Singularity and universality in Freud

• Grant number: 11/16850-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: February 28, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Epistemology
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Roberto Monzani
• Grantee: André Santana Mattos
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The object of this research project is the study of the relation between the epistemic categories of singularity and universality, in the works of Sigmund Freud, with the purpose of outline the role these categories play in the construction of psychoanalysis. Situated in the field of philosophy of psychoanalysis, this work intend to be one of epistemology of psychoanalysis, as proposed by Monzani (2008): we intend to outline the specificities of such discipline, trying to show the criterion of truth and self-validation that is implicit in itself. The approaches that some other authors make on psychoanalysis are related with the one we propose. We can quote the "Critique" by Politzer, who works with the opposition between the concrete and the abstract, but takes the issue of singularity also decisively, as well as Ricoeurs approach, through the opposition between energetics and hermeneutics, in a way that it situate us in the relation between interpretation and explication in the building of Freudian psychoanalysis. Rortys approach to psychoanalysis also brings an appreciation of singularity, to the detriment of universality, and sees in Freud precisely this diversion from the universal to the singular. Authors like Mezan and Monzani, in the other hand, in their aprroach to Freud, seem to give a similar importance to the universal and the singular. From this frame of commentators positions, we intend here to undertake an investigation of the relation between singularity and universality in the theoretical models created by Freud and in his main published case studies, trying to be restricted to what can be extracted from his texts.