Fictionality in Freud

I'll probably have to discard all of this but eh:
*Okay, definitely discarded and definitely, yes, definitely Freud has given my head a sharp spreading pain.

The novelist and the psychoanalyst may as well be twins. Their difference is evident, only, in their opposing trajectories for achieving clarity and presenting meaning to an audience. The novelist is allowed to be less of a presence amongst his subjects. He may inconspicuously observe, within his own reality, the scene of characters in order to structure a perspective that makes present, not an apparent awareness, but a meditated meaning often overlooked in the immediate visual reality and illuminated in the literary. The way an author fashions a character’s story—whether invented or actual—is not determined by a coherent reality, but is decided prior by authorial intention.

On the other hand, to develop meaning the psychoanalyst must be visibly and physically engaged with the individual, whom the material is dependent upon. Therefore, the other confirms one’s existence to proceed with discovering a meaningful story and the illumination that transpires depends upon the relationship between two memories and two perspectives. Truth is not an independent aim as it is for the novelist, but an effort of two minds whose achievement relies on the analyst and the analyzed relationship, their independent intentions and their narrative transparency.

Ultimately, the stories are presented for an audience within the same medium. Language is how the translator and the reader begin to understand the intangible. However, while the author is responsible for the truth that the final presentation retains, the psychoanalyst can claim the story is not from his mind but the patient’s. Therefore, the psychoanalyst is able to transfer any resulting implausibility toward the reality of the case or inadequacy of memory onto the patient—the other. This flee from responsibility is a denial of the psychoanalyst’s critical role in instigating a framework for narration and a platform to perceive event and emotion. To enter the realm of the real one must accept the unreliability of an absolute truth, fantasy and narrative. Freud, just like the author, selected material from memory to confirm and strengthen his theory on the individual. By structuring his cases, Freud was able to control his patient’s narration and manipulate a patient’s truth for his theory on truth. My intention is not to discredit Freud’s discoveries, but rather prove the narrator’s intention makes an absolute truth impossible to communicate. Ultimately, language provides one with the ability to present meaning made possible by narrating to the other an existence shaded by truth and fantasy, neither entirely real or unreal either.

To engage with meaning, one cannot begin without committing himself to memory. The analyst, patient and writer cannot avoid what they know. While memory is inexhaustible, it is nevertheless subject to change. Not only does this change happen in regards to time, but on lucidity and association. However, one element of memory does not change—it is always fragmented. In Freud’s course of psychoanalyst treatment, he dealt with fragmentary recollections remaining in the patient’s memory and also those he had to help bring to consciousness. Whether initially accessible or not, the memories used to structure a patient’s genuine being were pieces of experiential time and patterns of phantasy. Due to the patient’s neurosis, it was Freud’s role to determine which were pieces and not patterns, actuality and not imagination. Any mistake would disturb the analysis and therefore, one’s phantasy could not be exchanged with one’s experience.

However, because of the patient’s memory and it’s relation to age Freud faced many problematics. On one hand, Freud’s psychoanalytical theory was man becomes who is because of childhood experiences. Therefore, Freud’s intention was to direct the patient’s memory backward toward an obscure event experienced during initial stages of development and thus, most fragmented, incomplete and confused with consciousness and unconsciousness. The very communication of childhood elucidated the inexplicable difference between a child’s mind and an adult’s. Freud believed the traces of childhood were permanent scars in the adult mind. Therefore, by pointing to the place of origin one can discover the impressions that are destined to influence one to the end of their life. On the basis of this theory, a narration would be underwhelming if communicated in linear time and would be likely to show no extraordinary change in the individual. The purpose of the story is best communicated if narrated backwards. Freud was determined to prove the primal scene controlled a character’s life. Whether the child in life or simply in his imagination experienced this event did not prevent Freud from validating it as a possibility to valorize his theory and conclude the patient’s past and future cause of neurosis. Freud’s acceptance of an assumption means he believed fiction was interchangeable with fact. Because he thought it was impossible to confirm a child’s memory, he believed fantasy-formations were intended as symbolic representation of real wishes and interests—a reality the patient wants to have experienced. Therefore, whether the fragments of narrative were absolutely experienced in exterior life does not matter since the psychoanalysts’ intention is to free the patient of his interests, obsessions and anxieties in the present moment. Once the meaning of these symbols were determined, Freud was then able to direct his analysis toward the tasks of the present day—a lived time no longer weighted by the anxiety of an obscured past or rather, untranslated dream.