Friendship and alterity

reflections on psychoanalysis and religion based on Freud and Pfister's relationship

Abstract

This paper proposes a reflection on the place of alterity and the dimension of the social bond articulated with the expression of subjectivity. To do so, the starting point was the analysis of the friendship between Freud and the psychoanalyst and pastor Pfister, who, for decades, maintained a meaningful relationship, without renouncing the fundamentals and assumptions that were dear to each one, thus preserving their differences. In this relationship, as we will see in some excerpts of the correspondence exchanged between the authors, alterity is also represented by the debate between science and religion. Freudian psychoanalysis fundamentals were used to build this reflection, namely, omnipotence, the place of alterity, the social bond, the idealization, the illusion, and the direction of the analytical treatment. Openness to alterity, the foundation of psychoanalytic clinic, seems fundamental to a significant subjective experience that, in this sense, maintains a close connection with the scope of the collectivity.