection. In other words,Freud claimed, in the face of the Enlightenment tradition that

and I take this as one of the central facets of Freuds geniuswhatis violently repressed never ceases to exert its influence.There are many ships and misty harbors in Beyond the Pleasure

Principle, as well as many perilous voyages on tempestuous seas.Ships depart regularly. Few return. While many bold explorershave ventured out on these mysterious waters in search of pre-cious insights, much of this boundless territory remains unchart-ed. But when we unwittingly steered our course into the harbor

of Schopenhauers philosophy who was manning the helm? WasCaptain Freud steering the ship or simply allowing it to runaground on the muddy embankments of Schopenhauers thoughtto dispatch the ghostly visage of a secret sharer? How did we endup here? Was Captain Freud mapping the course or was he justclinging to the aft of a runaway ship? A ship which steers itself?

We have unwittingly steered our course into the harbor ofSchopenhauers philosophy. For him death is the true result andto that extent the purpose of life, while sexual instinct is the em-

bodiment of the will to live (Freud, 1920, pp. 5960). (The sec-tion quoted by Freud in the original German Jenseits des Lust-

prinzipsis actually much shorter: das eigentliche Resultat, p. 49.)The quoted portion is from Schopenhauers (1851) Parerga andParalipomena,5(vol. 1, p. 223).6It lies in the concluding paragraphof an essay titled Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent De-liberateness in the Fate of the Individual. Before we dive into thisessay, we must note a remarkable coincidence: The only text where

Schopenhauer engages in a sustained discussion of dreamshisEssay On Spirit Seeing and Everything Connected Therewithbegins on the following page. An inquisitive reader might venturethe burning question: Did Freud discover Schopenhauers essayon Transcendent Speculation while conducting research forThe Interpretation of Dreams(1900)? In fact, Freud (1900) does citeSchopenhauers Essay on Spirit Seeing in the Traumdeutung, buthe does not acknowledge the striking parallels between these two

dream theories, and defers any discussion of Schopenhauer (p.36). While he does mention Schopenhauer again (pp. 66, 90,503), he never treats, or even acknowledges, the striking conver-


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364 ROBERT GRIMWADE

gence of his dream theory with that of the great pessimist. As weknow, Freud returns to Schopenhauer many times in later works,

but this discussion of the dream theory is postponed indefinitely.From this infinite deferral, another, more difficult, question forc-es itself to the fore: Is the innermost kernel of Freuds dream the-ory based upon something he read in Schopenhauers obscuretext? If so, why does this source remain unacknowledged? Hereare two passages from the Essay on Spirit Seeing (Schopenhau-er, 1851):

Sensory nerves can also be stimulated to their characteristic sensa-

tions from within as well as from without. In the same way, thebrain can be influenced by stimuli coming from the interior of theorganism to perform its function of intuitively perceiving formsthat fill space . . . . (p. 236)

Since during sleep the brain receives its stimulation to the intuitiveperception of spatial forms from within, as we have stated insteadof from without, as during wakefulness, this impression must affectit in a direction opposite of the usual one that comes from thesenses. . . . The dream-organ is, therefore, the same as the organ of

conscious wakefulness and intuitive perception of the externalworld only grasped as it were from the other end and used in thereverse order. The nerves of the senses can be rendered activefrom the inner as well as from their outer end . . . . (pp. 249251)

In these passages, and throughout the text, Schopenhauer claimsthat dreams are the effects of stimulations from inside the organismacting upon the senses in the reverse order to that of waking life. And

what is the ultimate source of these internal stimulations? The un-

conscious will. Is this not the kernel of Freuds theory of regressionin dreams? And psychoanalysis owes nothing to Schopenhauer?

Why does Freud, who is certainly not afraid of citing other sourc-es, suppress this connection? And if the connection is a mere re-semblance, then why does he not acknowledge the prescience ofSchopenhauers dream theory?

That many of the fundamental metaphysical presuppositionsof Schopenhauers philosophyhis great metaphysical system of

will and representation, where will is the dynamic unknowablestriving force of the world understood as the timeless and space-less thing-in-itself and representation is our consciousness of that


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force objectified and individuated in time and spaceresonatewith many of the basic presuppositions of Freudian metapsychol-

ogy is well known.7What is less well known is that in this particularessay Schopenhauer (1851) draws a connection between dreamsand madness on the basis of temporal immediacy (The dreambears an undeniable resemblance to madness; for what mainlydistinguishes dreaming from waking consciousness is a lack ofmemory, p. 231), notes that dreams disguise themselves as onepasses into wakefulness (p. 255), and proposes that the allegoricalnature of dreams necessitates an interpretation with no fixed or

universal lexicon (pp. 255, 256), as well as claiming that the im-mediate cause of dream hallucinations are stimulations arisingfrom the interior of the organism (pp. 273, 275). But whileSchopenhauers essay contains his most lengthy discussion ondreams, it is not primarily about dreams. Schopenhauer is pre-dominantly interested in the possibility of explaining occultphenomenaanimal magnetism, oneiromancy, telepathy, deu-teroscopy, and the appearance of specters and doppelgangersdirectly from his metaphysics. In fact, the essay attempts to dem-

onstrate that the source of all these divergent phenomena is thetimeless and spaceless world will, which operates directly uponthe senses through the so-called dream-organ. If Freud had dis-cussed Schopenhauers Essay on Spirit Seeing in The Interpreta-tion of Dreams,he would have been forced to confront a series ofquestions regarding both the speculative origins of his own

young theories anda series of questions concerning the occult,which might have amounted to a lethal combination for a Wissen-

schaftin its infancy. Did Freud defer this discussion of Schopen-hauers dream theory because he was not ready to address the factthat psychoanalysis opened the door to questions far beyond thelimited purview of late nineteenth-century positivism?

Let us make a bold attempt at another step forward. In a som-ber letter to Lou Andreas-Salom dated August 1, 1919, Freud

writes: For my old age I have chosen the theme of death; I havestumbled on a remarkable notion based upon my theory of the

instincts, and now I must read all kinds of things relevant to it,e.g., Schopenhauer, for the first time. But I am not fond of read-ing (p. 99). Was Freud really going to read Schopenhauer for the


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366 ROBERT GRIMWADE

first time in the fall of 1919? Did he refer to Schopenhauer in TheInterpretation of Dreams(1905), Totem and Taboo (1913), On the

History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (1914), and A Difficult-ly in the Path of Psychoanalysis (1917) without having actuallyread any of his works? Was he a member of a reading society thatfocused on Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche who had neverread any Schopenhauer?8 Can we really believe that the prodi-gious Freud, whose scholarly erudition is demonstrated on everypage of every single one of his texts, was not fond of reading?9Can we decide about Freud and Schopenhauer once and for all?

But even if we couldprove that Freud waspresentbefore Schopen-hauers text, would anyone be so bold as to try to prove that hereadit?

Let us return to Schopenhauers (1851) essay TranscendentSpeculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of theIndividual, which is the source of Freuds quotation in Beyond thePleasure Principle. Does this transcendent speculation have anyconnection to Freuds speculation in Beyond the Pleasure Princi-

ple? What is transcendent speculation and why does Schopen-hauer disqualify it at the outset? The essay opens with the follow-ing lines which seem to retrospectively mirror Freuds (1920)repeated disclaimers in Beyond the Pleasure Principle:10 Althoughthe ideas to be given here do not lead to any firm result, indeedthey might perhaps be termed a mere metaphysical fantasy, Icould not bring myself to consign them to oblivion . . . in themeverything is dubious and uncertain, not merely the solution buteven the problem (p. 201). In this supplementary work, this ap-

pendageto his proper philosophy, Schopenhauer is indulging intranscendent speculation, a kind of thinking that is perhapsnothing more that mere metaphysical fantasy. While Schopen-hauer yields to its irresistible pull, he considers this particularkind of speculation to be entirely illegitimate because it addressessomething that cannot be proven by any of the proper routes ofphilosophical inquiry,11something undecidable, and yet perhaps ir-resistibly possible, at the very core of his metaphysics. While at

times he may take a positive or even dogmatic tone, he assuresthe reader that this kind of speculation is not to be taken seri-ously (p. 201).


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In this essay, Schopenhauer (1851) is speculating about fate.When we recognize the hand of providence in our lives we say

tunc bene navigavi, cum naufragium feci (p. 202). I have gone onthe voyage appropriate to me, even if I was shipwrecked. I amguided through life, for better or worse, until I arrive at my finaldestination, washed up on the banks of Hades. But does fate leadme to myproper deathor merely to a living death? Do fateful windsguide the ship of life toward death or merely into the harbor ofSchopenhauers philosophy of resignation? In the New Introduc-tory LecturesFreud (1933) states:

What we are saying is not even genuine Schopenhauer. We are notasserting that death is the only aim of life; we are not overlookingthe fact that there is life as well as death. We recognize two basicinstincts and give each of them its own aim. How the two of themare mingled in the process of living, how the death instinct is madeto serve the purposes of Eros, especially by being turned outwardsas aggressivenessthese are tasks which are left to future investiga-tion. (p. 114)

What, if anything, does Freuds instinctive dualism of Eros and

Thanatos have to do with Schopenhauers metaphysical opposi-tion between will and representation? And most importantly, doesSchopenhauers text state that death is the aim of life?

While Schopenhauer believed that he had proven the strictnecessity of all events a priori, what he calls demonstrable fatal-ism, in his prize-essay On the Freedom of the Will (1851, p.202), if not already in The World as Will and Representation(1819),transcendent fatalism is something entirely different. While de-

monstrablefatalism is proven a priori and confirmed empirically bymagnetic somnambulists, persons with second sight, and some-times even the dreams of ordinary sleep [that] directly and accu-rately predict future events (Schopenhauer, 1839, p. 202), tran-scendent fatalism involves the postulation of an inner purpose orintention behind the blind events of demonstrable fatalism. InSchopenhauers (1850) words, transcendent fatalism is

the insight, or rather the view, that this necessity of all that hap-

pens is not blindand thus the belief in a connection of events in thecourse of our lives, as systematic as it is necessary, . . . a fatalism of ahigher order which cannot, like simple fatalism, be demonstrated,


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but happens possibly to everyone sooner or later and firmly holdshim either temporarily or permanently according to his way ofthinking (p. 204).

This insight or view does not arise from a really theoreticalknowledge but gradually reveals itself in the experiences of oneslife (Schopenhauer, 1851, p. 204). This inner necessity thatseems to guide ones life explains why an individual always seemsto end up having experiences that are entirely appropriate to himor her (p. 204). From this viewpoint ones life seems as if it wereas profoundly conceived as is the finest epic (p. 204), as if ev-

erything therein had been mapped out and the human beingsappearing on the scene seem . . . to be mere performers in a play(p. 205). What is the source of this secret and inexplicable powerthat seems to guide our lives? Why do we each seem to end up insituations that are appropriate to our individual characters?

What is this inner compass, the mysterious characteristic, thatbrings everyone correctly on a path which for him is the only suit-able one (p. 206)? This systematic arrangement can be ex-plained by the immutability and rigid consistency of the inborncharacter which invariably brings man back on to the same track(p. 205). This rigid atemporal identityoperates as an infallible in-stinct passing into action without having entered clear con-sciousness (p. 206). But as Schopenhauer (1819) had alreadyshown in The World as Will and Representation, this intelligible12character is the immediate phenomenon of the will (p. 138).The question in Transcendent Speculation . . . is not whetherthe will determines the individual character, but whether the will

has apurpose.In this essay Schopenhauer is revisiting a question that he

asked himself in 29 of The World as Will and Representation (1819),namely, What is that will which is shown to us as the being-in-it-self of the world striving after? (p. 162). Is the will really a blindimpulse to exist without end or aim? (p. 156). Or does the will, infact, have some mysterious final cause? What is the ultimate aimof this monstrous drive? According to Schopenhauers proper

metaphysics, the will is a purposeless blind striving, an endlesssource of pain that can never be satisfied. However, in Transcen-dent Speculation . . . Schopenhauer (1851) is speculating as to


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the possibility that the will might guide us to turn away from itselftoward a peaceful life of ascetic resignation and aesthetic indiffer-

ence. Schopenhauer speculatesthat each individual is lead to therealization of this possibility by his or her transcendent fate: Nowwe have recognized from the results of . . . my philosophy . . . thewills turning away from life as the ultimate aim of temporal exis-tence, we must assume that everyone is lead to this in a mannerthat is individually suited to him and hence often in a long androundabout way (p. 223). Schopenhauers philosophy declaresthat our only hope of salvation is found in turning away from life,

from the will itself, but is this turn necessarily a turn toward death?Where does our transcendent fate really lead us? According toSchopenhauer, transcendent fate, if it indeed exists, pulls us to-

ward his own philosophy of immanent salvation, to the realizationof tragic wisdom and resignation that suppresses and eventuallyannihilates the endless thirst of desire. In other words, Schopen-hauer is speculating that the will leads directly to its own contrac-tion. The will does not aim at death. It aims at a living death. It isnot a death drive. For Schopenhauer (1819) the will, while blind

and unconscious, is alwaysa will-to-live, a will-to-will, a striving tostrive without aim or goal: . . . what the will wills is always life (p.275).Even ifthe will is oriented toward a final aim, it is not death,but a living death characterized by ascetic resignation, the denialof the will-to-live, which comes from the intuitive knowledge thatthe in-itself of the world is will. If the winds of the will are guidingus anywhere, it is right into the harbor of Schopenhauers philos-ophy. It must be stressed that, contra Freuds revisionist reading,

even Schopenhauer, the so-called great pessimist, does not posita drive toward death. In fact, for Schopenhauer (1819), deathcannot be a legitimate aim because death is nothing: neither the

will, the thing-in-itself in all phenomena, nor the subject of know-ing, the spectator of all phenomena, is in any way affected by birthand death (p. 275). The world will, as Kants thing-in-itself, isoutside of space and time, and therefore remains absolutely un-changed by death.

Even Schopenhauers intelligible character does not pointtoward death, but it does seem to imply an account of why we re-peat inherently painful situations. According to Schopenhauer


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(1819), the intelligible character is an immediate manifestationof the will. It is not a drive to repeat, but a permanent and rigid

special Idea which leads each individual toward situations thatare appropriate to him or her (p. 158). While the will-in-itself isabsolutely free, we, as its phenomenal manifestations, are abso-lutely determined by it. This results directly from Schopenhauersmetaphysics: If under the same conditions, a man could act nowin one way now in another, then in the meantime his will itself

would have to be changed, and thus would have to reside in time,for only in time is change possible. But then either the will would

have to be a mere phenomenon, or time would have to be a deter-mination of the thing-in-itself (p. 292)for the will to change is,of course, impossible for Schopenhauer, for the will as Kantsthing-in-itself is outside of space and time. Only the intuitive andimmediate knowledge of the will as thing-in-itselfthe core in-sight of Schopenhauers philosophy13allows us to bypass theprinciple of individuation and escape the absolute determinismcharacteristic of the phenomenal world (Schopenhauer, 1819,pp. 398, 404). In Transcendent Speculation . . . Schopenhauer

is speculating that even this one and only act of freedom of whichwe are capableour choice to deny the willis determined bythe will itself. Here he imagines that each individual is lead to thisrealization by his or her transcendentfate.

Schopenhauer and Freud do, however, seem to share a meta-physical presupposition about the nature of psychic forces andthe structure of pleasure. For both thinkerspleasure is wholly nega-tive: the discharge of painful tension. According to Schopenhauer

(1819):All satisfaction . . . is really and essentially always negativeonly, andnever positive. It is not a gratification that comes to us originallyand of itself, but it must always be the satisfaction of a wish. Fordesire, that is to say, want, is the precedent condition of every plea-sure . . . so the satisfaction or gratification can never be more thandeliverance from a pain, from a want. (p. 319)

This view of the economics of pleasure and pain is a direct conse-

quence of Schopenhauers metaphysics. The world will is the ulti-mate source of the negative nature of pleasure, an endless strivingincapable of final satisfaction (p. 308). What is this final and


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permanent satisfaction that Schopenhauer compares with thefleeting satisfaction of finite human life? Since the object of plea-

sure is wholly relativethe object of a desiring willwe cannotspeak of a summum bonum, but if we were to say what the ultimategood is, it would be a final satisfaction of the will, after which nofresh willing would occur; a last motive, the attainment of which

would give the will an imperishable satisfaction (p. 362). In itsproper metaphysical sense, this ultimate satisfaction could onlybe death. Death would be the final and ultimate discharge of ten-sion, the supreme orgasm. Among the living, tension is sporadi-

cally discharged, but it is always raised again by some internal orexternal stimulus. Unconscious desire, the striving of the worldwill, always multiplies and expands itself. It can never achieve ulti-mate satisfaction: tension can never be completely thrown off. ForSchopenhauer there is no death drive, but, as in Freud, the back-

ward pull of desirethe tendency to reduce tensionentailssuch a principle from the outset. If pleasure is merely satisfaction,un-pain, then desire itself must tend toward death: a striving forrest within the unconscious itself.

But here we find a salient difference between Freud andSchopenhauer: Schopenhauer fails to notice the ultimate impli-cations of his notion of pleasure, while Freud recognizes theseimplications in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. By recognizing thisconsequence, we might say that Freud beat Schopenhauer at hisown game. For Schopenhauer, life is always striving for itself with-out any aim or end, and hence thwarts ultimate satisfaction, but ifpleasure is the reduction of tension, then life must aim at death,

that is to say, the will itself must be a death drive suspended. InSchopenhauers philosophy, the only escape from the incessantpain of life, from the perpetual increase of tension, is thepureknowing subjects conscious act of resignation. The ego mustchoose to turn away from life, to deny the will itself. If Schopen-hauer had recognized that the will tends toward death, or, as hespeculates in Transcendent Speculation . . . , toward resigna-tion, then he would have been forced to revise his entire philoso-

phy. If Schopenhauer accepted the results of this transcendentspeculation, he would have had to admit that knowledge could nolonger bring salvation because resignation, the denial of the will


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to live, would have to have been thought of as an unconscioustendency of the will itself. So Schopenhauer speculates, and by

speculating he addresses the interest of disinterested knowledgewithout ever properly confronting it. Freud dethrones this con-scious act of resignation by showing that even this act of resigna-tion is ultimately determined by the inner nature of the uncon-scious drive. Was Freud pointing to this in Beyond the PleasurePrinciple? Did Freud want us to see how he out-SchopenhaueredSchopenhauer by pushing speculation beyond its proper limit?

If all experienced satisfaction is temporal, and hence fleet-

ing, where does the notion of absolutesatisfaction come from? It ischaracteristic of logocentric metaphysics to split differential rela-tions into absoluteoppositions. In fact, one might even go so far asto say that Western metaphysics is driven by a desire for opposableabsolutes. For both Freud and Schopenhauer, absolutesatisfactionis primary, while the temporal satisfaction of immanent life is de-rivative, secondary, fleeting. Freud and Schopenhauer are not sat-isfied by thinking of satisfaction as the reduction of sometension,but instead incessantly push this notion toward the reduction of

alltension. From the outset, prefigured in many ways by the eco-nomics of energy in the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895),Freud conceives primary process as the unconscious drive to dis-charge tension. As Freud (1920) repeats in Beyond the PleasurePrinciple,Unpleasure corresponds to an increase in the quantityof excitation and pleasure to a diminution (p. 8). In other words,tension reduction is the inner tendency of the unconscious drive,and this is the essence of pleasure (p. 33).14In Beyond the Pleasure

Principlethe pleasure principle is notopposedto the nirvana prin-ciple. In fact, the death drive might be seen as the result of Freudsabsolutization of tension reduction. The death drive will thencome, albeit briefly, to be understood as the very basis of the plea-sure principle: The dominating tendency of mental life . . . is theeffort to reduce, keep constant, or to remove internal tension dueto stimuli . . . a tendency which finds expression in the pleasureprinciple; and our recognition of that fact is one of the strongest

reasons for believing in the existence of death drives15

(p. 55).What does the drive strive for, according to its innermost nature?The complete reduction of tension, complete satisfaction (p.41), is its goal. For Freud, there is something deficient, not only in


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the drive repressed in civilized life, but within the drive itself. Thedrive can only achieve complete satisfaction in death, and hence

strives for death. For Schopenhauer and Freud, temporal, finite,human desire is contrasted with a transcendent notion of com-plete satisfaction and found to be wanting. Much more could besaid about this, but we shall defer this discussion in order to ad-dress something we cannot remain blind to.

Let us make a bold attempt at another step forward. In Be-yond the Pleasure Prinicple, Freud (1920) makes reference to Kantsthing-in-itself:

As a result of certain psychoanalytic discoveries, we are today in aposition to embark upon a discussion of the Kantian theorem thattime and space are necessary forms of thought. We have learnt thatunconscious mental processes are in themselves timeless . . . . thatthey are not ordered temporally, that time does not change them inany way and that the idea of time cannot be applied to them. (p. 27)

Freud is reminding of us of insights expressed in The Uncon-scious (1915),16ideas he would hold on to at least until 1938,17ifnot until the very end of his life. Given the resemblance between

Schopenhauers will and the Freudian unconscious, is Freudstimeless unconscious a transcendent unconscious? Freud certainlydid not shrink from explicitly comparing the unconscious to theunknowable substratum of experienced objects that Kant calledthe thing-in-itself. But unlikeKant and much in accord with Scho-penhauer, Freud (1915) finds something analogous to instinctin animals to be the nucleus of the unconscious (p. 194). Scho-penhauer and Freuds analogous conceptions of the thing-in-it-

self as animal instinct or drive are plagued by the same obviouscontradiction. What kinds of processes occur outside of time andremain unaffected by time? How can a process occur without acertain interval, temporal flow, and rhythm of becoming? Isntthe timelessness of the unconscious just another assertion of per-manent presence, eternal truth, or transcendental ideality, whichbelong squarely to the unfolding of Western metaphysics sincePlato? Isnt the Freudian unconscious, like Schopenhauers will,

nothing more that the latest form of the transcendent real? Nev-ertheless, we must admit that whatever else it may be, the Freud-ian unconscious is also alterity, excessa certain field of differ-ence that does not simply converge with conscious thought, and


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can never become present to consciousness. Is the Freudian un-conscious inexorably tied up with Western metaphysics or is it

something akin to the diffranceof deconstruction, or, perhaps,paradoxically, both at once?We return once again to that moment in Beyond the Pleasure

Principle where the text cites Schopenhauer, where it cannot re-main blind to Schopenhauer:

There is something else, at any rate, that we cannot remain blind to.We have unwittinglysteered our course into the harbour of Scho-penhauers philosophy. For him death is the true result and to

that extent the purpose of life while the sexual instinct is the em-bodiment of the will to live. (Freud, 1920, pp. 4950, emphasisadded)

Let us make a bold attempt at another step forward. (Freud, 1920, pp.4950, emphasis added)

Whose harbor have we sailed into? Who/What are we steppingbeyond? Are we not stepping beyond Schopenhauer? Arent we,in fact, sailingfromthe harbor of Schopenhauer into new and un-

charted waters? At the very moment when Freud steps beyondSchopenhauer, the text cites their affinity. It declares that nowand hence never beforethe sober and painstaking investiga-tions of psychoanalysis converge with Schopenhauers philosophy(Freud, 1933, p. 107). Due to this apparently innocuous citation,this new affinity, if investigated, will of course prove to be nothingbut a superficial and hence erroneous connection: It confirmsFreuds self-proclaimed constitutional incapacity for philoso-

phy, his supposed dislike of reading, preserves the purity of psy-choanalysis, and confirms that Freud read Schopenhauer for thefirst time late in life (Freud, 1925a, p. 60). Perfectly, perhaps alltoo perfectly, Freud has shown, yet again, that psychoanalysis owesnothing to Schopenhauer. But through the citation of Parerga andParalipomenathe text itself literally points back to Schopenhauersdream theory, to a disavowed affinity that is covered up as it is steppedbeyond. If Freud disavowed his inheritance from Schopenhauer,then through this ostensibly passive citation the repressed returns

to haunt the text: Has the ghost of Schopenhauer, a spectralgrandfather of psychoanalysis, come back to collect what is owed?Perhaps Freud, gripped by this speculating demon who pulls


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psychoanalysis back down into metaphysics, writes this affinityinto the very structure of the text. Doesnt Schopenhauers phi-

losophy reach out like the transcendent hand of fate unconscious-ly directing the outcome of Freuds earliest discoveries? Arentthe results of the laborious investigations of psychoanalysis de-livered over to the metaphysics of Schopenhauer because theypresuppose elements of that very same metaphysics?

But all such questions remain hidden, buried within the pas-sive reference to Schopenhauer, lost like so many ships in thestormy seas of Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

NIETZSCHES RHYTHM

[It is] better to dance clumsily than to walk lamely. So learn fromme my wisdom: even the worst thing has two good dancing legs: solearn, you Higher Men, how to stand on your own proper legs!

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra(18831885)18

Time is not an irreversible progress beginning with an origin andoriented towards a specific goal: it is a rhythmic play between op-posing of forces which prevail by turns, innocently constructingand deconstructing worlds. A rhythmic play which implies repres-sion and the return of the repressed.

Sarah Kofman, Nietzsche and Metaphor

In 1926 Freud received a magnificent and expensive birthdaypresent from his once highly esteemed disciple Otto Rank. Unfor-tunately this gift was something Freud had purchased for himselfsome 26 years earlier: The Collected Works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Per-

haps this was an unheimlich

19

moment for the seventy-year-old fa-ther of psychoanalysis? Had the secretly familiar, yet disavowed,philosophy of Nietzsche returned once again to herald the break

with yet another promising disciple? Had the disavowed ancestorreturned to threaten Freuds legacy? The progeny have discov-ered the ancestor. Legitimacy is questioned. They threaten to de-throne the king. Will Freud have an heir? At this moment, whichseems to return again and again, the future is uncertain. Was thisuncanny moment destined to recur eternally? Would Freud ever

be able to escape his demon-double, the dancing Zarathustra whoseems to have aped him from the beginning? Perhaps at this un-canny moment, Freud recalled the first pronouncement of the


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eternal return, which he may have encountered not long after thefirst publication of The Gay Science in 1882perhaps from his

friend Siegfried Lipner or another of the former members ofFreuds reading society in Vienna20who were strongly interestedin Nietzsche (Holub, 1999, p. 151; Lehrer, 1995, p. 15).

In a letter to Fliess from February 1, 1900, Freud writes, Ihave just acquired Nietzsche, in whom I hope to find words formuch that remains mute in me but have not opened him yet. Toolazy for the time being (p. 398). As Bass (1993, p. 197) pointsout, these lines are much more significant than they appear to be

at first glance. How did Freud know that Nietzsche might have thewords to fill his silence? At this time Freud must have knownenough about Nietzsche to know where the missing words mightbe found. Do these missing words remain unread because Freudis too lazy for the time being? Is the prodigious Freud really toolazy to find these missing words? Here we should ask, with Bass(1993), what words does Nietzsche have that might be able to give

voice to that about which Freud remains silent?That Freud disavows Nietzsche even more thoroughly than

Schopenhauer should give us pause. What, if anything, is hidingwithin Freuds ostensibly passive and indifferent reference to theeternal recurrence of the same in Beyond the Pleasure Principle?This was not the first time Freud referred to the eternal return ina passive way: In a 1917 letter to Ferenczi, Freud writes: I smiledat your optimism in a downright superior fashion. You appear tobelieve in an eternal recurrence of the same and want to over-look entirely the unambiguous downward direction of the curve.

There is certainly nothing noteworthy in the fact that a man of myage recognizes the unavoidable stepwise decay of his being (p.251). For Freud, this affirmative, perhaps even optimistic, doctrineignores the unambiguous downward direction of the curve.Does this reference have any significance or is it the product ofmerechance? There are at least two ways of interpreting this refer-ence. We might suggest that Freud is familiar with Nietzschesphrase, but knows little or nothing about the specifics of the doc-

trine of eternal recurrence. Following this reading, we might saythat Freud is using this phrase as a kind of clich, as it was cer-tainly a phrase common to the intellectual circles he was frequent-


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ing at the time. We have every right to interpret it this way. But wemay read it rather differently. We might suggest Freud was famil-

iar enough with the meaning of this doctrine to know it was anaffirmative doctrine for Nietzsche, one that ignored the down-

ward direction of the curve, namely, a certain inner curve towardones proper death. Does Freuds use of this phrase indicate a fa-miliarity with Nietzsches doctrine? Does this interpretation holdany weight? Traditional psychoanalytic interpretation presumesthat no expression happens merely by chance: In analysis I do not

just mention something by chance. What are we to make of this

reference? Perhaps, we might ask in a somewhat facetiously Der-ridian fashion: What are Freuds chances? In The Uncanny(1919), written around the same time as Beyond the Pleasure Princi-

ple, Freud links the eternal recurrence of the same (withoutscare quotes) with the demonic-doubling characteristic of the un-heimlich. Do these references to the eternal return of the same in-dicate that Freud was aware of the two sides of the eternal return:that it is either affirmed or denied? This link between demonic-doubling and eternal return is repeated in Beyond the Pleasure Prin-ciple (1920): the eternal recurrence of the same is used to referto repetition compulsion (p. 23). What might this referencemean? Can we decide once and for all about Freud and Nietzsche?

Let us make a bold attempt at another step forward. In hisbiography of Freud, Jones (1957) observed that Beyondthe PleasurePrinciplewas discursively written, almost as if by free associations(p. 266). Laplanche (1970) says that Beyond the Pleasure Principleremains the most fascinating and baffling text of the entire

Freudian corpus and that Freud had never been so profoundlyfree and audacious as in that vast metapsychological, metaphysi-cal, and metabiological fresco (p. 106). And Derrida (1980)claims that the text of Beyond the Pleasure Principle is autobio-graphical, but in a completely different way than has been be-lieved up to now (p. 322). Perhaps what stands written in Beyondthe Pleasure Principleis, at least partially, the product of a kind ofautomatic writing where it writes for Freud, producing a text

that is not only an autobiography of Freud the author, but of theit within. Returning to the text, we cannot remain blind to thestrikingly autobiographical nature of the character-types dis-


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cussed immediately before Freuds (1920) reference to Nietzsche.Thus we have all come across people all of whose human rela-

tionships have the same outcome: such as the benefactor who isabandoned in anger time after time by each of his protgs, how-ever much they may otherwise differ from one another, and whothus seem doomed to taste all the bitterness of ingratitude (p.23). It takes little imagination to see Freuds self-portrait here:Freud, the noble benefactor, rejected by the ungrateful protgs

Adler and Jung.21(And while Freud could not have known it whilewriting Beyond the Pleasure Principle, even Little Rank would soon

go his own way.) The text continues: . . . or the man whosefriendships all end in betrayal by his friend; or the man who raisessomeone else into a position of authority and then, after a certaininterval, himself upsets the authority and replaces him by a newone (p. 23). Is Freud referring to himself again, and to the disci-ples who betrayed him? Who has betrayed whom? Are the disci-ples men who raise someone to authority only to give up onthem? Is Freud afraid of being raised up and then usurped? Hasthis already happened? Is Nietzsche laughing somewhere nearby?

Adler, Jung, and others are pointing at the denied inheritanceand, whats worse, claiming legitimacy from it! The kingdom isthreatened. And thenseparated by a single linewe have the

words of an illegitimate ancestor who speaks without a propername. His namelessness hides nothing for he needs no introduc-tion. His infamous words stand starkly between quotes: the eter-nal recurrence of the same22(p. 23). Who pronounces the eter-nal return, a demon or a god? Who is selected? Who is left behind?

Who is destinedto be a path breaker? The future is uncertain. Whois the legitimate heir? And who is destined to disappear?

What, if anything, does the doctrine of eternal recurrencehave to do with repetition compulsion? What brings these con-cepts together and what holds them apart? Let us speculate. Repe-tition. Repetition. Repetitionis one of the basic elements of being-in-the-world, found everywhere from the deepest rhythms of natureto the habitual structures of everyday life. It is there in habit and

memory, in dreams and fantasy, in symphonies and paintings, inceremonies and poetry, in pleasure and in pain. Sometimes thisreturn of the same is comforting and familiar, and sometimes it is


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haunting and demonic. We witness the same scenes recurringagain and again, and we find ourselves playing all too familiar

roles in those scenes. We find ourselves repeating the same oldpatterns again and again, and sometimes viciously, horribly.Thoughts, desires, and memories all have the potential to hauntus, turning life into an unbearable repetition of the seeminglyidentical. At times death seems to be the only escape from thismonotonous and sometimes acutely painful repetition. In theseSisyphean moments it seems as if everything comes back, as if nospecter can finally be put to rest, as if the haunting never ends.

Psychic time often seems like a frightful circle of repetition, andat times a vicious one. Compared to the familiar and comfortablenotion of linear time posited by Western metaphysics, the tempo-rality of the eternal return might appear as if Lucifer himself con-cocted it: a time where everything repressed returns to haunt us.

To what extent is being-in-the-world characterized by the un-folding of linear time? Does time progress in a series of discreteand separable moments? Does time support the dialectical prog-ress of history toward the self-present identity of absolute knowl-

edge? Or, rather, is time an endless repetition, a vicious circle ofeternally recurring chaos? The eternal return is Nietzsches(1901) challenge to Western metaphysics: Let us think thisthought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without mean-ing or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothing-ness: the eternal recurrence (n.55). The first consequence ofthe eternal return is that evolution, dialectical progress, Aufhe-bung,23 is thwarted. Absolute knowledge will never be reached.

There can be no future redemption. The kingdom of God shallnever come. All those future utopias, including those consideredsecular, are shown to be nothing more than ghostly simulacra inthe twilight of metaphysics. The eternal return, the temporality ofthe will-to-power, the finite repetition of differential forces, shat-ters all illusory identities, past, present and future, into the end-less play of self-difference. If all is eternally returning becoming

without end, there can never be a pure present or a complete and

self-identical moment (1901, n. 708). Western metaphysics dis-avowed the circular time of ancient mythology, and with Nietzschethis secretly familiar time returns transformed. It cannot be the sim-


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380 ROBERT GRIMWADE

ple return of the self-identical, but the infinite repetition of be-coming, the eternal return of that which differs from itself. The circle

circles through metaphysical repression, and when it comes back it comesback as the devil-double of itself: the uncanny vicious circle. So whobetter to introduce the eternal recurrence than a self-differingdemon-god?

The heaviest weight.What if some day or night a demon were tosteal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: This life as younow live it and have lived it you will have to live it you will have tolive it once again and innumerable times again; and there will benothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thoughtand sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your lifemust return to you, all in the same succession and sequenceeventhis spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this mo-ment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turnedover again and again, and you with it, speck of dust! Would youthrow yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demonwho spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous mo-ment when you would have answered him: You are a god, andnever have I heard anything more divine. If this thought gained

power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crushyou; the question in each and every thing, Do you want this againand innumerable times again? would lie on your actions as theheaviest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to becometo yourself and to life to long for nothing more fervently than forthis ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? (Nietzsche, 1882, aph-orism 341)

Who is this messenger, a devil-double or a god? Who comes assupposed self-identity and leaves as self-difference?A demon is sup-

posed to be the opposite of a god, an angel who fell from god,the transcendent unity of self-presence. Nietzsches demon ap-pears as both a demon and a god, for the collapse of transcendentbeing into immanent becoming leaves only the play of difference.He is the embodiment of difference deferred by Western metaphysics, whonevertheless comes back to shatter the identity of those who are seized bythis thought of thoughts: My philosophy brings the triumphant ideaof which all other modes of thought will ultimately perish . . .

(Nietzsche, 1901, n.1053).How I interpret the eternal return tells me who I am. It re-flects the very forces that constitute me. Traditional interpreta-


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tions of the eternal return of the same understand it as an eternalreturn of the identical, but this is only one side, one interpreta-

tion, of the eternal return. In the chapter titled On the Visionand the Riddle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra(18831885), Zarathus-tra and his dwarf-double stand at the gateway of the eternal re-turn, inscribed Augenblick:24 a gateway with two faces, wheretwo paths meet that no one has followed either to its end (p.157). Two eternities that contradict each other, that offendeach other face to face (p. 158). What separates and differenti-ates the dwarfs interpretation from that of Zarathustra? Does the

dwarf not say that time is a circle? (p. 158). Have they not eachspoken the sameof the eternal return? Why does the dwarf disap-pear and Zarathustra remain? How does Zarathustra overcomehis suffering and erase the dwarf in himself? As Nietzsche (1901)saysand both Heidegger (1961) and Deleuze (1962) haveshown (albeit in markedly different ways)the eternal return hasa selective power (n.1058): It shatters the metaphysical series ofsubjectconsciousnessidentity and gives way to an understandingof nonmetaphysical multiplicityand difference.

What happens when the repressed circular time of mytholo-gy comes back as the eternal return of becoming? Perishing takesthe form of self-destructionthe instinctive selection of that

which must destroy (Nietzsche, 1901, n.55). The very thought ofthe eternal recurrence abolishes the transcendent beyond ofmetaphysics: There are no longer any permanent goals, ends, oraims that stand outsidethe endless flux of self-differential becom-ing. Time comes from and leads nowhere. The becoming of the

will to power is auto-affective: It leads only to itself. Those pos-sessed by reactiveforces are no longer preserved by the comfortingillusions of Western metaphysics. The will to destruction of lifeturned against itself is no longer suspended by metaphysical il-lusions and is finally unleashed and exposed as the will of astill deeper instinct of self-destruction, the will for nothingness(Nietzsche, 1901, n.55). The thought of the eternal return pushesboth activeand reactiveforces to the limit, beyond the limit. Those

with a predominance of reactive forces will experience the beliefin the eternal recurrence as a curse, struck by which one no lon-ger shrinks from any action (Nietzsche, 1901, n.55). For when


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reactive forces are pushed to their limit they become activewhatthey can do is no longer separated from what they are. As Deleuze

(1962) tells us, Only the eternal return can complete nihilismbecause it makes a negation of reactive forces themselves. By and in theeternal return nihilism no longer expresses itself as the conserva-tion and victory of the weak but as their destruction, their self-destruction (p. 70). The eternal return destroys those forces whichstrive for the illusion of singular self-identity, the permanence ofpresence, and hence proliferates difference: The eternal returnproduces becoming-active (p. 71). It is a difference engine, a

selective principle that destroys the proper temporality of West-ern metaphysics (Nietzsche, 1901, n.1058). In other words, eter-nal recurrence brings about the self-destructionof reactive forces:The will to nothingness of a form of life turned against itself, sus-pended from its completion by the illusions of Western metaphys-ics, finally completes itself, enacts itself. Through the eternal return,the death drive inherent to reactive forces finally and completely expressesitself.25

In Beyondthe Pleasure Principle,repetition compulsion pointstoward the death drive, that is to say, repetition is a force of death.

While formally introduced for the first time in Beyond the PleasurePrinciple, the phenomenon of repetition compulsion was not en-tirely new to Freud. In Remembering, Repeating, and WorkingThrough, Freud (1914) announced something which every ana-lyst has found confirmed in his observations namely, that thepatient does not rememberanything of what he has forgotten andrepressed, but actsit out. He reproduces it not as a memory but as

an action; he repeatsit, without, of course, knowing that he is re-peating it (p. 150). Instead of consciously remembering, the pa-tient repeats his or her past in the transference: The patient actsout his or her relational historicity in the relationship with theanalyst. In the transference the patients unconscious history re-peats itself: Repetition is intrinsic to transference. In this way, rep-etition is intrinsic to the psychoanalytic situation, and the temporality ofthe psychoanalytic situation itself. The sessions repeat over and over

again as the material is worked through again and again. In analy-sis the patient repeats and reworks material from a past that isnever remembered, that was never present, but one that is never-


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theless acted out in the transference. But is the past that returnsidentical to that of the last session, an upsurge of the same un-

changing unconscious substratum, the same intelligible charac-ter, the self-identical unconscious acting itself out?26 Doesnteach reenactment differ from the last time? Doesnt the shiftingscene of analysis and the whole matrix of connections and rela-tions between forces shape each repetition? This difference inrepetition seems to be a necessary condition of the possibility of

working through. For if the reenactment is identicalwith what itreenacts and hence identical in each repetition, change as such

would be impossible. Difference in repetition is the possibility ofchange inherent to the psychoanalytic situation. In analysis eter-nal return is the temporality of both the illness and the cure. Theillness is the return of the apparently identicalin an apparently time-less way. The temporality of illness is being apparently stuck intime, and the cure is the patients recognition that what re-turns is not the return of the identicalbut the return of the same, ofself-difference. Analysis is so painful because it forces the patientto confront the terror of differencethe abyssal play of becoming

without permanence or stabilitya play that forces him or her toface the inevitability of change. It is unsurprising that the absoluteterror in the face of repressed difference is experienced as de-monic when freed from the static concept of identity. The curefor metaphysical illness is the recognition and affirmation of dif-ference.27Here then, we have a kind of temporality that can un-derlay both Nietzsche and Freuds concepts, one that can accountfor the very basis of psychoanalytic practice and the possibility of

both illness and cure.In Beyond the Pleasure Principle,Freud attributes the compul-

sion to repeat to the internal nature of the drive itself. Nietzschealso links these two motifs together. As I alluded to earlier, the

will to powerthe relational network of finite differentials offorceis composed of two kinds of forces: active and reactive.These two kinds of forces, however, are not absolute opposites,like life and death. One kind of force tends toward self-multiplica-

tion and overcoming, while the other is the sameas this one, butturned against itself. According to Nietzsche, while one type oflife, characterized by a predominance of active forces, is ascend-


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ing, in acts of rhythmic surpassing and exceeding itself, anothertype of life, characterized by a predominance of reactive forces, is

declining, but preserves itself with delusions of permanence andpurity. These delusive projections are what Nietzsche calls reac-tive nihilism or simply metaphysics. This is why Nietzsche candescribe reactive forces, in Schopenhauerian terms, as a will tonothingness suspended bya will to self-preservation: a push towarddeath that defends itself with self-preservative illusions of permanence. Inother words, a reactive force is a will to nothingness suspendedfrom action: a death drive suspended. These forces, turned

against themselves, aim to reduce tension and hence eliminatedifference. Active forces, on the other hand, as drives toward life,toward self-multiplication and self-surpassing, strive to raise ten-sion levels, to face and overcome resistances. How we interpretthe eternal return tells us what kind of forces predominate in usat any given moment: our interpretation of the eternal returntells us who we are. Through the selective power of the eternalreturn reactive forces, the forces of nihilism or metaphysics be-come active forces of nihilism, an active will to self-destruction.

Active forces, on the other hand, are multiplied by the eternalreturn: They are pushed passed the limit that they are already ex-ceeding and liberated from their reactive counterparts. For somethe eternal return is the greatest curse, for others it stimulatesand furthers the affirmation of difference.

Here we must address an obvious point. Who were Freudspatients? Who comes to analysis? Not those who are predominate-ly active and life affirming, but those who are suffering from life:

those who need help to break free of reactive forces. In strictlyNietzschean terms, Freud treated people with a predominance ofreactive forces, namely, those who experience repetition as acurse and are trying to preserve themselves from an inherent willto nothingness. These individuals are bound to answer the ques-tion posed by the eternal return with a resounding no, for theyare unable to affirm difference. Hence, Nietzsche might haveseen Freud as a new type of priest, a new metaphysician who helps

preserve those who are suffering from life.28

It would not surpriseNietzsche that Freuds concepts are at times reactive, one-sided,even Schopenhauerean, because they were developed from the


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study of predominantly reactive individuals. But before we arecarried away by Zarathustras dance we need to address a some-

what obvious point.Who has ever been the expression of pure reactiveforces?As Derrida (1985) has shown in The Ear of the Other, and wecan see in Ecce Homo (Nietzsche, 1888), Nietzsche even under-stands himself as being split between active and reactive forces.

According to Nietzsche, no human being has ever been entirelyfree of reactive forces. To reiterate: A purely active human being hasnever existed and may be nothing but a fantasy. As long as humanityremains human, reactive forces will plague it. Only an bermensch

could be completely and utterly active, could embrace difference ab-solutely, but according to Nietzsche, the bermensch remains thegreat not yet hanging over us like the sword of Damocles. Inother words: Despite our desire to twist free, we, as human beings,can never completely escape the pathological delusions of meta-physics.

While there is a certain linkage of motifs between Freud andNietzsche (repetition, the demonic, etc.), Freud could simply ex-plain this associative connection as the result of Nietzsches tre-

mendous powers of endopsychic perception (endopsychische Wah-rnehmung). But even if this depiction is accurate, does this reallyinvalidate Nietzsches discovery? Didnt psychoanalysis find oneof its beginnings with a great self-analysis?29Doesnt Nietzsche seeinto the depths of the unconscious, even if that unconscious hap-pens to be his own? Further, isnt he quite aware of what he is do-ing? Doesnt Nietzsche recognize all philosophies, and all Wissen-schaften, including his own, as a projection of the deep rhythms of

differential unconscious forces: the becoming-play of will to pow-er?30 Perhaps the greatest delusion is to think that Nietzschesdiscoveries, and even those of Schopenhauer, are absolutely dif-ferent from those of Freud, or anyone else, by way of the suppos-edly infallible line drawn between illegitimate speculation andproper thought?

InEcce Homo, Nietzsche stresses that it is notHerrNietzschewho thinks the thought of eternal recurrence. This idea was not

worked out by the reflecting consciousness of an ailing philolo-gist named Friedrich Nietzsche. This idea graspedand overtook himin a text 6000 feet beyond people and time (Nietzsche, 1888, p.


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123). The eternal return is not a thought of the one who thinks it:It is a thought that thinks itself. It seizes the one who thinks, it comes

suddenly without herald or warning, like the demon-double inThe Gay Science (Nietzsche, 1882, p. 341). The eternal returncomes like fate and appears as destiny. But what is Nietzscheanfate? Where does it come from? Nietzsches incessant affirmationsof fate attest to the significance of fate in his thought. But the fateto which Nietzsche refers is not the transcendent fate Schopen-hauer speculates about or a manifestation of Schopenhauers

world will, but something immanentto the very thrust of life itself.

Nietzschean fate is the eternal recurrence of the same itself: the endless play-ing movement of unconscious differentials of force repeating again andagain, never identically but always the same(Nietzsche, 1901, n.1067).Amor fati is the joy of the circle, an affirmation of the viciouscircular temporality of the interplay of the differentials of forcethe affirmation of the temporality of will to power, of ever recur-ring difference (Nietzsche, 1901, n.1067).

We have speculated that psychoanalytic time is a kind of cir-cle, a kind of repetition, and now we must ask, where does this

primordial nonlinear time come from? If the eternal return is thecircular time of the will to power, then time is the repetition of the

finite differentials of force that characterize the deep unconscious or, alter-natively, the path-breaking differentials of Freuds Project (1895). In-terpreted this way, Nietzsches eternal recurrence of the same issimilar to what Bass (2006) has called unconscious time (p. 23).Unconscious time is the time prior to the linear now time ofmetaphysics, and even the ontological time of Heidegger: It is a

form of time beyond conceptualization: the periodicity of difference.While Freud was timid with regard to positing a theory of time, asBass (2006) has clearly demonstrated in Interpretation and Difference,There is an unintegrated thinking of unconscious temporality inFreud (p. 20). As Bass (2006, p. 20) shows us, developing avenuesfound in Derridas corpus, Freud undermines his own theory ofthe timelessness of the unconscious in several works, includingBeyond the Pleasure Principle and A Note on the Mystic Writing Pad.

In A Note on the Mystic Writing Pad, Freud (1925b) states:It is as though the unconscious stretches out its feelers, throughthe medium of the system Pcpt.-Cs. [perception-consciousness],


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toward the eternal world and hastily withdraws them as soon asthey have sampled the excitations coming from it [. . .] this discon-tinuous method of functioning of the system Pcpt.-Cs. lies at thebottom of the origin of the concept of time. (p. 231)

Earlier we wondered whether Freuds conception of thetimeless unconscious was a metaphysical inheritance of the world

will posited by Schopenhauer as the Kantian thing-in-itself. Nowwe can begin to sketch out a possible answer to that complex anddifficult question. While Freud repeatedly says that the uncon-scious is timeless (a metaphysical characteristic), he also sub-

verts his own interpretation by positing a kind of unconscioustemporality. Like the two philosophical legacies he inherits,Freud, in positing a timeless unconscious, repeats the fundamen-tal gesture of Western metaphysics by positing the unconscious asa permanent presence,31but he also undermines this permanenceof presence by ascribing temporal processes and differential forc-es to the unconscious. In other words, Freud points toward anopening beyond metaphysics by inscribing Becoming (self-differ-

ence) into the heart of apparent Being (self-identity). Here wecan begin to see the diverging structure of what I have calledFreuds philosophical inheritance: We have Freud la Schopen-hauer, but we also have Freud la Nietzsche. We uncover two di-mensions of Freuds philosophical inheritance: one distinctlymetaphysical and another that aspires to twist free from the meta-physical fantasy of permanent presence.

With the positing of unconscious temporality, Nietzsche andFreud converge: There is a rhythmic periodicityinherent to the uncon-

scious that stands beyond the linear now time of Western metaphysicsand modern science.What is beyond the pleasure principle and evenbeyond time itself? Diffrance and rhythm: The rhythm of will to

power: finite differentials of force repeating: the eternal recurrence of thesame. In To Speculateon Freud Derrida (1980) writes the fol-lowing cryptic lines: Beyond opposition, diffrance and rhythm.Beyond a beyond whose line would have to divide, that is to op-pose entities, beyond the beyond of opposition, beyond opposi-

tion, rhythm (p. 408). The temporality of the will to power as therhythm of the eternal return is beyond pleasure/pain,32beyondlife/death,33beyond the absolute oppositions and hierarchies


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of metaphysics. But how do we account for Freuds two ostensiblyopposed theories of unconscious time, namely, the timeless un-

conscious and the one that rhythmically repeats? How does onearrive at such a conflicting and paradoxical structure? What trans-figuring mirror represents repetition as timelessness? What givesus the notion of being as eternal, as timeless, as permanent pres-ence?In other words, from where do the pathological metaphysi-cal illusions of permanent presence arise? Tired of speculating, Idefer to Nietzsche (1901): That everything recursis the closest ap-

proximation of a world of becoming to a world of being(p. 617). Perma-

nent presence, referred to as being by Nietzsche, isanapproxi-mation (Annherung) of the self-differing rhythm of becoming:eternal repetition without beginning or end. For Nietzsche, ap-

proximation is always a falsificationa false equivalence, a meta-physical repression of differencehence the approximation ofbecoming and being is a twofold falsification: Two fold falsifi-cation, on the part of the senses and of the spirit, to preserve a

world of that which is, which abides, which is equivalent,etc.(Nietzsche, 1901, p. 617). Who/What is approximating/falsi-

fying here? Who/What desires to preserve? Just as nonmetaphysi-cal reality differs from itself,34the temporality of will to power asthe eternal return of difference also differs from itself. So who/what represents the endless repetition of the eternal return as being? Or,put differently, who/what represents self-difference as self-identity?Nietzsches answer is clear: The reactive force par excellence, theforce that defendsagainst difference by establishing unities out ofmultiplicities, the force that manufactures identities by repressing

a primary difference: consciousness.By repressing difference, con-sciousness represents the repetition of difference as timeless be-ing. The unconscious of reactive consciousness35 disavows unconscioustime by replacing it with the metaphysical fantasy of the eternal now:Con-sciousness is engaged in this twofold falsification: Consciousness repre-sents becoming as being.

CONCLUSION

One might wonder if what has been attempted in this essay is a yetanother form of masteryan attempt at mastery by appropria-tion. While there is no (conscious? intentional? Are these words


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meaningful?) attempt here to undermine Freuds text, as SarahKofman (1974) once put it, There is perhaps, for every writer,

one vital defense: to travesty his text, to cover it over, to protect itbehind a bundle of themes; or to ask endless questions about thefabrication of the text, which can also be a means of trying tomaster it (p. 162). What is the drive for knowledge (Wisstrieb)other than, as Freud (1905) says, a sublimated manner of obtain-ing mastery [Bemchtigung] (p. 194)? Are we (I mean me, Imyself, the It myself) trying to master Beyond the Pleasure Princi-

pleattempting to master Freuds attempt at mastery by specula-

tive subversion and philosophical reappropriation

? Perhaps. Arewe trying to deny the profundity and originality of Freud by un-dermining him? Here the answer is no. To suggest, speculatively,that Freuds concepts bear an inheritance in no way undermines the

profundity of his discoveries. What Schopenhauer and Nietzsche dis-covered through rigorousphilosophical thinking, Freud reinter-preted, developed, tested, expanded, and took out into the fieldto actually help people. Perhaps what has become Freuds greatestlegacy is not only the discovery of the unconscious, which un-

dermines the hegemony of metaphysical consciousness, but thedevelopment of these profound philosophical insights into a formof interpretive care. In other words, Schopenhauer and Nietzschecould obviously never be said to have invented or founded psy-choanalysis, because psychoanalysis is a practice of care. It is pre-cisely this legacy that belongs to Freud above all, embodied by thetheory and practice of those who have followed in his footsteps.36

My otherbiographicalinterpretations of Freuds refer-

ences to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are, of course, no morethan associative interpretations, other speculations, that seem toresonate with something written on the reverse of the text. In thespirit of Freud, we have attempted to open our ears to the uncon-scious resonances and the emotional current of the text: WasFreuds anxiety about finding a legitimate heir, about being thefather of a new Wissenschaft, associated with Nietzsche? Did Freudinherit ideas from Schopenhauer, disavow them, and then almost

automatically hide them in a reference? Did Freud inherit thelegacy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche? This is a matter of inter-pretation.Did he read them?All we can do is speculate. What I in-tend to suggest may be shocking to some readers: Freud is the


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390 ROBERT GRIMWADE

heir of both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche whether he read them ornot and no matter how much he (mis-)interpreted their texts and trans-

formed their ideas. Is not an inheritance only worthy of the name ifit is reinterpreted, revitalized, reinvested, and made to perform indifferent contexts? Does anything stand entirely outside the re-lays of inheritance?

With our conceptual interpretations the story is more com-plex. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud all dove into thedepths of the unconscious, returning with similar, but ultimatelydifferent treasuresdiscoveries standing apart, discoveries that

differ without the possibility of any absolute synthesis. This, ofcourse, does notmake them opposedto one another, for any discor-dance requires the possibility of an inherent accordance, and theinherent complexities of these relations as relationscannot simplybe ignored. Guided by the work of Derrida, Kofman, and Bass, wehave explored various dimensions of SchopenhauerFreud andNietzscheFreud relations. What is the connection between Freudand Nietzsche? What can their deep affinity tell us about psycho-analysis and philosophy? What can philosophy teach psychoanaly-

sis? What can psychoanalysis teach philosophy? What I have at-tempted here is merely to suggest some possible avenues forrethinking the relationship between philosophy and psychoanaly-sis. To understand and situate the NietzscheFreud relation, weneed to understand that of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, andthat of Schopenhauer and Freud. But to understand psychoanaly-sis andphilosophy beyond the artificial boundary lines of discipline,

we need a philosophy of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysis of phi-

losophy. But perhaps we must go even further toward somethingthat is neither philosophy nor psychoanalysis, something entirely

without borders and oppositions. Perhaps, if I may be forgiven asomewhat awkward neologism, what is called for a kind ofphilopsy-choanalysisbut who said that this does not already exist, travers-ing the proper border between psychoanalysis and deconstruc-tion? Let us make a bold attempt at another step forward. . . .

NOTES

1. One might wonder why I follow Derrida in suggesting that Freud disavowedhis philosophical inheritance and why I dont simply treat it as case of mere


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forgetting. Why not follow Zilboorg (1956), who suggests, . . . . as to Freudsforgetting the sources of his own ideas,whether the ideas could be relatedto Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegelian dialectics, or Herbartian trendsthat

he forgot or was unaware of the sources of his own Weltanschauung, seemsquite natural. Many of us are totally unaware of the fountainheads from whichwe refresh ourselves (p. 144). This essay will speculate as to how we mightunderstand this forgetting as a structured and multifaceted disavowal.

2. In the Standard Edition,Strachey translates ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen asperpetual recurrence of the same thing. I have modified this translation tothe eternal recurrence of the same.

3. Frie and Reis (2001) discuss Freuds strange relationship with philosophy:Freuds relationship to philosophy was . . . tenuous . . . . Freud lauded suchthinkers as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer for their considerable insights intothe human mind, yet he also sought to distance the nascent science of psy-choanalysis from what referred to as the speculative metaphysics of philos-ophy. Freud hoped to ensure that psychoanalysis could claim the objectivi-ty of the natural sciences, rather than be seen as a branch of the humanities.In our opinion, Freud thereby left the unfortunate legacy of an artificial dis-tinctionbetween the disciplines of psychoanalysis and philosophy (pp. 298299, emphasis added).

4. I use the German Wissenshaftto emphasize that psychoanalysis is a complexamalgam that traverses many traditional disciplinary boundaries, ratherthan one specific mode of knowledge.

5. Parerga and Paralipomena (Appendices and Omissions) is a collection of

philosophical essays written by Schopenhauer to supplement his two-volumemasterwork The World as Will and Representation(1819, 1849). Interestingly, itwas this work and not The World as Will and Representationthat sparked inter-national interest in Schopenhauers philosophy after John Oxenford re-viewed the work in the Westminster Review.

6. This quotation appears on page 236 of Freuds German edition of Parergaand Paralipomena.

7. That both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche share a conceptual affinity withFreud is well documented in the literature. While most authors grant Scho-penhauers and Nietzsches influence on Freud, if only indirectly, the ques-tion of the nature of this influence is hotly debated. A small sample of influ-

ential writings in the psychoanalytic literature on Schopenhauer and Freudincludes Bischler(1939),Proctor-Gregg (1956), Gupta(1975), and YoungandBrook(1994).A small sample of influential writings on the NietzscheFreud relation includes Mazlish (1968), Trosman (1973), Assoun (1980),Parkes (1994), Lehrer (1995), Bass (2006).

8. Trosman (1973) describes Freuds reading society: Freuds LesevereintookSchopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche as ideational leaders. It was believedthat a new and artistically vital culture, opposed to the excessive rationalismof the past, had to be created. Political activity was to appeal to the integrat-ed man and not regard his rational aspect as more important than his emo-tional side (p. 325).

9. Despite its merely extraneous significance, I cannot help noting that all thisis expressed to the same Lou Salom who was the former object of Ni-etzsches misguided affections, and no doubt well versed in Schopenhauer.

10. Freuds (1920) disclaimers are all over Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the mostfamous of which is the opening of chapter 4 (p. 26).


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392 ROBERT GRIMWADE

11. It is not one of the four types of legitimate knowledge Schopenhauer out-lines in On the Principle of Sufficient Reason,namely, logical, empirical, tran-scendental, or meta-logical, and is not the fifth kind of eminently philo-

sophical knowledge proposed in The World as Will and Representation (1819),namely, the immediate intuitive knowledge that the body as object has ofthe will-in-itself (p. 102).

12. In The World as Will and RepresentationSchopenhauer (1819) draws a distinc-tion between the empiricalcharacter and the intelligiblecharacter. The intel-ligible character is what he calls a special idea, namely, an archetypal formthat determines the empirical character, which is merely its manifestation(pp. 158, 161).

13. According to Schopenhauer (1819), this doctrine is the essential core of theworlds great religions, particularly Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity(p. 408).

14. The reality principle only modifies the pleasure principle by deferring orpostponing tension discharge: In other words, with the introduction of thereality principle, a certain amount of tension can be tolerated over time;pleasure, the reduction of tension, is deferred for the purposes of futuredischarge.

15. In theStandard EditionStrachey translates Trieb as instinct; here, and ineach subsequent case, I have substituted for it the more appropriate drive.

16. The processes of the system Ucs. are timeless; i.e. they are not ordered tem-porally, are not altered by the passage of time; they have no reference totime at all. Reference to time is bound up, once again, with the work of the

system Cs (Freud, 1915, p. 187).17. On August 31, 1938, Freud wrote to Marie Bonaparte: So it might be thatthe idea of time is connected with the work of the system Pcs-Cs (perception-consciousness). Kant would then be in the right if we replace his old-fash-ioned a priori by our modern introspection of the psychical apparatus. Itshould be the same with space, causality, etc. (Jones, 1953-1957, vol. 3, p.466).

18. By quoting this section I am suggesting that two of Freuds proper legs(touse the French term for legacies), at least of the philosophical ones, areSchopenhauer and Nietzsche. Freud must learn to walk on his two gooddancing legs. I am also referring back to the chapter of To Speculateon

Freud (Derrida, 1980) titled in French Freuds Legs, where Derridaplays on the FrenchEnglish homonym legs. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle,Freud (1920) quotes the poet: Was man nicht erfliegen kann, muss man er-hinken. Die Schrift sagt, es ist keine Snde zu hinken[What we cannot reach fly-ing we must reach limping . . . . The Book tells us it is no sin to limp](p.64). Why cant Zarathustra invite Freud to dance?If these two legs are pros-thetic, they are made of different materials and bend according to differentjoints: limping and dancing legs!

19. The unheimliche [uncanny] is something which is secretly familiar, whichhas undergone repression and then returned from it (Freud, 1919, p. 245).

20. See note 8.

21. Each of these men understood himself as an intellectual descendent ofNietzsche.

22. See note 2.23. Aufhebung, often translated as sublation in English, is Hegels term for the


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dialectical process of canceling, keeping, and elevatingthat does not leave any-thing behind.

24. Augenblick is translated as moment or instant, but literally means winkor blink of the eye.

25. In The World as Will and Representation,Schopenhauer (1819) indicates whathis answer to the eternal return might be: At the end of his life, no man, ifhe be sincere and at the same time in possession of his faculties, will everwish to go through it again. . . . he would much prefer to choose completenon-existence (p. 324).

26. For Freud, acting out [agieren], as a manifestation of the return of the re-pressed, is the return of the identical. This is because what returns is appar-entlyidentical, but nevertheless permeated by difference.

27. The work of Alan Bass explores the relationship between pathology andmetaphysics. See Psychopathology, Metaphysics (1993),Difference and Dis-avowal(2000), and Interpretation and Difference(2006).

28. Deleuze and Guattari (1980) state this Nietzschean position unambiguouslyin A Thousand Plateaus: The most recent figure of the priest is the psycho-analyst, with his three principles: pleasure, death, and reality (p.154).

29. I am referring to Freuds famous self-analysis that gave birth toThe Interpreta-tion of Dreams.

30. For example, Beyond Good and Evil(Nietzsche, 1886) chapter 1, aphorism 6.31. Freud obviously subverts the permanent presence of consciousness. The ques-

tion is whether Freud posits the unconscious as a permanent presence, thatis, outside of time, outside of space, as the metaphysical subject like Scho-

penhauer does with the transcendental will.32. In his Nachlass, Nietzsche states, Perhaps one could even describe pleasurein general as a rhythm of small unpleasurable stimuli . . . (Kritische Studi-enausgabe, 11[76], 1887-1888; alt. 1901, p. 697).

33. In The Gay Science Nietzsche (1883) states, Let us beware of saying thatdeath is opposed to life. The living is only a form of what is dead, and a veryrare form (p. 110).

34. This is Nietzsches so-c

freuds philosophical inheritance.pdf

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