Touchy Subjects: Wittgenstein’s ‘Freudianism’ and the moral dynamics of repression

This article discusses the ‘Freudian’ dimension in Wittgenstein’s thinking, related to his insight into the fundamental role of repression in structuring our difficulties of understanding in everyday life and in theorising, individually andcollectively. I show the presence of the problematic of repression in Wittgenstein’s view of philosophising, and in his investigations of language. I also indicate how taking the moral-existential and relational character of repression seriously radically reframes the debate about the aim of, and the possibility of truth in, psychoanalysis, and how the trouble we repress basically has no fixed ‘content’ at all; rather, the ‘primal’ target of repression is the very openness between human beings.