“As the history of the race moves on, the individual begins constantly anew”. The Relevance of Kierkegaard’s Concept of the Single Individual for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Article

Abstract

[In English]

When we strip Kierkegaard’s concept of the “single individual” of its religious connotations we get the most radical and at the same time the most truthful explanation of what it means to be human. This article explains first why the thesis of an “existential solipsism” (Heidegger) is immune to all objections made from an intersubjective perspective. Then it unfolds the subject by explaining: (a) why everyone has “constantly to begin anew”, (b) why this existential truth is disclosed in “anxiety”, and c) why we generally are in “despair” about this truth and try to escape it. In the second part Freud’s hermeneutic concept of neurotic suffering as a “suffering from reminiscences” is introduced and related to Kierkegaard’s theory of despair. From Kierkegaard’s viewpoint “suffering from reminiscences” can be interpreted as a form of being in despair about how the own life has begun and of struggling incessantly to change what cannot be changed anymore, namely the own childhood history. However the Oedipus complex – for Freud the “nucleus” of all neurosis – can be understood as a metaphor for becoming “this single individual” who has to choose how to live his own life, becoming inevitably guilty through this choice.