Comparing Causality in Freudian Reasoning - Anne Kran PDF

Journal of Critical Realism
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Comparing Causality in Freudian Reasoning and

Critical Realism
Anne Kran
To cite this article: Anne Kran (2010) Comparing Causality in Freudian Reasoning and Critical
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[ JCR 9.1 (2010) 5-32] (print) ISSN 1476-7430
doi: 10.1558/jcr.v9i1.5 (online) ISSN 1572-5138
COMPARING CAUSALITY IN FREUDIAN

REASONING AND CRITICAL REALISM
by
ANNE PERNILLE KRAN1

Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 15:03 02 April 2016
University of Tromsø
anne.kran@uit.no
Abstract. This article initially discusses reasons why Freud researchers

turn to critical realism since this is what led me to compare causality in
the two traditions in the first place. Three arguments on causality follow.
First, it is argued that Freud’s analyses of unconscious processes merit
closer attention by critical realists, focusing on the relation between
causal unconscious processes and rationality, and causal unconscious
processes and social change. It may be objected that this does not con-
cern the discussion of causality proper, to which I would reply that what
we consider to be causally efficacious ultimately is relevant to our concep-
tion of causality. The second argument, which is the centrepiece, outlines
Freud’s conception of causality, his idea of overdetermination (complica-
tion of causes) and his treatment of motives and reasons as causes. His
notions of causality are compared to those of critical realism. Freud’s
idea of retroactive causality is discussed in relation to delayed causality
in critical realism and the idea of disembedded space-time components.
Finally, Freud’s concept of determinism and the related concepts of rep-
etition and chance are discussed and compared to ubiquity determinism
in critical realism and the distinctions between causal and non-causal
correlations and necessary and accidental sequences of events. While the
first argument concerns presuppositions for the discussion of causality in
psychoanalysis and its relevance for critical realism, the third concerns
implications and/or applications of the two views on causality. It is my
contention that the second argument needs to be placed in context of
the other two in order for the two conceptions of causality to be under-
stood adequately and most revealingly compared.
1 Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, Department of Education,

University of Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø, Norway. Thanks are due to Mervyn Hartwig and two
anonymous JCR reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this
paper.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010, 1 Chelsea Manor Studios, Flood Street, London SW3 5SR.
6 ANNE PERNILLE KRAN
Keywords: causal unconscious processes, causality, chance, delayed cau-

sality, determinism, motives as causes, reasons as causes, repetition, ret-
roactive causality
1. Introduction
A number of critical realists and/or psychoanalysts have discussed the rela-
tionship between psychoanalysis and critical realism.2 While I agree that
critical realism is hospitable to psychoanalysis and that critical realism under-
labours psychoanalysis as a science, my aim in the following is to argue both
that there are parallels between psychoanalysis and critical realism and that
psychoanalysis can inform critical realism.
There will be readers of this article who are well acquainted with Freud’s
collected works (24 volumes),3 together with other important writings such
as On Aphasia,4 where the disciplines of medicine, philosophy, psychology
and linguistics meet. However, I believe it is not uncommon for people to
have an opinion on Freud without having read much of his work. In my view,
the resources of Freud’s works are by no means exhausted, notwithstanding
a great deal of subsequent, often correct, criticism and modification.
Before coming on to causality in Freudian reasoning5 and critical realism,
I contextualise the discussion by noting that and considering why Freud
researchers are turning to critical realism.
1.1. Freud researchers turn from Habermas to Bhaskar
In the 1970s and 1980s Freud researchers frequently turned to Jürgen Hab-
ermas, who seemed to offer Freudian reasoning a renaissance by portraying
psychoanalysis as an exemplary model for ‘therapeutic critique’.6 However,
Habermas made mistakes,7 first in claiming that an analysed patient would be
forever free of all irrationalities and blind spots (almost completely transpar-
ent to herself),8 and second in arguing that the patient, in Adolf Grünbaum’s
2 Notably, Collier 1994, 1999 and Clarke 2003, 2008.

3 Freud 1966–1995.
4 Freud 1953 [1891].
5 The terms ‘Freudian reasoning’ and ‘psychoanalysis’ are here used interchangeably.
6 Habermas 1982 [1981], 42–3.
7 Examples of mistakes Habermas made are referred to here because Bhaskar would not
have committed them and because they concern causality, and thus help to explain the turn
to Bhaskar.
8 Habermas 1982 [1981], 42–3.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

COMPARING CAUSALITY IN FREUDIAN REASONING 7
words,9 is ‘the ultimate epistemic arbiter’ of the correctness of all interpreta-

tions supplied by the analyst.10 Habermas further claimed that the ‘lifting’ of
repression would entail that the neurosis evaporated, dissolving the causal con-
nection linking the pathogenic cause aetiologically to its effect.11
Freud, however, made no such claims. To Freud the possible therapeutic
gain lay in making use of the causal connection that had been uncovered.
Furthermore, Freud never claimed that analysed patients had the capacities
Habermas claimed on their (and his) behalf. According to Freud, the pos-
sibility of introspection and self-analysis has severe limitations; the subject has
no privileged access to her own unconscious, which is why psychoanalysis, as
the relation to the other, was introduced in the first place.12
To Freud researchers, Habermas seemed for some time, not least in The
Theory of Communicative Action, to provide psychoanalysis with strong support.

When his misinterpretations of Freud became apparent, Roy Bhaskar’s The
Possibility of Naturalism and other works seemed to take the place of works by
Habermas for a great many Freud researchers. The move from Habermas to
Bhaskar (in particular his early works), which seems to be a growing trend,13
suggests that Freud researchers turn to philosophy for the underlabouring
of psychoanalysis as a science.14 It still remains to establish why they turn to
critical realism and in particular Bhaskar’s works. The reasons are I believe at
least the following three.
The first concerns Freud researchers’ need for underlabouring or concep-
tual clarification of Freud’s works. Freud’s works can be classified in various
ways, for example ‘the psychoanalytic method, Freudian psychology and
Freudian philosophy’.15 Freud’s studies of psychology/pathology, his studies
9 Grünbaum 1985 [1984], 21.

10 Habermas 1971 [1968], 261. Cf. Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 116 n. 33, where Bhaskar dis-
cusses why an agent’s special authority is never absolute.
11 Habermas 1971 [1968], 271.
12 And as Freud later states: ‘In the individual’s mental life someone else is invariably
involved.’ Freud [1921], 69.
13 See for example Hanley and Hanley 2001; Pocock 2006; Sims-Schouten, Riley and
Willig 2007. Here, however, I concentrate on Gullestad and Killingmo 2005, e.g. 57, 61. This
publication illustrates that established Norwegian academic psychoanalysts refer to critical
realism and not Habermas, as was common earlier. This publication, which probably will be
read by generations of students of psychology/psychoanalysis at the University of Oslo, will
very likely result in critical realism being studied in Norway and other Scandinavian coun-
tries as a frame of reference for psychoanalysis as a science. The authors, both renowned
Freud scholars, do not quote Bhaskar directly but rely on interpreters of his work.
14 A Google search on Habermas, Bhaskar and psychoanalysis still has Habermas in the
lead but a trend towards Bhaskar is evident.
15 Maritain 1989 [1957], 302. Both Maritain and Bernard Lonergan (quoted later)
referred to themselves as ‘critical realists’.

of the psychoanalytic method and his metapsychological works were never

quite reconciled. There are unresolved issues and lack of clarity in Freud’s
writings as well as considerable tension between the different levels of abstrac-
tion in his substantial and metapsychological analyses. The arguments in this
article concern (examples of) Freud’s view of science stated explicitly and
inferred from his substantive analyses.
The second reason concerns the inherent character of Freud’s works as
illustrated by arguments such as Hanley’s16 that ‘Freud explicitly made criti-
cal realism the epistemology of psychoanalysis’. Hanley cites the following of
Freud’s many descriptions of psychoanalysis:
Its endeavour is to arrive at correspondence with reality – that is to say,
with what exists outside us and independently of us and, as experience has

taught us, is decisive for the fulfilment or disappointment of our wishes.
This correspondence with the real external world we call ‘truth’.17
Freud reasons in ways that are sometimes strikingly similar to basic tenets
in critical realism. There is in other words in my opinion an initial affinity
between Freudian reasoning and critical realism that helps to account for
Freud researchers turning to critical realism.18
The third reason for the shift from Habermas to Bhaskar lies in the charac-
ter of Bhaskar’s works, not least The Possibility of Naturalism, and the assistance
it offers to confront and clarify the concepts involved in research through its
sheer quality. I would add that Collier’s work19 is also important for seeing the
possibility of studying Freud as a transcendental realist.
Critical realism has much to offer Freud researchers. Likewise, I aim to
show that Freud’s psychoanalysis can offer critical realism insights.
2. Three Arguments Comparing Causality in Freudian Reasoning and Critical

Realism
Below I argue from the point of view of the interplay between Freud’s
substantive analyses and his metatheoretical works, adducing examples of
16 Hanley 1999, 427. The quote from Freud is apt but, as one of my anonymous reviewers
points out, Hanley’s article is not exemplary.
17 Freud [1933], 170. Hanley’s quote from Freud is shortened here but not otherwise
altered. While Bhaskar rejects the correspondence theory of truth except as a metaphor,
his expressive-referential theory does hold that ‘a proposition is true if and only if the state
of affairs that it expresses (describes) is real’. Bhaskar 2008 [1975], 249.
18 For an example of Freud’s epistemic relativism, see Freud [1914], 77. For an example
of his use of analogies, see his comments on the structural viewpoint (id, ego, superego) in
Freud [1926], 195.
19 Collier 1994.

Freud’s views on science focusing on causality and comparing Freudian

reasoning in that area with that of critical realism. When I discuss criti-
cal realism I mean, with few exceptions, original critical realism, that is,
its first phase (‘transcendental realism, critical naturalism and explanatory
critique’20) rather than its second (dialectical) or third (the philosophy of
meta-Reality).
2.1. First argument: Why causal unconscious processes are important for critical realist
thinking on rationality and social change
Causal unconscious processes do not directly concern our conception of cau-

sality, but the question of which powers and mechanisms we conceive of as

causally efficacious ultimately does have implications for our view of causal-
ity. Here I argue that Freud’s analyses of causal unconscious processes merit
closer attention by critical realists by showing the relevance of causal uncon-
scious processes for rationality and social change.
The study of unconscious processes and their causal efficacy is an obvious
example of Freud’s work in the intransitive dimension and at levels of onto-
logical depth through retroduction as the mode of inference, in accordance
with critical realism. Freud argued that it was the unconscious that ‘enabled
psychology to take its place as a natural science like any other’.21 The view of
unconscious processes as causally efficacious illustrates that the ontology sus-
tained in critical realism favouring ‘explanations of phenomena at one level
in terms of powers, structures and other factors at a deeper level’22 equally
applies to Freud.
The unconscious was studied by poets, thinkers and philosophers before
Freud. Freud was however the first to discuss the causal role of unconscious
processes and thereby started establishing psychoanalysis as a science observ-
ing the two criteria for ascribing reality to a phenomenon that critical realism
stresses, namely perception and causality.23 Unconscious reality, operative
irrespective of our knowledge of it, became Freud’s major focus both in his
clinical and metapsychological works.
The link between unconscious causal processes and rationality is the focus
in the first argument.
20 Hartwig 2009, 234 n. 2.

21 Freud 1940 [1938], 158.
22 Pratten 2007, 195. I have found Dictionary of Critical Realism (edited by M. Hartwig), in
which Pratten’s piece appears, invaluable for research purposes.
23 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 12.

2.1.1.
Rationality, in the broad sense of the term, is vital for mental health, growth
and learning. What psychoanalysis does, among other things, is to show how
rationality can be disrupted, disturbed and broken down. Freud’s analyses
of unconscious causal processes also give us an understanding of how early
experiences can leave impressions on the mind that do not reach conscious-
ness or experience, in other words, that evade or escape reflection and/or
correction.
Margaret Archer seems undecided on this point when she writes: ‘Although
a repressed thought could potentially divert a reflection or possibly even censor
it, the fact remains that unconscious items cannot enter into our reflections.’24
By this argument she means to support the claim that ‘non-conscious’ features
‘can play no part in the conscious, reflexive deliberations of the active agent’.25 I
claim that indeed they can, precisely by limiting or censoring reflections and
thus influencing conscious deliberations as Archer states in her note. The ex-
pression ‘play no part’ in Archer’s text seems ambiguous.
Irrationality is not an absence but a breach of rationality: irrationality can
only be understood against a background of rationality and, likewise, ratio-
nality presupposes irrationality. This argument can be compared to the view
attributed by Mervyn Hartwig to Bhaskar that ‘freedom presupposes the pos-
sibility of making mistakes, of acting otherwise than in accordance with our
true natures’.26 For this reason alone I believe that excluding unconscious
effects or non-conscious features from reflexive deliberations makes Archer’s
concepts of reflexivity and rationality vulnerable to criticism.27
Archer may disagree with the claim inherent in the notion of unconscious
effects, but may be persuaded by the argument that, while we are not logically
compelled to take responsibility for unconscious states and their immediate
effects, ‘less distortion is involved overall in doing so than would result from
dissociating oneself from one’s unconscious states by denying ownership of
them’.28
Archer invokes John Searle in support of her position on the relationship
between the unconscious and consciousness.29 Searle writes: ‘I believe that in
most appeals to the unconscious in Cognitive Science we really have no clear
24 Archer 2003, 25 n. 14 (original emphasis).

25 Archer 2003, 25 (original emphasis).
26 Hartwig 2007b, 123.
27 Clarke argues along similar lines in Clarke 2008, e.g. 75, 80.
28 Gardner 1999 [1991], 157 (original emphasis). I support Gardner’s conclusion, but
not the premises of his argument.
29 Searle 1992. See Archer 2003, 25 n. 14.

idea of what we are talking about.’30 Cognitive scientists, however, argue that
‘the cognitive unconscious is efficacious and quite real precisely by looking at
Searle’s own criteria’.31 I refer to this controversy simply to illustrate that there
is an ongoing debate about (the causal status of) unconscious processes.32
Freud vacillated between different conceptions of the unconscious, ini-
tially equating it with the inferno the study of the unconscious was meant
to uncover but later repeatedly warning against conceiving of an inherent
antagonism between conscious and unconscious attributes.33 Controversies
about the unconscious, both empirical and conceptual, sometimes suffer
from not making explicit which conception of the unconscious is being discussed.
This comment may apply to Archer’s work cited above.34
I conclude that causal unconscious processes may influence rationality
and ultimately the conception of causality.
2.1.2.
The next strand of the argument concerns the possible importance of causal
unconscious processes for the analysis of social change. Social change presup-
poses learning processes that may involve unconscious causal mechanisms.
Bhaskar clearly credits Freud’s insights into unconscious processes.35 He argues
that social change presupposes human change ‘which centrally involves chang-
ing consciousness’. Change will take place, says Bhaskar, by ‘raising conscious-
ness’ and ‘thinking differently’.36 Like Bhaskar, I understand both as necessary
for rational social change, but would add that changing consciousness in many
cases presupposes addressing unconscious processes or requires knowledge of
the workings of unconscious causal mechanisms (and I believe Bhaskar would
agree). Since Bhaskar’s idea of raising consciousness and thinking differently
seems to include or presuppose addressing unconscious processes, how does
he propose we approach this task?
30 Searle 1995, 128.

31 Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 115. The authors specify that the term cognitive ‘is used for
any kind of mental operation or structure that can be studied in precise terms’ (11).
32 Schools of psychoanalysis might differ in respect to which conception of unconscious
processing they adhere to. Hopefully they will find this depiction of Freud’s approach to
causality useful despite disagreements with Freudian reasoning on other points.
33 Freud, e.g. [1920a], 19; [1923], 17.
34 Today the focus is on unconscious processes rather than ‘the unconscious’. Peter Fonagy
and Mary Target remark that ‘discoveries in neuroscience mostly seem to confirm psycho-
analytic intuitions about the complexity of mental functions’ (Fonagy and Target 2005,
317).
35 E.g. Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 97. Differences between Archer and Bhaskar on the issue of
subjectivity are described in Hartwig 2007f, 446.
36 Buch-Hansen 2005, 68 (original emphasis).

Freud asked, as Descartes did before him, why do we not learn from
our mistakes, and why do we undermine our own best interests? Bhaskar
addresses much the same questions when he argues that ‘access to your true
self’37 is a prerequisite for ‘shedding everything that is inconsistent with what
we already essentially are’,38 adding that this is a ‘huge project’.39 I agree with
Bhaskar’s ideal, but believe that unconscious mechanisms and their elusive
character need to be stressed: what is to be shed must have been acquired or
learned, sometimes by non-conscious processes. Such processes of acquisi-
tion can be compared with the idea of ‘direction’ defined as a ‘force which
integrates memories in a certain pattern without being a memory itself’,40 indi-
cating the difficulties in tracing the aetiology of some parts of that which is
acquired or learned.
Shedding presupposes knowledge of that which is to be shed. The differ-

ence between Freud and Bhaskar on this issue lies not so much in the area
of psychoanalysis as a technique,41 a question on which Freud also expressed
scepticism and doubt42 as well as optimism, and which can never be a common
solution under all particular circumstances, as in Freud’s relatively stronger
emphasis on and meticulous studies of how constraints (that which is to be
shed) are acquired. Comparing the two on this issue, Freud seems, at least at
times, less optimistic than Bhaskar, and I believe rightly so, concerning both
the possibility of shedding and of emancipatory change. The reasoning in
the philosophy of meta-Reality seems to me to lack the attention Bhaskar oth-
erwise pays unconscious causal processes as well as the claim inherent in the
idea of explanatory critique, that ‘an ill cannot be removed without removing
its causes’.43 Having studied examples of how Bhaskar works, this is probably
not an oversight, but a choice. And if so, how is it argued? Perhaps it will be
suggested that the philosophy of meta-Reality takes for granted the empha-
sis of previous works, but Bhaskar explicitly states that his book ‘articulates
the difference between critical realism and a new philosophical standpoint’.44
37 Bhaskar 2002, e.g. 53, 102.

38 Bhaskar 2002, 53.
39 Bhaskar 2002, 102.
40 Bateson 1987 [1972], 166 n. 2, where Bateson discuss deutero-learning, citing Maier
1940, 47 (my emphasis).
41 Bhaskar comments that ‘whether the techniques of psychoanalysis are the best ways of
getting rid of these unconscious residues…is another question’ (Bhaskar 2002, 156).
42 Looking back, Freud says: ‘It almost looks as if analysis were the third of those “impos-
sible” professions in which one can be sure beforehand of achieving unsatisfying results.
The other two, which have been known much longer, are education and government’
(Freud [1937], 248).
43 Lacey 2007, 197.
44 Bhaskar 2002, ‘Preface’, 10 (my emphasis).

Perhaps the answer will refer me to the ‘aporias that inevitably result from an
epistemic (knowledge-based) as opposed to an alethic (objectivistic or truth-
based) approach’?45 Or perhaps the ‘meta’ in meta-Reality refers to a realm
that goes beyond the sciences as we know them, pointing out their limitations
in guiding us through life? If so, this paper will come full circle in the end
by pointing out that Freud too in his treatment of causality goes beyond the
causality of the sciences.
I conclude that unconscious causal processes may be vital for the analyses
of social change whether the issue is knowledge or truth.
2.2. Second argument: how notions of causality, reasons as causes, Nachträglichkeit and
delayed causality in Freud and critical realism compare
In this section, Freud’s causal analyses of mind, his concept of causality,

his idea of overdetermination (complication of causes) and his treatment
of motives and reasons as causes are compared to corresponding ideas in
critical realism. Finally, Freud’s concept of retroactive causality is discussed in
relation to the idea of delayed causality in critical realism.
2.2.1. Introduction
First a few words explaining why causality became so central in research on
Freud. Causality became the key issue in the ‘demarcation debate’, which
follows in the wake of Freud’s works like ‘a kind of historical see-saw’, to
borrow a phrase from Bhaskar.46 This debate mirrors the wider debate
between positivism and hermeneutics. It has to a large degree centred on
the issue of casual connection versus meaning connection or ‘thematic affin-
ity’, as the philosopher of science Adolf Grünbaum has dubbed the latter.47
The hostility to the notion of causal connections came, predictably, from the
hermeneutic camp and the critical social sciences48 and the defence from a
variety of quarters.49 Habermas eventually retracted or modified his claim
that Freud is guilty of a ‘scientistic self-misunderstanding’,50 and Ricoeur
45 Norris 2007, 337.

46 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 18.
47 Grünbaum 1985 [1984], e.g. 55–6, 227–8. Grünbaum has published a series of works
on Freud’s psychoanalysis from the seventies to the present day. Cited here, besides Founda-
tions, is Grünbaum 1993.
48 Prominent among these are Ricoeur 1970 and 1993 [1981]; Habermas 1971 [1968]
and 1982 [1981].
49 Among these: Grünbaum 1985 [1984] and 1993; Cavell 1993; Wollheim 1995 [1971]
and 1993; Forrester 1984 [1980] and 1994 [1990].
50 Cited in Ricoeur 1970, 304.

eventually conceded the necessity of causal connections.51 Grünbaum, after a

protracted debate, agreed to the ‘evidential probity of the clinical data’.52
These controversies indicate that Freud researchers are confronted
with issues familiar to critical realists. Freud regarded reasons as a species
of motive, and motives, conscious or unconscious, as a species of the genus
cause. Below I outline aspects of Freud’s conception of causal relevance as
opposed to causally sufficient and/or causally necessary relations. The inten-
tion is to show how Freud’s views on causality compare with critical realist
conceptions.
However, it must be pointed out that Freud’s conception of science is
diverse and at times ambiguous: there is a conflict between mechanistic
and non-mechanistic elements in Freud’s concept of mind. In ‘Project for
a scientific psychology’, Freud’s intention was to ‘furnish a psychology that

shall be a natural science: that is, to represent psychical processes as quantita-
tively determinate states of specifiable material particles’.53 But Freud’s views
changed: ‘It is a sacrifice of mechanistic determinism that opens the way to
the recognition of the psychogenic as a genuine category.’54
Below I shall show how Freud’s understanding of causality compares with
ideas in critical realism. Like Marcia Cavell in her work on Freud and phi-
losophy, I argue that Freud’s conception of causality shows that causal laws
should be seen, with critical realism, as normic, that is, as tendencies, maintain-
ing that psychoanalysis is a causal as well as an interpretive discipline which
stresses that interpretation is ‘not “subjective” in a sense that leaves truth up
for grabs’.55
2.2.2. Freud’s conception of causality compared to the conception of causality in critical

realism
The following is an outline of how Freud argued. The order of the argu-
ments presented is an attempt at an historical outline. Otherwise the order is
unimportant to the argument as a whole: my aim is to show that there are
real points of connections between the notions of causality in Freud and
critical realism.
51 Ricoeur 1993 [1981], 262–3.

52 Grünbaum 1993, 111–12. He still maintains that Freud tended to draw causal conclu-
sions on the basis of thematic affinity alone, the so-called thematic affinity fallacy. While I
agree with this, Grünbaum overlooks that thematic affinity might be indicative of a causal
link.
53 Freud [1895a], 295. Ideas from this work, ‘Project for a scientific psychology’, survived
through Freud’s entire production, making it one of Freud’s most important works.
54 Lonergan 1957, 205.
55 Cavell 1993, 74.

2.2.2.1. In his early studies of the aetiology of symptoms Freud soon discov-
ered that a symptom could have a complicated history. Realising this, Freud
introduced or coined the principle of causal ‘overdetermination’,56 later
called ‘the principle of complication of causes’.57 By this Freud meant that a
phenomenon is often attributable to a combination of causes and/or a suc-
cession of causes. This observation easily translates to the conception in criti-
cal realism of multi-causality, conjunctural determination and open systems.
In other words, Freud worked from the assumption that systems may be char-
acterised as ‘open, where no constant conjunctions obtain’.58
2.2.2.2. In support of the notion that Freud operated with a conception of

open systems is his observation that prediction may be beyond reach; Freud
says, ‘we never know beforehand which of the determining factors will prove
the weaker or the stronger’.59 The idea that we only know the quality of aetio-
logical factors, not their relative strength, is present as early as ‘Project’.60
This observation corresponds with the critical realist view that there is an
‘asymmetry of explanation and prediction’, implying that ‘extravagant claims
for falsifiability as a necessary feature of science are mistaken’.61
2.2.2.3. Freud argued that the tubercle bacillus is not disqualified from being
a cause of tuberculosis merely because many carriers of the bacillus do not
develop the disease.62 (Freud’s aim here was to rid his readers of the notion
that infantile seduction episodes cannot be the specific cause of adult hyste-
ria merely because many people have had such experiences without becom-
ing hysterics.) Needless to say, he regarded the tubercle bacillus as a cause of
tuberculosis whether you were a carrier or not. This line of argument fits with
the critical realist view of causality as powers to bring about change, powers
or potentialities that may or may not be exercised.
These examples illustrate that Freud typically did not conceive of causality
in terms of constant conjunction, regularity and/or regularity determinism.63
56 Freud [1895b], 131. Critical realists have borrowed ‘the concept of overdetermination
from Althusser (who got it from Freud)’ (Hartwig 2007b, 122).
57 E.g. Freud [1901b], 60–1.
58 Bhaskar 1989, 16.
59 Freud [1920b], 168.
60 Freud [1895a], 295.
61 Collier 1994, 58. See also Grünbaum’s discussion of Popper’s objections to Freud
where Grünbaum remarks that ‘nonpredictability is not tantamount to untestability’ (Grün-
baum 1985 [1984], 126).
62 Freud [1896a], 209.
63 There is a huge amount of work on causality, also today, taking Freud’s works as point
of departure.

The examples above show that Freud conceived of causality in ways similar
to critical realism, suggesting that Freud’s arguments coincide with the view
that ‘causal laws must be analysed as tendencies, which may be possessed
unexercised and exercised unrealised, just as they may of course be realised
unperceived (or undetected) by anyone’.64
As I mentioned initially, Freud is a writer of voluminous output whose
works contain conflicting views. Therefore I am sure counter-examples can
be found. However, Grünbaum, whom I disagree with on some other counts,
has summed up Freud’s views on causality in a similar fashion,65 though with
a differing focus in mind.
The similarity of notions of causality in Freud and critical realism is
further evidenced when we turn to Freud’s treatment of motives and reasons
as causes which also illuminates his focus on the emergent powers of mind.
2.2.2.4. Freud’s treatment of motives and reasons as causes was met with
criticism, a point that I shall illustrate only, since this debate is well known
to critical realists. Ludwig Wittgenstein argues that Freud’s use of causal-
ity is ‘obscure’ and that in treating reasons as causes Freud overlooks the
fact that what makes something a reason is that it can be acknowledged as
such:
And yet the psychologist wants to say: ‘There must be some law’ – although
no law has been found. (Freud: ‘Do you want to say, gentlemen, that changes
in mental phenomena are guided by chance?’). Whereas to me the fact that
there aren’t any such laws seems important.66
Wittgenstein is right in pointing out that Freud rejects inner chance (not
outer/external) but is wrong in assuming that this view commits Freud to
find causal laws in Wittgenstein’s sense, that is, ‘laws’ that we produce in
experiments. Further, the fact that reasons are the sort of thing that can be
acknowledged says nothing about when or under what conditions.67
James Hopkins argues that remarks like Wittgenstein’s enforced a distinc-
tion between reason and causes within this field of study and influenced later
works on psychoanalysis,68 for example, The Unconscious, by Alasdair MacIn-
tyre. MacIntyre writes: ‘Freud calls the unconscious motive “the driving force
behind the act”. In other words he tries to treat unconscious motives both
64 Bhaskar 1989, 16.

65 See Grünbaum [1984] 1985, e.g. 69–73. There is, however, no reference to Nach-
träglichkeit nor to determinism in Grünbaum’s work.
66 Cited in Wollheim and Hopkins, eds, 1982, 1 (original emphasis).
67 Cf. Cavell 1993, 60.
68 Hopkins 1989, viii.

as purposes and as causes. This is simply a confusion.’69 In Freud’s defence

Frank Cioffi, for example, has replied: ‘What Wittgenstein calls Freud’s con-
fusion may have shown more grammatical flair than grammatical muddle.’70
This debate has in no way come to an end.
2.2.2.5. Freud seems to have viewed the grounds for assimilating motives and
reasons to causes as almost self-evident, not needing elaborate explanation
or particular defence. In contrast to Bhaskar, who gives a penetrating analysis
of the pros and cons of the reasons vs. causes debate,71 Freud seems to leave
much of this work to his readers.
I will not rehearse the general arguments that reasons are causes but refer
the reader to Freud researchers who treat this topic along similar lines to
Bhaskar.72 I limit my comments to examples of Freud’s arguments.

In arguing that motives and reasons are causes, Freud stressed the ideogenic
aspect of motives as well as their etymological meaning, what moves us to action,
for example, ‘the cause [Ursache], the motive [Motiv] of falling ill’.73 Refer-
ence to ‘forces as exciting causes is built into the very meaning of the term
“motive” as Freud uses it’.74 Freud acknowledged, like Bhaskar, that neither
causes nor reasons or beliefs are unambiguous terms.
Freud’s early discovery that hysterical illnesses do not obey physical laws,75
in other words that ideas have agency, and his repeated statement that what
determines the formation of symptoms ‘is the reality not of experience but
of thought’,76 make his view compatible with that of Bhaskar when he states:
‘If and when they explain, reasons must be interpreted as causes, on pain of
ceasing to explain at all.’77
Freud ascribed reality or ontological status to ideas and thoughts by
deploying a causal criterion, irrespective of whether the idea or thought in
question had a referent:78 working from the point of view of pathology, Freud
69 MacIntyre 1958. Hopkins 1989, viii n. 2, adds that MacIntyre later revised this view.
70 Cited in Cavell 1993, 60.
71 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 80–97.
72 Grünbaum 1985 [1984], 69–83, argues with strict reference to Freud’s views. Cavell
1993, 58–66, argues somewhat more freely, sometimes blurring the distinction between her
own and Freud’s view.
73 Freud 1941, 420.
74 Shope 1973, 292, cited in Grünbaum 1985 [1984], 71.
75 This discovery goes back to the time when Freud was working with Jean-Martin Charcot
(1885–1886) observing that traumatic hysteria (the results of accidents) ‘behaves as though
anatomy did not exist’ (Freud [1888–89], 169, original emphasis).
76 E.g. Freud 1912–13, 66.
77 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 90.
78 Cf. Bhaskar 1997, 139.

particularly avoided ‘the conflation of the ontological issue of the reality of

ideas with the epistemological or ethical issues of their truth’,79 a point that
is relevant to the epistemic fallacy and its linguistic version, which in my view
Freud was aware of and strove to avoid.
As to the epistemic fallacy, Freud points to ‘the philosophical distinction
between consciousness and self-consciousness’.80 Regarding the linguistic
version of the epistemic fallacy, Freud’s conception of repression as a ‘failure
of translation’ is a simple illustration of his awareness of the consequences of
barriers to thinking in complexes or conceptual transformation.81
Studies of Freud’s assimilation of motives and reasons to causes have simi-
larities to Bhaskar’s analyses.82 Bhaskar’s distinction between real and possible
reasons (Rr/Rp) is mirrored in analyses of Freud’s work through the concept
of causal relevance. Of course, the concept of rationalisation83 necessitated a

distinction between those explanatory reasons that are motivating and those
that are not. But I am not sure I agree with Grünbaum when he argues that
causal relevance ‘is a matter of whether X…MAKES A DIFFERENCE to the
occurrence of Y, or AFFECTS THE INCIDENCE OF Y’.84 As Freud has argued
(see above), a cause can still be termed such even though it does not manifest
itself, and therefore neither need make a difference nor affect the incidence
of Y, in accordance with critical realism as I interpret it.
Freud’s conviction that motives and reasons must be treated as causes is
constant throughout his oeuvre, but his explanation is nowhere as lucid as
Bhaskar’s in The Possibility of Naturalism. In Freud, the reader has to tease out
the arguments from the margins of his works.
Summing up, the points in 2.2.2.3.-5. suggest that there are close points
of contact between the notions of causality in Freudian reasoning and
critical realism, indicating that they may derive mutual benefit from closer
dialogue.
2.2.2.6. The challenge Freud poses to critical realism in connection with cau-
sality concerns the idea of Nachträglichkeit, usually translated in the Standard
Edition as ‘deferred action’, but I believe better understood and translated as
‘retroactive causality’. Retroactive causality is a complicated and controversial
79 Bhaskar 1997, 139.

80 Freud 1914, 98 n. 1. This statement compares with Bhaskar’s: ‘In consciousness, reason
and consciousness of reason remain distinct’ (Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 92).
81 Robinson 1993, 73. ‘We need to recall that part of Freud always strenuously resisted
the effort to transform him into a philosopher of language.’
82 E.g. Grünbaum 1985 [1984] and 1993; Cavell 1993.
83 For an introduction to this concept see Jones 1908, 8–15.
84 Grünbaum 1985 [1984], 72 (original capital letters).

idea, sometimes mistakenly attributed to Jacques Lacan.85 In what follows,

retroactive causality is explained and then discussed in relation to Bhaskar’s
idea of ‘delayed causality’ and his claim that ‘space-time components’ can be
disembedded in various ways.
We are all familiar with the past catching up with us, often in uncom-
fortable ways. Usually we know what ‘hit’ us. And this is exactly where Nach-
träglichkeit differs: ‘the effect hits us before we know the cause’.86 It takes time
for us to figure out, often with the help of another, what it is that is causing us
pain. The idea is complex and difficult to spell out but I argue that it is ‘indis-
pensable for understanding temporal connections and psychic causality’.87
It is often commented that the idea of Nachträglichkeit is difficult to trans-
late. While I agree with this, I concur with Forrester: ‘the fetishisation of one
particular term leads readers of the translation into believing that the rest of
the translation – the bits that are translated… – are more reliable than they
actually are’.88 Many Freudian concepts, including those considered to be
commonplace, are often not clearly understood.
The essence of the idea of Nachträglichkeit may be outlined as follows. In
a letter to Wilhelm Fliess, Freud writes that he is working on the assumption
that ‘our psychical mechanism has come into being by a process of stratifi-
cation: the material present in the form of memory-traces being subjected
from time to time to a re-arrangement in accordance with fresh circum-
stances – to a re-transcription’.89 Freud argues that the ‘traumas of childhood
operate in a deferred fashion as though they were fresh experiences; but they do so
unconsciously’.90
Freud introduces the topic of Nachträglichkeit under the heading ‘The Hys-
terical Proton Pseudos’,91 referring to Aristotle’s Prior Analytics and the sentence
asserting that a false statement is the result of a preceding falsity. In other
85 Jacques Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis suggest ‘that the credit for drawing attention to
the term should go to Jacques Lacan’ (Laplanche and Pontalis 1984 [1983], 111). However,
while Lacan did pursue the idea, it originated with Freud. This is sometimes overlooked in
discussions of Lacan’s works; e.g. Forrester 1994, 205 and passim.
86 Cf. Eickhoff 2006, 1463 n. 3. This is an excellent article on the topic of Nachträglichkeit.
I am grateful to one of my reviewers for calling my attention to it. Eickhoff (2006, 1459)
also points out that ‘a brilliant example of Nachträglichkeit…is to be found in Winnicott’s
posthumous “Fear of breakdown” from 1974’.
87 Eickhoff 2006, 1453.
88 Forrester 1994, 100.
89 Freud [1892–1899], 233 (original emphasis).
90 Freud [1896b], 166 n. 2 (original emphasis). Trauma is a necessary but in many
ways ill-defined notion in psychoanalysis. The concept is however very much in use today:
research in neuroscience discusses the negative impact of what is termed childhood trauma
on learning and memory structures. See e.g. Ekstrom 2004, 674.
91 Freud 1895a, 352.

words, what is distinctive about the process of retroactive causality from the
point of view of pathology is that the wrong idea enters consciousness. But
this has no bearing on the ontological status of an idea or a cause, as Bhaskar
would agree.92 (The phenomenon of a wrong idea entering consciousness
can also be observed in Freud’s idea of mésalliances.93)
Freud’s idea differs from the idea that consciousness re-writes the past:
deferred action is not a conscious process. It concerns experiences that were
not assimilated or incorporated into meaningful contexts at the time of their
occurrence.94 The experiences are first endowed with significance at a later
date through the process of memory. And memory is, according to Freud,
not a conscious process.95 Simplifying somewhat, it is the way of remember-
ing that establishes the causal link and carries the potential for pathology,
rather than, or as much as, that which is remembered.

Retroactive causality is in other words not a matter of interpretation,
nor a matter of creating a causal relation, but a claim that a prior incident
takes effect at a later date through processes that are not conscious.96 The
simple observation that ‘the infant will come to have thoughts, phantasies
and desires of very complex kinds means that experience may later acquire
a meaning it didn’t have at the time’.97 This observation also gives support to
the idea of retroactive causality.98
Retroactive causality again illustrates how psychoanalysis works backwards,
here meant both as a methodological point and a reference to the metaphor
of archaeology. It also indicates Freud’s grasp of the dynamics between the
tenses: the logic behind this idea has similarities to Freud’s reasoning in state-
ments such as ‘what emerges from the unconscious is to be understood in
the light not of what goes before but what comes after’.99 And again: ‘It must
92 Cf. Bhaskar 1997, 143.

93 Mésalliances or false connections are consequences of the original bond between an
idea and affect being severed (Freud [1896c], 48). The split-off affect attaches itself to a
random or spurious (‘wrong’) idea. This may account for a dangerous adherence to ‘wrong’
ideas since their defence has to be produced with extra force against rational arguments on
which these ideas are not founded. See also Collier 1994, e.g. 186–8. The concept has clear
relevance for the idea of explanatory critique in critical realism. It is however equally suited
to illustrate yet another causal story of how unconscious processes may affect consciousness
and reflexivity, a point I shall not pursue here.
94 Cf. Laplance and Pontalis 1984 [1983], 112.
95 Freud [1923], 228.
96 The idea of retroactive causality was retained in Freud’s works independently of the
so-called seduction hypothesis. See e.g. Freud [1919], 37–8.
97 Cavell 1993, 54–5.
98 Cavell 1993, 54–5.
99 Freud [1909], 66.

not be forgotten that the things one hears are for the most part things whose
meaning is only recognised later on.’100
Let us look at arguments against this idea before turning to a related
but different idea in critical realism. Retroactive causality conflicts with the
common conception of causality. I believe, however, that it is worth consider-
ing whether a temporal conception of causation is too narrow if it does not
allow for the operation of retroactive causality, by which I mean that an effect
may precede a cause in the sense that a cause is evoked at a later date out
of an earlier incident or happening that was not (experienced as) causally
efficacious at the time of its occurrence.
I certainly agree with the argument in critical realism that re-descriptions
of the past cannot retrospectively ‘alter the past (as distinct from its inter
pretations)’.101 However, I cannot see that this objection need apply to retro
active causality. If it does, I believe it might apply to delayed causation as well (an
idea we shall discuss below), though less obviously so.
Finally, retroactive causality implies that the process of memory is trig-
gered by a later event, and since this later event might not occur, this instance of
causality is so to speak dependent on this event not only to take effect, but for
its existence. This may be seen as paradoxical and as sufficient reason for dis-
carding the notion. But before concluding let us compare retroactive causal-
ity with delayed causality and the premises of that idea. Instances of delayed
causality might also be said to depend on a later event for their occurrence,
but again, less obviously so.
Is there anything in critical realism that resembles the idea of Nachträglich-
keit? Searching Bhaskar’s works, a remark suddenly appears as relevant to
this discussion. Explaining why an agent’s special authority is never absolute,
Bhaskar’s reasoning seems in some ways very close to the description Freud
gives of retroactive causality:
It [the reason why an agent’s special authority is never absolute] derives
in the last instance from the fact that what is to be explained consists or
depends on episodes in his/her life (and therefore depends upon his/
her unity and continuity as a biological individual), whether or not the
episodes occurred prior to the acquisition of a language and the onset of reflex-
ivity.102
Bhaskar proceeds to explain, with reference to repression and the fact

that the episodes are episodes in the agent’s life, why ontological privilege
does not automatically carry over into epistemological authority. He adds: ‘Of
100 Freud [1912], 112.

101 Bhaskar 1989, 152.
102 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 116 n. 33 (my emphasis).

course the status of the agent’s account may be reinforced by relativising

the aims of inquiry’.103
Does this mean that critical realism may adopt the idea of Nachträglichkeit?
Critical realism argues for ‘the impossibility of backwards causation’,104 and
so, I believe, does Freud. Freud does not refer to backwards causation in con-
nection with retroactive causality or elsewhere.105
Critical realism incorporates the idea that causes may be simultaneous with
their effects106 and also argues for delayed causality. Let us look closer at the
latter idea. Bhaskar argues that ‘space-time…components can be disembed-
ded in many ways’.107 They may ‘intersect, overlap or coalesce, often in con-
tradictory or conflictual rather than just divergent ways’.108 Bhaskar points to
‘modes in which the past and/or the outside may affect the here and now’.109
Among these are ‘LAGGED, delayed efficacy as in global warming’.110 And

‘lagged efficacy or time refers to delayed causal efficacy, as in starlight or the
return of the repressed’.111
Spelling out this idea, Bob Jessop comments that we ‘lack explanations as
to why particular space-time-causal relations obtain in given circumstances’,
adding that it is ‘not Bhaskar’s aim to provide substantive analyses’.112 In
my opinion Freud’s idea of retroactive causality provides an example of
a substantive analysis of how particular space-time-causal relations may
obtain. It invites a discussion of two different but related conceptions of
causality: delayed causality in critical realism and retroactive causality in
psychoanalysis.
As for the notion that mind is a complex structure that at times is struc-
tured in contradiction, may not causality-time(-space) be disembedded as
well as time-space? Lagged efficacy seems to indicate just that possibility.113
Furthermore, according to dialectical critical realism, ‘memory is a negative
103 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 116 n. 33 (original emphasis). What Bhaskar’s concluding sen-
tence implies is however not clear to me.
104 Jessop 2007, 436.
105 Strong argument against the idea that Nachträglichkeit implies ‘backwards causality’ is
found in e.g.Thomä and Cheshire 1991, 425.
106 Hartwig 2007a, 58, 60.
107 Cited in Jessop 2007, 436.
110 Cited in Jessop 2007, 437 (original capital letters).
111 Cited in Hartwig 2007c, 277 (my emphasis).
112 Jessop 2007, 437.
113 Further, is it possible to support the idea of the ‘return of the repressed’ (or repression
proper), allowing delayed causality, without supporting primal repression which is closely
related to the operation of retroactive causality?

presence, which may of course be causally efficacious’.114 Might not memory

in particular display not only a lagged, delayed causal efficacy, but also retro-
active causality?
To readers unfamiliar with Freud, it is perhaps worth pointing out obser-
vations concerning Nachträglichkeit from another discipline: ‘the constant
“belated” retranscription of memories obviously corresponds noticeably to
modern brain-physiological research results’.115 Further, it is argued that
contemporary distinctions showing that memory systems may be of different
kinds ‘obviously has common points of contact with Freud’s ideas on tempo-
rality and on memory’.116
Nachträglichkeit captures in my opinion the intricate workings of (psychic)
processes in regard to causal operations. Nachträglichkeit illustrates how we can
be causal agents and causal victims at the same time in ways that may chal-
lenge our reasoning processes and the reflexive monitoring of our causal
interventions.
Is evoking a cause at a later date a matter of altering the past? Or put dif-
ferently: may critical realism incorporate the idea of Nachträglichkeit? If so, it
would suggest that the two conceptions of causality might profit from contact.
In the idea of Nachträglichkeit I have tried to show that Freudian reasoning
can offer critical realism an insight into a valuable conception of causality.
2.3. Third argument: how the concept of determinism in the two theories compare
In this section Freud’s concept of determinism and the related concepts of

chance and repetition are discussed in relation to the concept of ubiquity
determinism in critical realism and the distinctions between causal and non-
causal correlations and necessary and accidental sequence of events. Freud’s
concentration on the accidental is stressed.
2.3.1.
Freud’s determinism is too complex to treat very adequately within the scope
of an article. Ideally his concept of determinism should be interpreted, first,
in the context of the scientific views dominant at the turn of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, when the old outlook of mechanistic determinism
was about to dissolve and, ‘as one might expect, the ambiguity of the moment
114 Hartwig 2007e, 326.

115 Eickhoff 2006, 1464 (my emphasis).
116 Eickhoff 2006, 1464. This corresponds to Cavell’s account of retroactive causality
(Cavell 2004, 7–8).

forced ambiguity upon the interpretation of his work’.117 Second, as argued

above, Freud’s concept of causality, and his treatment of motives and reasons
as causes, differ radically from the idea of constant conjunction and regular-
ity determinism. Finally, understanding Freud’s determinism involves under-
standing his concept of chance, which I return to below.
Freud was professedly determinist, claiming for instance that ‘one cannot
even make a number occur to one at one’s own free choice any more than
a name’.118 His writings on determinism are unclear, the references are few,
and nowhere does he define determinism or related concepts clearly. This
helps explain the debate that followed and the various interpretations of
Freud as advocating ‘hard determinism’, with which I on the whole do not
agree. There are versions of determinism in Freud’s works that definitely can
be characterised as actualist and that give rise to the free will vs. determin-
ism debate,119 and there are versions that in my view can be defended. Some
of the intensity of the debate may be explained by misconceptions about
Freud’s understanding of causality and/or confusing the universality of causa-
tion with uniformity of causation. But some of Freud’s statements are indeed
indefensible, showing that Freud is at times a sloppy writer, making research
on Freud a strenuous task.120
How determinism is handled must be seen in the context of a theory as
a whole. Since Freud’s theory of emotions ‘fails to distinguish adequately
between security feelings (such as fear, anxiety and dread) and moral feel-
ings (such as shame, guilt and remorse)’,121 this has a detrimental effect on
Freud’s concept of determinism in relation to moral issues.
The following description of determinism seems fairly representative of
Freud’s view:
psycho-analysts are marked by a particularly strict belief in the determina-
tion of mental life. For them there is nothing trivial, nothing arbitrary or
haphazard. They expect in every case to find sufficient motives where, as a
rule, no such expectation is raised. Indeed, they are prepared to find sev-
eral motives for one and the same mental occurrence.122
The above is similar to the concept of ubiquity determinism in critical realism

stating that everything has a cause.123
117 Lonergan 1957, 203–4.

118 Freud [1901a], 240.
119 This debate ‘arises from the reduction of the necessary and possible to the actual’.
Hartwig 2007b, 123.
120 For a particularly indefensible example of determinism, see Freud [1927], 111.
121 Jones 1989, 233.
122 Freud [1910], 38.
123 Hartwig 2007b, 122.

Philip Lawton remarks that ‘Freud was simply acting on deterministic

premises: Everything has a natural cause [at least one]; everything can be
explained in terms of the interplay of natural forces’.124
In his handling of determinism and free will, however, Freud argues along
lines similar to Spinoza who states that ‘experience itself, no less than reason,
clearly teaches that men believe themselves to be free simply because they are
conscious of their own actions, knowing nothing of the causes by which they
are determined’.125
As a practising psychoanalyst, Freud wanted ‘to “un-write” the future,
which the neurotic lives as “already written” ’.126 In other words, he strove to

open the future to choice. This shows that his early mechanistic view of deter-
minism and causal connections as opposed to choice was contradicted in his
clinical work. A successful outcome would still imply that determinism was
operative, but now in accordance with revised wishes and desires.127
2.3.2.
Freud believed in both determinism and chance, that is, chance in the physi-
cal as opposed to the mental world. Comparing himself to the superstitious
person, Freud writes: ‘I believe in external (real) chance, it is true, but not in
internal (psychical) accidental events. With the superstitious person it is the
other way around.’128 This compares with the following distinction in critical
realism: ‘External relations are contingent, internal relations (which pertain
to intrinsic structures) necessary’.129
Freud argued for the importance of chance both in his scientific works and
in public debate.130 In a letter to Carl Jung, Freud refers to ‘the undeniable
“compliance of chance” which plays the same part in the formation of delu-
sions as somatic compliance in that of hysterical symptoms’.131 And likewise,
answering a mother concerned with her son’s disposition, Freud writes:
The question as to which is of greater significance, constitution or experi-
ence, which of the two elements decides character, can in my opinion only
be answered by saying daimon kai tuché (fate and chance) and not one or
the other is decisive.132
124 Lawton 1991 [1947], 30.

125 Spinoza 1988 [1677], 397.
126 Forrester 1994, 95.
127 Cf. Cavell 1993, 82.
128 Freud [1901], 257.
129 Hartwig 2007d, 316.
130 Combining the two notions of chance with the idea of determinism is a challenging
task.
131 Cited in McGuire, ed., 1979, 146.
132 E. L. Freud, ed., 1970, 292–93 (original emphasis). See also Freud [1912], 99 n. 2.

This quote should be interpreted in the light of the heavy emphasis Freud’s
contemporaries placed on unchanging characteristics, ‘popularised by such
unscientific clichés as “national character” and “blood”’. To this Freud replied
with his ‘somewhat idiosyncratic use of the words chance and accident…stress-
ing the pervasive play…especially of early experience’.133
The reason why I underline the attention Freud paid to chance and acci-
dents (Zufallen) is the role it plays in the possible interpretation of determin-
ism with reference to Aristotle. I agree with Forrester when he says: ‘One
simple index of Freud’s avoidance of the Laplacean denial of a difference
between past and future is the fact that the question of chance and coinci-
dence bulks so large in [his] discussions of foretelling the future’.134 Taking
into account Freud’s use of the hypothetical stance in his clinical inter-
pretations, Forrester argues that Freud’s determinism ‘happily and quite

legitimately… [can] be assimilated to the Aristotelian model of “definite
causality”, supplemented by the “incidental causative forces” we call luck’.135
Freud refers to tuché136 as we saw above, but does not argue for it as a cause
in the sense mentioned in the previous argument. I certainly agree that
luck and accident are important in Freud’s work, but believe that assimilat-
ing determinism to Aristotle’s tuché and automaton should be reserved for
those versions of determinism more closely linked to Freud’s discussion of
repetition.
2.3.3.
Repetition is related to psychic determinism in complex ways. In a letter to
Jung, Freud refers to ‘the universal tendency to keep making new prints of
the clichés we bear within us’.137 Freud states that it is the tendency that is
universal, not repetition as such. The ‘clichés’ are continually dressed up
in ‘new attires’ so as to escape detection; otherwise we would hardly keep
repeating them.138
The phenomenon of repetition illustrates how the distinction between
what we do and what happens to us may become both ambiguous and vague.
133 Gay 1990, 83–4.

134 Forester 1994, 95–6.
135 Forester 1994, 210.
136 Tuché may be translated as luck or fortune and automaton as accident or chance, and
both be reckoned among causes. ‘Aristotle regards tuché as being a sub-class of the term
automaton’ (Forrester 1994, 209). In Aristotle 1988 [1952], 272, the concepts used are
others: ‘Both chance also [sic] and spontaneity are reckoned among causes.’ Forrester uses
the translation of the Loeb edition.
137 McGuire, ed., 1979, 87. The letter is dated November 1907.
138 Repetition helps explain the difficult passage from insight to change.

The ‘compulsion to repeat’ refers to the repetition of an earlier distressing

situation without recalling its prototype,139 a phenomenon that explains
Freud’s concern with the accidental and also shows how the question of what
one can hold oneself and others responsible for can become complicated.
It is Freud’s preoccupation with the tragic dimension, the (self-?)destructive
repetition he observed in his patients’ lives, that is my underlying concern
here.
Bhaskar argues that transcendental realism has ‘no problem in sustaining
the contrast’ between things that we do (α) and things that happen to us (β),
implying that ‘reasons are appropriately and correctly invoked in the former
but not the latter case’.140 Of course, Bhaskar reminds the reader that the
paradigms get modified in practice and adds: ‘But this only introduces the
more general phenomenon of mind–body dependency or inter-influence.’141

Bhaskar’s aim here is to counter the language-stratum theorists’ attack on
granting causal status to reasons.
Freud’s concern with repetition can be said to concern strongly modified
versions of the (α) (β) paradigms. When Bhaskar argues that ‘the (αβ) case’
(as in the case of the accident-prone person) may illustrate ‘a case where the
agent seems to be the cause of things that happen to him/her’,142 his argu-
ment has a link to Freud with the difference that in Freud (in cases of pathol-
ogy) the agent would see herself as cause or victim.
To conclude the argument of this section so far: Freud’s determinism (at
its best) resembles determinism in critical realism. But Freud’s concept of
determinism, denying inner chance but not external chance, giving weight
to the accidental and repetition, raises the question whether the distinctions
between ‘a necessary and an accidental sequence of events, and a causal
[and] a non-causal correlation’143 conflict with Freud’s reasoning. In his con-
centration on the accidental Freud seems to go beyond the causality of the
sciences into a murky but still important terrain.
It may be risky to dismiss Freud’s concept of chance as uninformed. Critical
realism specifies two possible interpretations of ‘accidents’, the one assimilat-
ing it to the contingent (distinguishing necessary from accidental sequences
of events), the other regarding it as ‘an event or state of affairs resulting from
a freakish combination of circumstances’,144 freakish meaning odd, abnormal,
capricious and unpredictable, coming closer to Freud’s concept of Zufallen.
139 Note that a cliché may refer to a trauma constituting a prototype.

140 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 89.
141 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 90.
142 Bhaskar 1998 [1979], 89.
143 Hartwig 2007d, 316.
144 Hartwig 2007d, 316 (my emphasis).

Zufallen is a distinct domain of causality for Freud: ‘Beyond chance and neces-
sity, there is luck and accident.’145
I end with a comment on Richard Rorty’s belief in self-creation from an
angle tied in with the arguments above. I certainly agree with Archer that
Rorty’s146 interpretation of Freud as favouring self-creation over self-knowl-
edge seems to depend on a serious misreading of Freud.147 And I certainly
agree with Bhaskar’s view that Rorty underdescribes the importance of science.148
My comment on the idea of redescription has another address: I share the
view of the Norwegian philosopher who argues that belief in (radical) rede-
scription found in (among others) postmodernist works (for example, Rorty)
may be motivated by a need to see the world as just, showing little or no toler-
ance for the workings of phenomena such as luck and bad luck.149 I conclude
by reminding the reader of the possibility of assimilating Freud’s determin-

ism/repetition to Aristotle’s ‘definite causality, supplemented by the “incidental
causative forces” we call luck’, which focuses on tuché and automaton.
I believe Freud would have said that we must not underestimate the acci-
dental and the working of luck and bad luck in the shaping of our lives, and
sadly I believe he is right.
3. Conclusion
This article argues that there is a turn in Freud research from Habermas to
Bhaskar or critical realism, not least because of Habermas’s mistakes in his
conception of Freud’s view of causality and of an agent’s special authority. Of
course, Habermas may still be valuable to Freud researchers, but my observa-
tion is that Freud researchers are turning to Bhaskar or critical realism for
the much needed underlabouring of their research.
I argue and conclude, first, that Freud’s conception of causal unconscious
processes is of importance to critical realist thinking in relation to both ratio-
nality and social change. I claim that the question of what is regarded as caus-
ally efficacious ultimately affects the conception of causality. Second, that
the notions of causality in Freudian reasoning and critical realism have real
points of connection according to a set of vital criteria – from open systems
to the reason vs. causes debate. Furthermore, that critical realists may profit
from Freud’s conception of causality set out in his idea of Nachträglichkeit
145 Forrester 1994, 213.

146 Rorty 1999 [1989], 35–6.
147 Archer 2000, 37.
148 Bhaskar 1991, 13.
149 Hellesnes 2007, 87–8.

which illuminates how mind is a complex structure sometimes structured

in contradiction demanding extraordinary exploratory skills. Third, that the
respective notions of psychic determinism and ubiquity determinism – the
idea that everything has a natural cause – are both similar and different.
Finally, that the assimilation of aspects of Freud’s determinism (tuché and
automaton) to Aristotle merit attention from critical realists, in other words,
that Freud’s idea of the importance of the causality of Zufallen (luck and ill
luck) deserves attention.
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COMPARING CAUSALITY IN FREUDIAN

ANNE PERNILLE KRAN1

Abstract. This article initially discusses reasons why Freud researchers

1 Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, Department of Education,

Keywords: causal unconscious processes, causality, chance, delayed cau-

1.1. Freud researchers turn from Habermas to Bhaskar

2 Notably, Collier 1994, 1999 and Clarke 2003, 2008.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

words,9 is ‘the ultimate epistemic arbiter’ of the correctness of all interpreta-

Theory of Communicative Action, to provide psychoanalysis with strong support.

9 Grünbaum 1985 [1984], 21.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

of the psychoanalytic method and his metapsychological works were never

with what exists outside us and independently of us and, as experience has

2. Three Arguments Comparing Causality in Freudian Reasoning and Critical

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

Freud’s views on science focusing on causality and comparing Freudian

Causal unconscious processes do not directly concern our conception of cau-

sality, but the question of which powers and mechanisms we conceive of as

20 Hartwig 2009, 234 n. 2.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

24 Archer 2003, 25 n. 14 (original emphasis).

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

and ultimately the conception of causality.

30 Searle 1995, 128.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

Shedding presupposes knowledge of that which is to be shed. The differ-

37 Bhaskar 2002, e.g. 53, 102.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

delayed causality in Freud and critical realism compare

In this section, Freud’s causal analyses of mind, his concept of causality,

45 Norris 2007, 337.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

eventually conceded the necessity of causal connections.51 Grünbaum, after a

a scientific psychology’, Freud’s intention was to ‘furnish a psychology that

2.2.2. Freud’s conception of causality compared to the conception of causality in critical

51 Ricoeur 1993 [1981], 262–3.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

2.2.2.2. In support of the notion that Freud operated with a conception of

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

64 Bhaskar 1989, 16.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

as purposes and as causes. This is simply a confusion.’69 In Freud’s defence

Bhaskar.72 I limit my comments to examples of Freud’s arguments.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

particularly avoided ‘the conflation of the ontological issue of the reality of

of causal relevance. Of course, the concept of rationalisation83 necessitated a

79 Bhaskar 1997, 139.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

idea, sometimes mistakenly attributed to Jacques Lacan.85 In what follows,

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

rather than, or as much as, that which is remembered.

92 Cf. Bhaskar 1997, 143.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.