Blumenberg and Psychoanalysis (Freud, Ferenczi, Klein)

The dissertation project aims to comprehensively and systematically examine the reception of the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Sándor Ferenczi, and Melanie Klein in both Hans Blumenberg’s published work and his numerous, largely unpublished posthumous writings on psychoanalytic theory. In light of this account, the project identifies certain concepts in Blumenberg’s thought that require reinterpretation. Particular attention will be paid to Freud’s significance for Blumenberg’s metatheoretical considerations, as well as the connections between Blumenberg’s theory of concepts of reality and psychoanalytic notions of the real.

Drawing on recent conceptualizations of ‘reparative’ hermeneutics, this dissertation traces the contours of an ‘ethical turn’ in Blumenberg’s work, oriented around the paradigm of the human need for consolation and marked by a departure from the theoretical style of psychoanalysis. The project thus aims not only to contribute to the interdisciplinary history of theory in the 20th century, but also to demonstrate the continued relevance of Blumenberg’s historicizing analyses of psychoanalytic theory formation for current discourses, in particular to postcritical interventions informed by Kleinian thought.

Fig. above: Drawings unknown patients. ?Rolf (1925), part of the Melanie Klein collection, license: CC BY-NC 4.0, source: Wellcome Collection