Navigating the Psychoanalytic Symbol: The Transphenomenology of Nicolas Abraham

Nicolas Abraham (1919-75) rethinks the symbol as the very fabric of being. The author examines how this notion challenges the limitations of Husserl’s phenomenology and its reliance on a transcendental ego that can apprehend hyletic data in its purity. For Abraham, the symbol is worldly and resonates with its emergence from intersubjective foundations to constitute subjectivity impurely as a Dyad. It is born from trauma, a cut that differentiates Ego from Other but also generates anxiety (and Time) to keep its operation unfinished. This projection into the future implicates intention (agency) that builds upon origins that are opaque and immemorial. Abraham denotes this origin as the Arche, conceiving of it as a primary symbolism that renders the traumatic cut but without temporal or structural guarantee. It is a beginning that is beyond the phenomenal, requiring exploration through a radical transphenomenological perspective derived from psychoanalysis. Here, trauma is both the debilitation of the symbol and (potentially) the impetus for its transformation, (re)iterating structures of subjectivity that have greater complexity and degrees of freedom. This is, of course, as circumstances allow. Abraham’s construction of symbolic subjectivity is stratified as the symbol negotiates levels of existence from basic Ego-integration to sophisticated social organizations, none of which can individually capture its operation. The journey to a fulfilling existence is riddled with obstructions that could be physiological, relational, cultural or otherwise. The author highlights this multivalence as a complexity that must be carefully navigated - especially when there is suffering - by attending to the symbol and its resonances where creative transformations cannot be mapped in advance.