This is the argument that Rachel Blass (2006) pursues in her reading of Freud’s Leonardo study. Blass is committed to rehabilitating Freud’s concept of Wissbegierde in order to engender an epistemological stance for psychoanalysis that ‘focuses on the necessary involvement of passion rather than detachment’ (1259). She highlights the problems that core psychoanalytic concepts pose for a more expansive treatment of the research instinct; pointing in particular to Freud’s theory of motivation as the principal barrier to an understanding of Wissbegierde that would accommodate desire as ‘both refined or sublimated and as qualitatively subjectively passionate’ (1268). The either/or that Freud’s apparatus sets up is, ‘if passionate, then libidinal; if sublimated, then detached and neutral’ (1268). Acknowledging these structural difficulties, and the fact that Freud’s explicit treatment of the research instinct is short-lived (appearing predominantly throughout his writings of 1908-1915), Blass is nonetheless clear that a passionate desire to know, existing independently of the self-serving satisfactions that knowledge can bring, is one of the ‘foundational yet unarticulated’ ideas in Freud’s corpus (1272). Ultimately, in order to mobilise a Freudian Wissbegierde that is non-derivative, she aligns the research instinct with Eros. Her thesis is that, ‘we can desire truth passionately without it serving some need or wish and without it distorting our perception of reality because Eros is striving towards a unity that is universal and does not necessarily seek personal gratification’ (1272). By placing Wissbegierde under the sign of Eros, Blass can conclude that, ‘the act of researching itself, the act of seeking to know, like the act of love, is in itself a valuable state of being’ (1273).
The risk with this conception of the research instinct, as I see it, is that its necessary emphasis on striving for unity under Eros may derail Freud’s stringent advice to the analyst-as-researcher. A clear example of Freud’s expectations in this area can be seen in his paper ‘Psycho-Analysis and Telepathy’ (1941 [1921]) where he draws a stark distinction between a sort of anti-Wissbegierde of the occultist who looks only for confirmation of his faith, and the Wissbegierde of the analyst. Here is Freud on the latter point:
Moved by an extreme distrust of the power of human wishes and of the temptations of the pleasure principle, they [analysts] are ready, for the sake of attaining some fragment of objective certainty, to sacrifice everything—the dazzling brilliance of a flawless theory, the exalted consciousness of having achieved a comprehensive view of the universe, and the mental calm brought about by the possession of extensive grounds for expedient and ethical action. In place of all these, they are content with fragmentary pieces of knowledge and with basic hypotheses lacking preciseness and ever open to revision (Freud, 1941 [1921]: 178-179).
Leaving aside the thought that the analyst, thus conceived, is the researcher of Freud’s fantasies, the point to raise here is that the unifying drive of Eros appears at odds with the analyst’s commitment to the resolutely provisional character of that which can be achieved through analytic research (and analytic treatment). Which raises the question, is Freud’s exaltation of the fragment (‘fragmentary pieces of knowledge’) undermined once the research instinct is aligned with Eros’ drive for unity? We shall come to see how this vital tension, which inheres in the structure of research itself, can be illuminated through the figure of the narcissistic child.