Ignatenko, A. S. Psychoanalysis and Psycholamarkism

Abstract: In her article Ignatenko reconstructs evolutionary grounds of Freud’s metapsychology as the synthesis of Darwin’s and Lamarck’s theories combined with the Haeckel-Muller law of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. The researcher also traces back the process of development of evolutionary issues in the works of Freud’s followers such as Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. Ignatenko discovers that the interest towards phylogenetic development had a tendency to decline (in Klein’s researches). Further the ideas of ontological development was criticized by Lacan which, however, was quite extreme and did not find support of the majority of analysts of those times for whom ontological development remained of the fundamental concepts in the psychoanalytical theory. In addition, the researcher also examines the development of the interdisciplinary branch of psychoanalysis and linguistics which was based on the thesis about phylogenetic development moving towards the increasing ability for symbolization. Ignatenko has used the method of ontoepistemological reconstruction allowing to view any concept (even a concept refusing ontology as it is) as containing systems features of a philosophical theory which can be discovered and reconstructed. Based on a number of researches about the influence of Darwin’s and Lamarck’s evolutionism, the researcher has also carried out her own research in search for similar ideas in Melaie Klein’s, Jacques Lacan’s, Green’s, Bion’s, Michel Foucault’s, Gilles Deleuze’s works, etc. Ignatenko concludes that Freud’s followers gradually lost their interest in evolutionary issues. The researcher explains it with the fact that epistemology of those times was experiencing the shift from realism to constructivism and from positivism to instrumentalism. That shift was reflected in psychoanalysis, too, and changed the concept of the Oedipus complex as a fundamental concept of psychoanalysis.

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