Freud and the ethics of fragment

Abstract

The theme of the fragment and what is fragmentary runs through Freud’s work: pieces of memories, vestiges of the past, scraps of texts are some of the elements that figure in his empirical practice and in his theoretical work. Not only does the past reappear, in the present, through fragments, but also the truth or meaning (of a dream, of a symptom) can emerge, in the interpretive and therapeutic activity, in a fragmented state. In this text, we seek to understand the role of the fragment within the Freudian theory; to do so, we focused our attention on the case of the Wolfman, in which the fragments are massively present. We noted that they act in three distinct and complementary dimensions: a) in the very content of the analysed neurosis; b) in the course of the analytical treatment, or rather, in the Freudian method; c) in the writing of the clinical case, that is, in the passage of the treatment to the field of written words. Studying the relationships between these three fields, a Freudian ethics of the fragment emerges, in which we, as readers, are always involved.