‘Becoming’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology and in Psychoanalysis

In this article I accept the idea of Hyppolite that there is a great similarity between the dialectical changes analysed in Hegel’s Phenomenology and the changes aimed at through Freud’s psychoanalytic method. In both, the central idea pursued is that of ‘becoming.’ My contribution in this article is to show how Hegel develops a teleological becoming in which the future is the main dimension of time, whereas Freud, and also Lacan, aim in psychoanalysis at discovering a trauma in the past which the patient is invited to deal with and to accept.…