On and Off the Couch: The Dogs of Psychoanalysis

The psychoanalytic bestiary is full of dogs. The clinical and theoretical literature abounds in examples of canine symbolism, phobia, projection, anthropomorphism, surrogacy, and identification. Many psychoanalysts, from Anna and Sigmund Freud to contemporary practitioners, have been devoted dog companions, and dogs have been present in countless psychoanalytic sessions—increasingly, as acknowledged coparticipants. Dogs themselves have been studied, and even treated, psychodynamically. Yet there has never been a comprehensive examination of the relation between dogs and psychoanalysis. And while no single species could fully address “the question of the animal” in psychoanalysis, there is no species more thoroughly implicated in psychoanalytic history, theory, and practice than Canis familiaris. Thus my lecture will not only provide an introduction to the prominent place of dogs, both real and imaginary, in the clinical, metapsychological, and sociocultural dimensions of psychoanalysis, but it will also begin to make a case for expanding and reorienting psychoanalytic thought toward the probability that there are nonhuman animals whose experience of the world is structured by something like the unconscious and who relate intersubjectively to their human companions.

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