Abstract

This chapter focuses on the intersection of philosophy and psychoanalysis and challenges common misconceptions about the way in which the two disciplines relate to one another. It challenges skepticism towards philosophy among mental health professionals in general, and psychoanalysts in particular. The author draws on his own experiences as an academic philosopher and practicing psychoanalyst to show how each discipline emerges out of lived experience. The notion that human life is always and already circumscribed by society, culture, and history in ways that are outside of awareness is a tenet of modern hermeneutics and is evident in psychoanalytic approaches that pay particular attention to human situatedness. Drawing equally from philosophy and psychoanalysis, the chapter lays out a hermeneutic perspective that presents human experience as inseparable from the social, cultural, and historical contexts in which it unfolds.