It always seemed to me that analysis was not so much a matter of technique but of the kind of work the analyst inspires the analysand to do in the course of analysis. (Location 43)
The majority of the techniques proposed here are designed for work with neurotics, not psychotics. (Location 60)
Whereas many contemporary analysts seem to believe that the majority of the patients seen in our times are not suffering from “neurotic-level problems,” I would argue that the majority of analysts can no longer recognize “neurotic-level problems” precisely because repression and the unconscious are no longer their guiding lights (Location 65)
In other words, our usual way of listening is centered to a great degree on ourselves—our own similar life experiences, our own similar feelings, our own perspectives. (Location 136)
thing or act or feel that way? Most simply stated, our usual way of listening overlooks or rejects the otherness of the other. We rarely listen to what makes a story as told by another person unique, specific to that person alone; we quickly assimilate it to other stories that we have heard others tell about themselves or that we could tell about ourselves, overlooking the differences between the story being told and the ones with which we are already familiar. (Location 147)
Our usual way of listening is highly narcissistic and self-centered, for in it we relate everything other people tell us to ourselves. (Location 183)
This, in a word, is what Lacan refers to as the imaginary dimension of experience: The analyst as listener is constantly comparing and contrasting the other with herself and constantly sizing up the other’s discourse in terms of the kind of image it reflects back to her—whether that be the image of someone who is good or bad, quick or slow, insightful or useless. The imaginary dimension concerns images—our own self-image, for example—not illusion per se (Lacan, 2006, pp. 349 (Location 186)
Listening for all this makes the analyst constitutionally incapable of hearing a great many things that the analysand says—first and foremost slips of the tongue, which, as they are often nonsensical, do not immediately reflect upon the analyst and thus are generally ignored by her. When the analyst is operating primarily within the imaginary dimension or register, everything that cannot easily be compared with her own experiences (her own sense of self—in short, her own “ego,” as I shall use the term) goes unattended to and, indeed, often remains simply (Location 196)
This essentially means that the more the analyst operates in this imaginary mode, the less she can hear. Our usual way of listening—both as “ordinary citizens” and as analysts—primarily involves the imaginary register and makes us rather hard of hearing. How, then, can we become less deaf? (Location 204)
listening to him in a way that he has never been listened to before. (Location 216)
we must “exhibit a serious interest in him” (Freud, 1913/1958, p. 139) by listening in a way that demonstrates that we are paying attention to what he says in a fashion hitherto unknown to him. (Location 218)
In everyday discourse, we generally show other people that we are listening to what they are saying by nodding or saying “yes” or “yeah,” all of which imply assent—that we agree, that we are buying the story we are being told. Analytic discourse, on the other hand, requires something different of us: It requires us to show that we are listening intently without suggesting that we either believe or disbelieve what we are hearing. (Location 248)
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Instead, she should cultivate a wide range of “hmms” and “huhs” (not “uh-huhs,” which have come to signify agreement, at least in American English) of various lengths, tones, and intensities, which can be used to encourage the analysand to go on with what he is saying, to further explain something, or simply to let the analysand know that she is following or at least awake and inviting him to continue. One of the advantages of such sounds is that their meaning is not easily identifiable and the analysand can thus project many different meanings onto any one particular sound. (Location 254)
is rather an attentiveness that floats from point to point, from statement to statement, without necessarily trying to draw any conclusions from them, interpret them, put them all (Location 293)
together, or sum them all up. It is an attentiveness that grasps at least one level of meaning and yet hears all the words and the way they are pronounced as well, including speed, volume, tone, affect, stumbling, hesitation, and so on. (Location 294)
I repeatedly tell my students: “Don’t try to understand!”…May one of your ears become as deaf as the other one must be acute. And that is the one that you should lend to listen for sounds and phonemes, words, locutions, and sentences, not forgetting pauses, scansions, cuts, periods, and parallelisms. (p. 471) (Location 299)
Getting caught up in the story being told is one of the biggest traps for new analysts (Location 310)
Free-floating attention is a practice—indeed, a discipline—designed to teach us to hear without understanding. (Location 316)
In session, he may try to convince the analyst, and thereby convince himself, that he was nothing but a victim in the situation, but he may not fully endorse that view in his heart of hearts. Part of the analyst’s job is to ensure that the part of him that does not endorse this view has a chance to speak its piece and gets a fair hearing, so to speak. (Location 329)
If we could say that there is, indeed, something in particular that the analyst listens for, it is for what does not fit, does not make sense, or seems to make too much sense and therefore seems problematic. These are all related to repression. When the analysand truncates his story by suppressing certain elements, he may be doing so consciously, knowing that he is trying to present himself in a certain way (whether flattering or unflattering) to the analyst, but he may also be doing so unconsciously, for reasons of which he is not aware. He may not be aware (and may resist becoming aware) of the way in which he situates the analyst in his psychical economy—of the type or quality of transference he has to her—or of what he is trying to achieve in relation to her. Similarly, (Location 339)
he may have truly forgotten certain elements of the story and may recall them only after a considerable quantity of analytic work. (Location 345)
Repression is our guiding light in psychoanalysis (if you will excuse the paradoxical nature of the metaphor, repression usually being associated with darkness). Virtually everything we do as analysts should be designed to get at the repressed in a more or less direct manner. This is why our constant focus is on what is being left out of the equation, out of the story, out of the picture the analysand paints of himself and of his life. This is why we give special attention to the details of a story that were “accidentally” left out the first time the story was told. This is why our ears perk up when the analysand is suddenly unable to recall the name of his best friend. This is why we are intrigued when a sentence is interrupted and started anew somewhere else (our concern being with the break in the narrative, not its continuity). This is why, like Freud (1900/1958, p. 518), we give extra weight to elements of a dream that were forgotten during the first telling and only remembered later when the analysand is associating to his dream. This is why we may find the stray or offhanded comment he makes on the way out the door after the session to be the most important. (Location 363)
The notion that we must approach each new analysand on his own terms, as though he were our first, does not imply that we must act as if we know nothing at all about psychoanalysis—as (Location 374)
To the analyst, nothing is ever “just a figure of speech.” The analyst’s mode of listening attends to both what is presented and what is not presented, to both what is enunciated and what is avoided. In essence, it reads all speech as a compromise formation, as produced by competing forces. (Location 417)
Although the most biologically-minded researchers consider the difficulty filtering out stimuli to be a strictly physiological problem, resulting from some malformation of a specific brain structure or (Location 445)
some chemical imbalance, it strikes me as equally (if not more) likely that language plays a significant role in the ability to filter stimuli, for those who are unable to filter perceptions in the usual manner generally do not speak or think in quite the same way as those who can filter such perceptions. Perhaps it is not gating difficulties that cause problems with language acquisition but problems with language acquisition that cause gating difficulties. (Location 447)
I got in fights [in high school] because kids teased me. They’d call me names like “retard,” or “tape recorder.” They called me tape recorder because I’d store up a lot of phrases in my memory and use them over and over again in every conversation. (p. 1) I almost never remember specific words and sentences from conversations. That’s because autistic people think in pictures; we (Location 461)
have almost no words running through our heads at all. (p. 10.) When I talk to other people I translate my pictures into stock phrases or sentences I have “on tape” inside my head…. I am a tape recorder. That’s how I am able to talk. The reason I don’t sound like a tape recorder anymore is that I have so many stock phrases and sentences I can move around into new combinations. (p. 18) Animals and autistic people don’t seem to have repression…. I don’t think I have any of Freud’s defense mechanisms, and I’m always amazed when normal people do. One of the things that blows my mind about normal human beings is denial…. People [in a] bad situation can’t see it because their defense mechanisms protect them from seeing it until they’re ready. That’s denial, and I can’t understand it at all. I can’t even imagine what it’s like. That’s because I don’t have an unconscious…. While I don’t know why I don’t seem to have an unconscious, I think my problems with language have a lot to do with it. (p. 92) (Location 465)
For those of us who come into language in the “usual neurotic way,” our immersion in language is so extensive and colors our world so thoroughly that we selectively see and hear what the social/linguistic context has led us to expect to see and hear. (Location 482)
This can be a serious liability for the clinician: Even the most well-intentioned clinician almost automatically hears what, to her mind, it would make sense for the analysand to be saying in a particular context, as opposed to hearing what the analysand is actually saying, which may be quite out of the ordinary and even nonsensical. Even the most attentive analyst often hears only what the analysand likely meant to say, filtering out the analysand’s slight slip of the tongue or slur. Throughout our lives we learn to find meaning in what others are saying to us, even if it is sometimes rather incoherent, and this often involves seeing a whole image (or gestalt) where only a partial one was presented, or hearing a whole coherent thought when only a partial or incoherent thought was enunciated. We learn to fill in the gaps, supply missing words, rectify the grammar, and correct malapropisms—and we do all of this in our heads without even becoming conscious of it, for the most part. (Location 485)
We are used to almost automatically cutting the ribbon up into discrete units on the basis of the language as we think we know it, as well as on the basis of what we are expecting to hear in general and what we have come to expect from a particular interlocutor. This constant activity aiming at making sense of what we hear is such that hearing itself fades behind meaning making; perception itself is suppressed in favor of interpretation. The result is that we become constitutionally deaf, in a certain sense. (Location 501)
If we begin to listen only for the patterns or sets of patterns that we have been taught to identify and treat, we are likely to turn a deaf ear to anything that does not appear on our DSM radar screen. (Location 533)
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During the preliminary meetings—that is, during the longer or shorter period of face-to-face sessions (lasting up to a year or more) that precede the use of the couch—the analyst can place a question mark after something the analysand has said simply by raising an eyebrow or giving the analysand a quizzical look. Such a question mark is not, however, terribly precise, for the question raised could concern the whole of what the analysand has just said, just the last part, the way it was said, or the fact that the analysand got angry or laughed while saying it—in short, it does not point to anything in particular. (Location 683)
If the analysand says, “I had a great many difficulties in elementary school due to all the moving around my family did,” and the analyst wants to know what kind of difficulties, it usually suffices to simply ask “Difficulties?” Should the analyst instead ask, “Can you give me some examples of that?” he may be met with examples of the different moves her family made from city to city instead of examples of her difficulties. Less is often more when asking questions, and should the analysand respond to the query “Difficulties?” simply by saying “Yes, difficulties,” the analyst can easily add, “What kind of difficulties?” (Location 694)
Although the analyst must not force the analysand to reveal things she is not yet ready to face, he must not shy away from encouraging her to talk about painful or difficult subjects. (Location 707)
This is where the analyst’s own resistance may well come in, for it is much easier for the analyst to sit back and allow the analysand to talk about whatever she feels like talking about than it is to work with her to articulate the trying and traumatic experiences in her past. The analysand may be reluctant to delve into painful matters, but if the analyst responds by backing off and does not show the analysand that he wants her to talk about these things—if not today, then tomorrow (and he must not forget to bring them up tomorrow if she does not do so spontaneously)—he allows the treatment to be directed by his own resistance rather than by his desire as an analyst to always pursue the analysis ever further. (Location 708)
Words are not indifferent or interchangeable: better to stick with the verbatim text. (Location 732)
Shying away from repeating the four-letter words the analysand employs (often with considerable affective charge) suggests that the analyst disapproves of such language—or worse, of the body parts or activities associated with them—or cannot abide the crude reality of the analysand’s life or fantasy life. This too will defeat the analysis in short (Location 734)
repression often works by making a link between two different events or thoughts (Location 822)
Rather than propose an A or B, or even an A, B, or C, to choose from, we generally do best to avoid putting words in the analysand’s mouth. Rather than trying to guess at the analysand’s likely reaction to a situation, it often makes far more sense to simply say, “And?” or “What was that like?” or “How did you react?” (Location 838)
If, in the early stages of an analysis, the analyst asks many questions, it is at least in part to get the analysand to start asking herself questions. For it is only once the analysand has begun to raise her own questions and begun to wonder about the why and wherefore of her own experiences that she has truly entered analysis. Prior to that time she may well be there because her spouse demanded that she go or because her boss strongly recommended that she seek help; as cooperative as she may be in diligently striving to answer the questions the analyst poses to her, she is still not really there for herself, for her own reasons, for her own motives, to figure something out for herself. (Location 857)
It is this question that makes her continue the analysis even when it becomes difficult or painful. (Location 866)
It would seem that the analyst by repeatedly asking “why?” becomes associated, in certain cases, with a desire to know why. (Location 878)
The analyst—in attempting to slow the analysand down, get him to repeat more clearly words that he has muttered under his breath, and explain himself a bit more fully—tries to bring about a shift in that preexisting punctuation. (Location 966)
Part of the analyst’s task is to provide a slightly different punctuation, a punctuation that brings out meanings in the “text” of the analysand’s speech that had not been visible before. (Location 972)
We begin with a text that has a certain ready-made punctuation provided by the analysand and attempt to read it in a way that destabilizes or upsets the analysand’s take on its meaning and is thus transformative for the analysand. (Location 977)
The analysand is quite often duped by the seeming irrelevance of images, thoughts, and feelings that arise at specific moments in the therapy, and—following the conventions of everyday conversation—tries to stay on topic (a counterproductive habit of which the analyst must try to break him). (Location 1038)
An obvious way of punctuating someone’s discourse is to repeat it back to him verbatim, thereby highlighting, underlining, or underscoring it, as it were. Sometimes simply hearing the exact same words repeated by someone else sheds new light on them, allowing them to be heard differently. (Location 1088)
That might be one fruitful way of thinking about what we as therapists do as well: We bring out something that is there—already there, waiting to be heard—but that is not heard without our help. As one of my analysands once put it, his desire was like a murmur, a heart murmur so faint no one had ever heard it before, not even him, until he began his analysis. (Location 1159)
I suspect that their lack of faith in their ability to effectively punctuate, whether in a small way or a big way, is related to a sea change in contemporary analysts’ view of how and why analysis is curative: Rather than emphasizing the filling in of the gaps in the analysand’s history and self-understanding, as Freud (1916–1917/1963, p. 282) did, or emphasizing that it is only the symbolic dimension that cures, as Lacan did, contemporary analysts often endorse the idea that it is the relationship itself that the analysand has with the analyst that is curative (the relationship often being included under the heading of “nonspecific factors” or “common factors”),3 not anything in particular that the analyst says or brings the analysand to say.4 Attention is thus diverted from the work of symbolization in the therapy, and what is considered to be of genuine importance is a secure, well-structured, protective relationship. This approach was already catching on in France in the 1950s: Lacan quoted one of his colleagues as having said that “the analyst cures not so much by what he says and does as by what he is.”5 It is the emphasis placed on the analyst’s personality and on the relationship—as opposed to the work done by the analysand and the analyst to articulate the analysand’s history and desire—that led to the ever-growing importance placed by clinicians in the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century on the “therapeutic frame. (Location 1270)
Lacan quite explicitly formulated scansion—involving at times abrupt endings to sessions—for work with neurotics, not psychotics. (Location 1291)
Lacan suggests here that the analyst need not feel nothing toward the analysand, need not have no desire whatsoever to either embrace or defenestrate the analysand. For, assuming the analyst has been sufficiently analyzed, his feelings and desires for the analysand will be superseded by a properly psychoanalytic desire: a desire for the analytic work to proceed and for the analysand to speak, associate, and interpret. (Location 1345)
Lacan (2006, p. 854) referred to this (Location 1348)
properly psychoanalytic desire as “the analyst’s desire” and it should be clear that it does not require the analyst to have killed in himself every other desire by which he may be inhabited, but simply to have learned how to set those other desires aside during the analytic work itself.14 A change must have occurred in what Lacan refers to as the analyst’s “economy of desire”—a change that can only occur if the analyst undergoes a thorough analysis of his own. (Location 1349)
Although Lacan (1976, p. 15) proposed that an analysis has gone far enough when the analysand is “happy to be alive,” he nevertheless draws a distinction between the “therapeutic” aim of analysis and the beyond of therapeutics required “to create an analyst” imbued with the analyst’s desire (Lacan, 2006, p. 854). The therapeutic successes of an analysis are not necessarily sufficient to allow one to work felicitously as a psychoanalyst oneself, to be imbued with a desire to conduct analyses oneself. (Location 1368)
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The fixed-length session gives analysands the false impression that in coming to see the analyst they will be paying for a service like any other, a service whose conditions are regulated by a kind of contractual agreement in which analysands can be quite sure of getting exactly what they intend to pay for. This allows them to think of themselves as customers or “clients”—a term now consecrated by American psychological usage—who have the right to make specific demands upon the analyst. (Location 1391)
This opens the door to a fundamental misconception about what they can expect in analysis; virtually all analysts agree that it is important to frustrate many, if not the vast majority, of the analysand’s demands or requests, because (1) satisfying the analysand’s demands does not ultimately help the analysand, (2) (Location 1395)
the analysand often demands things that the analyst cannot provide, and even if he could, they would destroy the therapeutic relationship, and (3) people often demand things that they do not really want. Indeed, Lacan (1965–1966, March 23, 1966) formulated the complex relationship between demand and desire by saying that the human predicament is such that “just because people demand something from you doesn’t mean that’s what they really want you to give them.” To give me what I say I want (that is, what I request or demand) will not actually satisfy me because what I say I want is not the same as what I desire (and human desire is such that it cannot be satisfied with some specific object or action). (Location 1397)
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As I have put it elsewhere, “in therapy the therapist sidesteps the patient’s demands, frustrates them, and ultimately tries to direct the patient to something he or she never asked for” (Fink, 1997, p. 9), to discovering his or her own desire. This project is not suitable to the kind of exchange that occurs between service providers and customers in an economy in which time and money are equated, in which one receives so many minutes of a service (a massage, for example, or a legal consultation) for so many dollars. This explains why Lacanians charge by the session, regardless of its length, not by the number of minutes that the session lasts. Not surprisingly, perhaps, American analysts I have spoken with often assume that the cost of each session must depend upon its length (were that the case it would almost ineluctably lead to ever longer sessions). (Location 1403)
Often the very first sessions lead to surprising connections, establishing links between a whole series of problems later in life and several specific earlier events that had never been given much thought. This leads to a first sketch of a life history where before there had seemingly been a life without history, history being understood here as recording the major symbolic turning points or mileposts along one’s path, even before suppositions about cause and effect can be made. (Location 1469)
The most important aims of the early sessions are to intrigue the analysand, to put the analysand—and above all her (Location 1564)
unconscious—to work (the analyst must make it clear by his comportment in the therapy that he is there to guide things to some degree but not to lead), and to encourage the analysand to sketch a preliminary picture of her life. (Location 1565)
few psychoanalysts or analysands with several years of therapy under their belts would be surprised at the notion that interpretation in the analytic situation aims less at accuracy than at having a certain kind of impact. (Location 1821)
Truth, as experienced by the analysand in the analytic context, has to do with what remains to be said, with what has not yet been said. What has already been said often seems empty, whereas what is being said now for the first time is what has the potential to shake things up, is what feels important, truthful. To the analysand, the truth is always elsewhere: in front of him, yet to be (Location 1849)
Insofar as it concerns “what remains to be said,” truth in psychoanalysis has to do with the experience of symbolizing what has never before been put into words. With Lacan, I refer to “what has never before been put into words” as “the real” (it can also be referred to as “the traumatic real”). Interpretation by the analyst, then, quite obviously seeks—at one level, at least—to inspire or to provoke the analysand to engage in the process of symbolization, to put into words what has never before been put into words. Interpretation aims to hit the (Location 1853)
It should be clear that “truth,” as I am using it here, is not so much a property of statements as it is a relationship to the real; to hit the truth is to alight upon something that had never before been formulated in words and to bring it into speech, however haltingly or insufficiently at first. For it is in the impact that speech is able to have on the real that lies the power of psychoanalysis. Left to its own devices, the real does not change over time; like a traumatic war experience, it persists, insistingly returning in nightmares or even waking life (leading, at times, to what I would be tempted to call “intruthive thoughts”). It is only by symbolizing it in words—and in many cases it must be articulated a number of times in different ways—that one can begin to shift positions with respect to it. (Location 1865)
In the analytic setting, interpretations that aim at tying down a single meaning that is clear and distinct commonly shut the analysand down, in a sense, putting a stop to his discourse and stemming the flow of his associations. Such interpretations may well suffer from banality and merit no further comment, closing doors instead of opening them. The more convincing they seem to the analysand, the more likely they are to concern things that he has in fact already discovered or thought about himself. And even if they are new to the analysand, he is likely to simply latch on to the ideas expressed in them and incorporate them into his thinking about himself instead of taking them further. In a word, one might say that the analysand’s thinking (or his ego) recrystallizes around easily graspable interpretations, whereas the goal of psychoanalytic work with neurotics is to thwart such crystallizations. (Location 1921)
An interpretation that conveys a meaning that one can easily understand is simply not a psychoanalytic interpretation, strictly (Location 1938)
It is, rather, tantamount to suggestion. The point of a psychoanalytic interpretation, like that of so many of the other psychoanalytic techniques I have mentioned in previous chapters, is not to give the analysand some specific meaning to latch on to but rather to put him to work. Questioning, punctuating, and scanding are all designed to elicit, unfold, and at times explode the meanings implicit in the analysand’s speech, impelling him to strive to put into words what he has never before said. (Location 1939)
Analytic interpretation is not designed to be understood; it is designed to make waves. (Location 1946)
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Interpretations that provide a single, readily graspable meaning should be understood as suggestions because they offer a specific way of thinking or seeing things. If the analysand has a great deal of faith in the analyst, he will take the meanings conveyed in her interpretations very seriously, which will reinforce his position of dependency upon her. (Location 1948)
Briefly stated, “the subject supposed to know” refers to the fact that the analysand tends to assume that the knowledge about what ails him—which is in fact located, loosely speaking, in his own unconscious—is located in the analyst.19 It is this projection of his unconscious knowledge onto the analyst that allows the analysand to seek out his own truth via the analyst, (Location 1982)
As Edward Glover (1931) indicated long ago, interpretation aims to be productive in the therapy, that is, to elicit new material. Lacan (2006), discussing this viewpoint some three decades later, wrote: Everyone acknowledges in his own way that to confirm that an interpretation is well founded, it is not the conviction with which it is received by the subject that counts, its well-foundedness instead being gauged by the material that emerges afterward. But psychologizing superstition has such a powerful grip on our (Location 2014)
minds that people always seek out the phenomenon of well-foundedness in the subject’s assent, entirely overlooking the consequences of what Freud says about Verneinung [negation] as a form of avowal—to say the least, negation by the subject cannot be treated as equivalent to drawing a blank. (p. 595) (Location 2019)
the more important point here is that the value of an interpretation must be judged by what it leads to—that is, by whether it furthers the analysis or not (Location 2036)
The concern with generating new material led Lacan to at times characterize interpretation as a kind of “oracular speech”. Much like the Delphic oracle, the analyst says something sufficiently polyvalent that it resonates even though it is not understood, arousing curiosity and a desire to divine why the analyst said what she said. (Location 2045)
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This can lead to a short-circuiting of the psychoanalytic process, which, in its fullest expression, involves facing the fact that there are no such final explanations or ultimate answers. (Location 2090)
There is no ultimate answer or final explanation why one is a certain way or did a certain thing. There are certain constructions one can arrive at regarding one’s life direction, but in the final analysis it just is, and one must come to accept that. One must come to own the decisions or choices that do not seem to have been decisions or choices. Just as a child’s endless questions (Why is the sky blue? Why does light refract? Why does light take the form of waves? etc.) sooner or later lead to something unanswerable—and it is not always even clear that the child’s true motive is to know the answer—the analysand’s endless pondering leads to an imponderable, something ultimately unknowable that must simply be accepted. (Location 2099)
The Other (with a capital O) as the repository of all knowledge—that is one way of understanding Lacan’s term—is lacking, is incomplete, and there is nothing to be done about it except to accept the predicament. (Location 2108)
This is one way of talking about what Freud called “castration,” something that applies to both men and women and involves our all-too-obvious limitations: We are not immortal, our days being numbered; we do not know when we will die; we cannot do all things, become proficient in all areas, or master all fields; and there are limits to our knowledge. Just as Freud said that the analyst must lead the analysand to confront the “bedrock” of castration (suggesting that the analyst can do no more than lead him to that point, it being up to the analysand to accept or reject the fact that he is castrated), Lacan argued that the analyst must lead the analysand to confront the lack in the Other and find a way to help him accept that lack or limitation and go beyond it. (Location 2110)
“Complejo de castración”
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A stubborn insistence upon finding the final answer suggests a libidinal investment in continuing to blame one’s predicament on circumstances or on other people, whereas in the vast majority of cases, circumstances and the actions of others can only explain so much and the analysand must finally accept that he himself played a part, indeed a very important part, in the way his life unfolded. (Location 2116)
To paraphrase Lacan (1966 p. 13), an interpretation whose effects can be predicted completely in advance is not a psychoanalytic interpretation. (Location 2194)
most interpretations relying very significantly on a highly specific speech context that differs markedly from moment to (Location 2203)
moment. It seems to me to be a good general principle—if one is going to provide specific meanings at all—to avoid interpretations with so many moving parts, so to speak, so many separate (Location 2239)
Although humor is not called for at most times in the majority of sessions, it can occasionally be a useful way (and sometimes the only way) to get through to certain analysands. Moreover, there is no reason why analysis should not be fun, at some level, for both analysand and analyst; as Lacan (1988a, p. 77) said, “The closer we get to psychoanalysis being funny, the more it is real psychoanalysis.” Indeed, moments of fun may be the only thing that keeps certain analysands coming back when the going gets tough. (Location 2248)
For neurotics there is a serious barrier between thought and deed, between thinking and doing, and one can quite safely encourage the verbal expression of the drives, no matter how violent. With psychotics this is not always the case, hence the importance of being able to distinguish between neurosis and psychosis. Indeed, with neurotics we must entertain all aspects of dreams and fantasies in which drive components show themselves, since they are aspects of the real that have likely never before been brought into speech and that often lead to repetitive behavior until they are articulated in as many ways as possible. (Location 2290)
Dreams should be considered potentially inexhaustible, there being no predetermined stopping point to their interpretation and thus no such thing as a “complete interpretation” of a dream. The analysand spontaneously ceases to speculate about the meaning of a dream when it stops inspiring her to do so, when it no longer bothers, perplexes, or intrigues her, or when other more pressing material comes to the fore. (Location 2575)
Insofar as one’s desires are so closely tied to other people’s desires, it is foolish, strictly speaking, to talk about “one’s own desires”—as if one could own desires, as if one could be the sole proprietor of desires—and yet it is important for the analysand to reach a point at which she can feel at one with or at peace with the desires that inhabit (Location 2805)
In his view, we often demand from others things that we do not even want them to give us, in a sense, for if they did give them to us it would lead to the extinguishing of our desire, our desire (which as he understood it is always a desire for something else, something more) being what is dearest to us, we being far more concerned with having and experiencing desire than with satisfying it. For it is the having and experiencing of desire that makes us feel alive, not its satisfaction. In general, we prefer not to get what we demand—even if we express dissatisfaction when we do not get it—so that we can go on desiring. Lacan theorized that we awaken in horror from dreams in which our demand is about to be satisfied because that will entail the crushing and extinguishing of our desire; such dreams threaten to jeopardize our very being as beings of desire, desire being what is most precious to us (far more precious, in many cases, than satisfaction). (Location 2902)
Although analysands often present a plethora of different fantasies in the course of even just a few years of analysis, Lacan hypothesized that virtually all of these particular fantasies stem from one and the same structure: a “fundamental fantasy” (see, for example, Lacan, 2006, p. 614) that defines the subject’s most basic relation to the Other or stance with respect to the Other.13 The myriad scenarios that run through the analysand’s mind, daydreams, and masturbation fantasies were considered by Lacan to be permutations of the fundamental fantasy, usually presenting one facet of that fundamental fantasy, albeit in a disguised form. Or, to put it differently, the myriad scenarios, daydreams, and masturbation fantasies all boil down to a “single” fundamental fantasy, a fantasy that plays an important role in structuring the analysand’s relationships with significant others in her life. (Location 2918)
It is not easy to detect and articulate one’s fundamental fantasy; it may take many months, if not years, of analysis. Indeed, my sense is that by the time an analysand has brought out most of the elements of a fundamental fantasy such that it can be clearly and convincingly articulated, it has already begun to change and give way to something else: a new fantasy. This is a regular feature of psychoanalytic work: The analysand is far more able to articulate something that no longer has the same hold upon her than to articulate something that she is still currently in the grips of. (Location 2937)
It makes little sense to say here that the analysand has “unconscious feelings of anger” toward his mother and thus toward the analyst, for something is not, strictly speaking, a feeling if it is unconscious: It has not yet become a feeling; it can only become a feeling when it is felt.4 Nevertheless, the repressed aspects of the relationship with the mother are manifesting themselves in the creation of a rebellious stance on the analysand’s part, of which he himself may be unaware. (Location 3072)
Coincide con la lectura de Mark Solms, en el sentido de que el sentimiento es inherentemente consciente. Incluso, quizás es la fuente de la conciencia.
cita psicoanálisis transferencia inconsciente sentimientos
Transference is thus in no way, shape, or form confined to the field of affect alone: Just as an analysand’s symptoms may reflect a whole family structure, the transference may involve a repetition of a highly complex structure of the same kind. (Location 3076)
Such complex transferences are often very difficult to detect and perhaps account for why most clinicians view transference simply as the way the analysand feels about the analyst at a particular moment in time.5 One might even postulate that their difficulty (Location 3093)
detecting complex transferences has led them to engage in what might be referred to as “affect hunting,” constantly asking the analysand, “How did that make you feel?” as if feeling were the key to all things (transferential and otherwise), which it clearly is not.6 Contemporary clinicians also have a nasty tendency to attribute intractable silences, and many other treatment difficulties as well (e.g., lack of associations, inability to remember dreams or daydreams, tardiness, cancellations, no-shows, and so on), to a willful resistance to the treatment on the analysand’s part instead of looking at the larger picture. Such treatment difficulties generally arise (1) from the fact that it is not easy to articulate what has never before been articulated, (2) from the repetition of an earlier situation, which may be very complex and hard to elucidate, or (3) from something the analyst is or is not doing, for example, refusing to help the analysand articulate what has never before been articulated (indeed, allowing both the analysand and herself to avoid that difficult task) or not striving to figure out what earlier situation the analysand may be repeating.7 This is why Lacan (2006, p. 595) decided to adopt a point of view diametrically opposed to that of many contemporary clinicians when he said, “There is no other resistance to analysis than that of the analyst himself,” 8 the idea being that when analysts are inclined to conclude that the analysand is resisting, it is often their own failing, not his. In other words, treatment difficulties tend to arise when the analyst herself adopts what Freud (1900/1958, p. 639) referred to as the “ostrich policy,” sticking her head into the sand so as not to see. Since “whatever interrupts the progress of analytic work is a resistance” (p. 517; see also Freud, 1915a/1958, p. 162), it makes perfect sense to characterize the analyst’s obstruction of the treatment as a resistance. (Location 3096)
the very process of falling in love and the experience of being in love owe a tremendous amount to transference: The more intensely one is in love at the outset, the more likely it is that a “case of mistaken identity” like that found in transference is at work, the more likely it is that a “false connection” (Freud & Breuer, 1893–1895/1955, p. 302) has been made between a beloved earlier figure and the current (Location 3123)
The most passionate forms of love generally involve a total misrecognition of the otherness of the other person and a massive projection of all kinds of desirable qualities onto someone about whom one knows very little. The object of such massive projection sometimes even protests that she or he wants to be loved for her- or himself, not put on a pedestal or idealized. In many cases, people begin to fall out of love precisely when the other’s actual qualities begin to come into view and the perfection that had been projected by the lover onto the beloved proves to be (Location 3126)
The analysand’s love of knowledge, knowledge that he hopes to find in the analyst, plays an important role in an analysis almost right to the very end. Like Socrates’ disciples, who believed Socrates had a great deal of knowledge even though he professed to have none (except regarding love), and were able to seek knowledge precisely because of their belief that he possessed it, analysands are able to engage in the arduous task of seeking knowledge about themselves precisely because of their belief that the analyst possesses it. Indeed, Lacan considered this belief to be the indispensable motor force of analysis with neurotics. (Location 3138)
Analysts may not only have “inadequate information” insofar as they fail to study significant psychoanalytic literature, but also insofar as they embrace psychoanalytic concepts that conveniently shift the onus for difficulties in the treatment from the analyst to the analysand. (Location 3189)
The analysand feels he has found someone who truly listens to him, can understand him, and may possibly be able to help him in his time of need. She strikes him as knowledgeable—as already knowing or likely to know what his problem is and how to solve it. In a word, he sees her like a positive figure from his past, like someone who, at least at one point in time, seemed open to him and willing and able to help. Nevertheless, he does not experience his transference as transference. He does not say to himself, “The only reason I feel this way about my analyst is because she reminds me of the way my mother was when I was little and she still acted like a mother to me.” Instead, he experiences it as a strong feeling for this particular person, right here, right now. He is caught up in it, not observing himself at a distance from it: His passion for his analyst feels very real to him. (Location 3214)
As long as his transference takes this form and does not interfere with the work he is doing in the therapy, there is no need to intervene in any way to temper his enthusiasm.15 Psychoanalysis harnesses the kind of excitement (libidinal energy) generated by the analytic situation and the case of mistaken identity that it fosters; it does not try to neutralize or dissipate it as certain other forms of treatment do. (Location 3221)
whatever aesthetic or erotic interest brought her analysand to therapy was (Location 3227)
fine, as long as it inspired him to engage in the work of exploring and changing his life. When the analysand has this kind of positive transference to the analyst, the analyst strives to get the analysand to begin the laborious process of the analysis out of love for her, to begin recalling certain parts of his past, as well as daydreams and fantasies that he usually pays no attention to, and to begin associating to them. This is hard work, and the analysand needs all the motivation he can get. (Location 3227)
Recall that psychoanalysis began with a love story: Anna O. (whose real name was Bertha Pappenheim) came up with the “talking cure” out of love for Joseph Breuer, the attentive young doctor who made housecalls morning and night to work with her for hours at a time. (Location 3231)
They seem not to have realized that an interpretation of the transference that comes from the transferential object herself, the analyst, is not a way out of the transference but simply reproduces the transference; for, as Lacan (2006, p. 591) said, “The analyst’s speech is [always] heard as coming from the transferential Other.” If, for example, the analyst has become associated with a critical parental figure, her interpretation will be heard as critical; if she has become associated with a seductive maternal figure, her interpretation will be heard as seductive. We do not achieve some sort of metaposition outside of the transference by interpreting it (the claims of therapists like Levenson, 1995, p. 88, that we can “metacommunicate” notwithstanding). We remain up to our ears in the transference. As Lacan (1967–1968, November 29, 1967) said, there is “no transference of the transference,” meaning that—just as there is no position outside of language that allows us to discuss language as a whole without having to rely on language itself in our discussion—there is no way in which we can step completely outside the transference situation in order to discuss what is happening in the transference itself (see also Lacan, 1998b, p. 428). The interpretation of transference is a vicious cycle! (Location 3266)
The analyst’s speech is heard as coming from the person the analysand imputes the analyst to be, not as coming from the person the analyst thinks he is or would like to be, or as coming from some objective outside observer. In this sense, interpretation of the transference, which is allegedly engaged in so as to “resolve” or “liquidate” the transference, ends up merely feeding the transference, making it still more intense and unwieldy. (Location 3310)
This is one of the reasons why Lacanians will often proffer very short interpretations that omit the subject of the statement (avoiding, for example, “I think”) and that consist essentially of the analysand’s own words—perhaps strung together in a slightly different order—such that it is not entirely clear to the analysand who authored them. This makes it more difficult for such interpretations (see Chapter 5) to be experienced and rejected “as coming from the transferential Other.” (Location 3314)
In general, the best policy is to do the strict minimum required to get the analysand back to work. The analyst should avoid accusing the analysand of being in love with her; it may be sufficient to simply give the analysand less eye contact and attention when he is saying nothing, show signs of boredom when he seems content to just be there, or ask about dreams, daydreams, and fantasies. If need be, she might draw a link between the current situation and scenes the analysand has already reported from his past in which something analogous occurred (for example, those happy moments of his childhood in which he lay contentedly on the floor in the kitchen while his mother baked bread, relishing the warmth of the oven and the lovely smell). This keeps the emphasis on the similarity of situation without explicitly pointing to the analysand’s love, which the analysand may not be really aware of, proud of, or eager to avow. In any case, the analyst should concern herself primarily with a different question altogether: Why is such a manifestation of transference love occurring at the present time? Especially when the transference love has arisen not right at the beginning of the analysis (intense love that arises right at the beginning of the analysis may suggest a diagnosis of psychosis, not neurosis) but later on, what has usually happened is that, when faced with the virtual impossibility of talking about something, of putting some traumatic experience into words, the analysand has had his attention diverted to something about the analyst herself. He has become frustrated in his attempt to recall or formulate something and his attention has shifted to the only other person there with him in the room: the analyst. He may flash on something about her (Location 3365)
that bothered him (for example, the way she shook his hand that day, what she was wearing, a new piece of art in her office, or some comment she made in a recent session), or he may suddenly recall something positive about her (for example, her smile upon greeting him, her gait, or her presence). (Location 3377)
In such cases, the transference has not become a resistance, as it was in the earlier example in which the analysand simply wished to bask in the analyst’s presence; on the contrary, the resistance to the work of symbolization put up by the traumatic real has given rise to transference as a diversionary tactic, as a way of diverting attention away from the “pathogenic nucleus” (Freud, 1912a/1958) of the problem the analysand is trying to tackle, and onto something that is not transparently linked to it.24 As Lacan (1978, p. 145) put it, “Transference is both an obstacle to remembering and the rendering present of the closing up of the unconscious, which results from the failure to hit the spot at just the right moment.” In other words, transference… (Location 3379)
As Lacan (1968a, p. 18) reminded us, the very existence of transference “constitutes an objection to intersubjectivity.” The analytic situation is not a forum in which two different individuals encounter each other as subjects, because the party of the first part (so to speak) lends herself to any and every projection drummed up by the party of the second part. This means that something essential about her own subjectivity fades in the encounter, stays on the sidelines. Even though Lacan was a proponent of the idea of intersubjectivity in the 1950s, he came to see that to talk about the analytic situation as an intersubjective one is to overlook the existence of transference. (Location 3410)
Insofar as the analysand does not experience transference as “merely a projection” and instead takes his annoyance at the analyst as verily and truly about her, the analyst must make a special effort not to take criticism in the spirit in which it was given or respond in kind. If she does, she will end up debating the analysand’s criticism (“I have too been trying to help”), objecting to his accusations (“but I gave you two new interpretations yesterday”), retorting with criticism of her own (“you’re the one who’s been uncooperative”), or simply getting angry. She must instead try to situate herself at a different level: She must learn how not to react as though she were the genuine target of the criticism, remembering at all times (at least trying to) that she is dealing with (Location 3425)
The supervisor is never in the consulting room with the analysand whom he is being consulted about, and thus he cannot be taken with or turned off by the analysand, as he might otherwise be (when Freud, for example, commented that one of his female analysands was beautiful and charming, you can be sure that he put his countertransferential foot in his mouth with her). Nor is the supervisor likely to feel that he is in the line of fire—that is, to feel put out by the analysand’s demands or tempted to satisfy them. The supervisor is unlikely to fall into the trap of associating the analysand with someone from his own past based on looks, style of dress, tone of voice, gestures, and the like. In other words, the supervisor is automatically placed in a position in which he is immune to a great many imaginary pitfalls. Of course, his own more or less rigid theoretical perspectives may well make him blind to certain things, but at least his blindnesses are not likely to overlap with the analyst’s own blindnesses. The supervisor is presented only with the analysand’s words, insofar as they are more or less faithfully reported by the supervisee. In other words, the supervisor is able to situate the analysand at the symbolic level immediately, without becoming mired in the imaginary (there are, of course, some imaginary effects that enter into supervision between supervisor and supervisee). (Location 3568)
Supervision is best viewed as a lifelong endeavor, not something one does only during a few short years of training. (Location 3588)
If anything can help an analyst supervise herself, it is writing down a thorough formulation of the case—something I would recommend as a prelude to or preparation for supervision by another person. This formulation should include: (1) as much of the analysand’s early childhood and later history as she has been able to piece together, laid out in chronological order; (2) what the analysand offered as his presenting problem as well as what appeared, in the course of the work, to be the problems that actually precipitated the analysand’s entrance into therapy; (3) the major articulations of the work that has thus far been done, including important connections that have been drawn regarding the analysand’s history and relationships, as well as any reversals in perspective that have been arrived at (for example, the analysand may have initially blamed all of the problems in his family on his father, later concluded that his father was actually but a victim and his mother was to blame instead, and still later arrived at a more nuanced picture of things); (4) all of the transitory and more enduring symptoms that have thus far been discussed and their possible meanings, with hypotheses about what repressed material led to their formation; (5) the fantasies (of all kinds) the analysand has recounted and their possible convergence on something like a fundamental fantasy, suggesting what his most basic stance toward the Other may be; and (6) diagnosis (if the diagnosis is not clear, the reasons for thinking that a certain diagnosis makes sense should be elucidated, as well as the reasons for thinking that a different diagnosis also makes sense). Once the analyst has articulated in words (that is, via the symbolic) everything she would want to tell others about the case, including her own position in the analysis and her previous and current difficulties, and has made her account of the case coherent and understandable to others, she should go back and search for anything she has wittingly or unwittingly left out of her account. For when we try to tell someone a clear story about something, we (just like our analysands when they tell us stories about their lives) inevitably leave things out—things that may well turn out to be crucial. (Location 3658)
has recounted and their possible convergence on something like a fundamental fantasy, suggesting what his most basic stance toward the Other may be; and (6) diagnosis (if the diagnosis is not clear, the reasons for thinking that a certain diagnosis makes sense should be elucidated, as well as the reasons for thinking that a different diagnosis also makes sense). (Location 3667)
I also find that I get a great deal out of my own case write-ups if I reread them a couple of weeks after I have written them so that I have some more perspective on them: By that time I am not so caught up in the process of constructing a good, coherent story, and I can read the stories a bit more as if I were someone else reading them. (Location 3678)
The first thing we should notice here is that, instead of being encouraged to think they are situating themselves incorrectly vis-à-vis the analysand, analysts are encouraged to think they have become exquisitely sensitive to something of which the analysand is not even aware. We should perhaps be suspicious of the fact that the analyst’s negative reaction to the analysand is thereby magically converted into a virtue, a dialectical reversal of the situation being effected here not for the analysand’s sake but apparently so that the analyst can have a clear conscience. If nothing else, the very fact that the analyst is let off the hook so thoroughly here, her bad temper being transmogrified into divine sensitivity, should put us on our guard. This alchemical transmogrification of something lowly—the dross of the analyst’s confused countertransferential feelings and anger—into something worthy (the alchemist’s gold) may well explain part of the popularity of the concept. (Location 3711)
“there is no other resistance to analysis than that of the analyst himself.” (Location 3720)
It seems quite plain in the context of her article that Klein means that the infant or psychotic adult attributes his own aggressiveness, for example (one of the “hated parts” of himself), to the mother or some other person, “identifying” the other person as the aggressor instead of himself. He can then in good conscience hate the other person instead of himself, for his hatred is simply a response to the other’s preexisting aggression. (Location 3733)
None of these things—the analysand’s speech, body language, or action—can be transparently understood by the analyst. All of them must be considered in context—in the social, cultural, and political context, but also in the context of everything that has hitherto transpired in the analysis. This means that the analyst is always and inescapably part of the equation, insofar as she is the one who interprets all of these contexts and is palpably involved in the history of the analysis. Try as she might, she is not a transparent medium (like a medium who supposedly channels spirits and turns tables), a pure and simple instrument that contributes nothing to the situation, whose own neurosis and insecurities can be considered to play no role in the analysis. (Location 3797)
But the concept of projective identification, as used since around 1960, suggests that the analyst can gain access to what is going on for the analysand in an unmediated way! (Location 3804)
It seems notable, then, that analysts who embrace the notion of projective identification would say that they are not picking up on subtle signs of suppressed emotion in their analysands—indeed, they argue that projective identification is occurring precisely at moments at which there are no such signs to pick up on. They do not argue that we are dealing here with something along the lines of the classical Freudian notion of repression whereby the link between thought and affect is broken, affect continuing to exist and to be felt by the analysand, certain signs of it being visible to other people. In other words, they are not arguing that their analysand is feeling something but simply does not want to feel it, want to acknowledge it, know what to call it, know what it is due to, or know what to connect it to. Nor are they arguing that the analysand is deliberately or unwittingly suppressing his emotions. What they are arguing is that his emotions are “split off” in such a way that they are projected outside of his psyche and body altogether. (Location 3937)
Splitting is something that, for Freud, occurs within one and the same person, and both sides of the split remain “within” that person, however approximately we must take terms like within and without, or inside and outside, in psychoanalysis. And according to Klein, although a person may fantasize that he is not characterized by a certain emotion, and that someone else is instead, the split remains at the level of fantasy: The emotion has not left that person’s psychical economy. (Location 3950)
escición psicoanálisis fantasía defensa
In the absence of compelling explanations of these processes, the notion of projective identification seems to rely on mechanisms or procedures bordering on magic. Few notions in psychoanalysis are, to my mind, fraught with more conceptual confusions and aporias. (Location 3961)
“Identificación proyectiva” críticas a…
psicoanálisis identificación proyectiva nota cita concepto
For those who lend credence to Occam’s razor—the principle that the best explanation is often the most concise explanation, the explanation that requires the fewest debatable hypotheses—I would recommend seeking an explanation of what the analyst is feeling first and foremost in the analyst herself, next in the relationship between herself and the analysand as it has developed over the course of the analysis, and only lastly—should all else fail—in something the analysand is not even experiencing. (Location 3963)
The subtext of the notion of projective identification, as I read it, is often based on a specific conception of what the analysand should be feeling when he discusses certain things. (Location 3970)
The assumption that the analyst is feeling what the analysand would be feeling if only she were in touch with her feelings very often rides roughshod over the potential otherness of the other, over the genuine differences among people, relying as it does on a presupposition that we are all fundamentally alike in our “basic humanity.” (Location 4009)
There are obviously complex interactions that occur between analysand and analyst; the latter are by no means isolated monads (in Leibniz’s sense) that have no real effect on each other. For example, with the analysand whose case I discussed in an earlier section, it was no doubt my tendency to pry that encouraged his repetition with me of the particular scene that occurred with his sister as a child, leading him to fall silent more often, which encouraged my prying still further (which encouraged still more silence on his part, and so on). At times, the analyst pressures the analysand to act in certain ways, at other times the analysand pressures the analyst to act in certain ways, and a subtle, complex dance results from this.53 The analyst clearly plays an important part in the repetitions that occur in the analysis: She is anything but a neutral or objective observer. An analyst who believed herself to play no role in what transpires in the analysis would be embracing a highly obsessive theory of psychoanalytic treatment indeed. (Location 4036)
No one trained in a Lacanian approach to transference and countertransference could ever, it seems to me, have asserted that the analysand was responsible for the analyst’s napping. As even Gill (1982, p. 63) said, “Countertransference can be rationalized easily in terms of a theory of therapy.” (Location 4070)
The attempt to make use of imaginary-level reactions on the analyst’s part (such as feeling annoyed, angry, bored, sleepy, rejected, abandoned, scared, and so on) to the analysand’s projections encourages the analyst to situate her work in the imaginary register, thinking that the lion’s share of the work occurs in the transference and countertransference. However, according to Lacan, transference reactions occur at moments at which symbolization fails—that is, when the analysand is unable to go any further in his articulation of the “pathogenic nucleus”—and countertransference is indicative of the analyst’s failure to situate herself in the position of the symbolic Other, having become bogged down in the imaginary relation (that is, in the dyadic relation between two egos; see Fink, 1997, Chapter 3). In other words, according to a Lacanian perspective, transference and countertransference occur at moments when the all-important process of symbolization breaks down, not when something productive for the analysis is happening. Transference and countertransference are thus (Location 4079)
diversions, imaginary lures, and are associated with moments of stasis, not moments in which something psychoanalytically important can be done. Direct work with the transference and countertransference may be satisfying to the analysand at some level, but it does not produce the kind of change that Lacanian psychoanalysis aims (Location 4087)
If most everyone has them, why should the analysand bother to decipher what they mean to her in particular, especially when that deciphering process can be long, arduous, and humiliating? In the longer term, such comments by the analyst suggest to the analysand that the analyst, like most other people, believes that there is such a thing as normality and that one is okay if one is normal (and perhaps even that we should all try to be as normal as possible). (Location 5035)
When a male analysand of mine was concerned that the woman he had picked to marry resembled his sister in many ways, I could have told him that it is quite normal for men to choose women who resemble their mothers or sisters, and he might have felt momentarily relieved at my saying so, but this would very likely have forestalled his realization that he could not enjoy his relationship with his wife because he felt that it was incestuous. While it is hardly unusual, statistically speaking, for men to choose women who resemble their mothers or sisters, making a remark to that effect would not have addressed the specificity of his incestuous relations with his sister many years before and their effects on his present relationship with his wife. (Location 5046)
“Why did they want to?” one might ask. Such a solidly established developmental model would give them a specific image of the type of personality they were trying to mold and would justify all kinds of interventions that would move the analysand in that direction (as opposed to simply following Freud’s recommendation to seek out the repressed). It would also provide a kind of map for them in the otherwise unwieldy long-term process of analysis, for they began to view analysis as a reparenting process wherein one brings the analysand back to each of the developmental snafus that has occurred during the otherwise normal “maturational processes” (Winnicott, 1977, p. 2) and leads him anew through each of the “maturational stages” (p. 3) that has gone awry. Conceived of in this way, the analyst was simply removing obstacles to the analysand’s natural development, and she could shift responsibility for her actions to the theoretical model itself. In other words, it was relieving to the analyst, for it told her what she ought to do given her assessment of the “stage” at which the analysand was stuck. (Location 5078)
It is as if philosophers were saying, “Tell me what a human being is and I will tell you what he or she should do.” (Location 5092)
The hope, apparently, is that neuroscience can provide an objective, incontrovertible definition of “optimal neural functioning” at the different ages of life, allowing us then to postulate what a child and its mother should have done by such and such a point in the child’s life to achieve such functioning. The fact that we can still raise the question “neural functioning that is optimal for what?” indicates that the problem here is simply pushed back a notch, and that different analytic schools will continue to have different ideas about what they think neural functioning should be optimized for. (Location 5136)
Men often profess that they would like to get women to think like they do (as Rex Harrison famously put it, in My Fair Lady, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”)—in other words, eliminate their difference from men so that they would be the same as men. And analysts, who have mostly (though not exclusively) been neurotic, have often wished they could make psychotics into neurotics, reshape psychotics in their own image, make them like themselves. Both of these projects involve the attempt to eradicate the Otherness of other people, to reduce whatever difference from oneself the other manifests to zero. They run utterly and completely counter to Freud’s (1919/1955, p. 164) warning not “to force our own ideals upon [a patient who puts himself into our hands in search of help], and with the pride of a Creator to form him in our own image and see that it is good.” Freud no doubt found himself succumbing to this normalizing temptation at times, which is precisely why he issued this warning to (Location 5157)
The point, in my view, is not to propose that we nuance our approach to normality by adding several new categories—“normal for women,” “normal for men,” and so on—but rather to propose that we jettison the notion of normality in general, because it is not only useless but often even harmful to our clinical work. Indeed, it blinds us to the fact that each person’s neurosis (or major symptom) makes him or her operate in ways that seem “abnormal” to anyone else but that are utterly and completely “normal” to the person in question. (Location 5165)
The use of terms like rationality and normality is one of the biggest shams—indeed, one of the biggest rationalizations—in current psychotherapeutic discourse. As Macalpine (1950, p. 196) nicely put it, “It is particularly unfortunate that the antithesis, ‘rational’ versus ‘irrational,’ was introduced, as it was precisely psychoanalysis which demonstrated that ‘rational’ behavior can be traced to ‘irrational’ roots.” (Location 5196)
How can anything that occurs in the therapy setting be considered inappropriate? (Location 5225)
I would be tempted to say that there are no “inappropriate affects” in therapy—there are only inappropriate ways of practicing therapy (and by “inappropriate” in the latter part of this formulation I mean ways that are not helpful to the analysand). (Location 5233)
there is no such thing as an inappropriate affect—affects simply are. (Location 5237)
whenever the analyst is tempted to qualify someone’s affect as “inappropriate,” she should think displacement or projection (Location 5258)
Another highly normalizing term in the contemporary clinician’s arsenal is reality-testing. Whereas virtually all of the social sciences have moved in the direction of a notion of reality that is socially constructed—a notion of reality that is therefore shaped by a particular society’s or group’s language and worldview—psychology and psychoanalysis have often persisted in espousing a reality that is objective, not a product of our historically situated belief systems, and fully knowable. (Location 5326)
Our access to reality is mediated by language (and all of the political, philosophical, and cultural assumptions it contains and conveys) and—just as we cannot step outside of the transference, as I indicated in Chapter 7—we cannot step outside of language to somehow experience reality directly. Even our specialized vocabularies and symbols (our “metalanguages”) are (Location 5336)
made of the stuff of language and can only be explained with more language (the definition of one term or symbol always referring to other terms and symbols). There is no escape from language’s mediation (except perhaps for the autist, whom language has failed, as we saw in Chapter (Location 5338)
At a time when a large number of those even in the “hard sciences” have come to the realization that they do not touch matter directly but only in a mediated way—only through the dominant scientific terminology and theories that inform their research and delimit their ways of thinking (see, for example, Kuhn, 1962)—it is curious that psychotherapists appeal to seemingly “paradigm-free” notions like “reality-testing” and good or bad (Location 5354)
Although much of this may concur with the way many contemporary clinicians think of reality-testing, I hope it is clear from this brief discussion that for Freud, reality-testing does not involve our ability to really and truly know the “outside world” in some sort of direct, unmediated way, but rather our ability to tell whether what we are experiencing is a perception or (the intrapsychic or endogenous recathecting of) a memory—that is, our ability to distinguish between perception and fantasy.18 It has nothing to do with the actual content of the perception. And as we have known since the pre-Socratics, the information conveyed to us by sense perception (the content) is often misleading (a branch lying partway in a pool of water and partway out does not look straight even when it is, for example) and must be corroborated or corrected by other perceptions. Freud (1900/1958, p. 613) was well aware that we have no direct access to reality, our access being mediated by our senses: The unconscious “is as much unknown to us as [is] the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our sense organs.” (Location 5391)
we might hypothesize that in many cases the stronger one’s ego, the less able one is to know the repressed within oneself and therefore the less able one is to distinguish whether what one “sees” is coming from oneself or from other people. Perhaps this observation can shed a new light on psychoanalysis’ fascination with strengthening patients’ egos. (Location 5417)
inability (in psychosis) or ability (in neurosis) to see several different meanings in one and the same portion of speech. This brings us to the relation between speech and meaning—in linguistic terms, between the signifier and the signified—which is very different in neurosis and psychosis. (Location 5747)
What is the place he must stay in, once he is quite sure that his analysand is psychotic? Since he cannot occupy a symbolic role, he is left with an imaginary role (to put it as simply as possible). Although the imaginary dimension can be characterized by rivalry and jealousy (see Fink, 2005b), the important aspect of the imaginary relationship here is that analyst and analysand are qualitatively the same: They are more like siblings than like parent and child. They are similar to each other in many respects—they are “semblables,” as Lacan put it, people who resemble each other more than they differ. (Location 5917)
For the neurotic, there is always a little story, vague and confusing as it may be, about why her parents wanted her or perhaps did not want her at first but grew to love her. This little story tells her something about the place she occupies in their desire, and that space in their desire, small as it may be, is her foothold in life. At the most minimal level it explains the why and wherefore of her existence in the world, explaining why she is here. In this sense, the story serves as an explanatory principle. (Location 6024)
The psychotic sets out—via the delusional process—to generate explanations for things that happen in her world and, in particular, to foment an explanatory principle of her own. The delusion constructed by a psychotic serves to make up for the lack of an explanatory principle; it supplements this lack. Delusional activity, when it is allowed to run its course rather than being silenced by a therapist’s intervention and/or medications, eventually leads—and this process may take years—to the construction of what Lacan (2006, p. 577) called a “delusional metaphor,” a new starting point on the basis of which the psychotic establishes the meaning of her life and world. (Location 6050)
If, on the other hand, there are already signs of delusional activity on the patient’s part, the analyst must not take it upon himself to rid the analysand of the delusions. As Freud (1911a/1958, pp. 71, 77) pointed out in his commentary on the case of Judge Schreber, delusions are part of the curative process. Hallucinations and delusions are often very dear to the patient—she loves them more than she loves herself, as Freud said—and the patient may feel quite bereft should they (Location 6065)
be taken away from her through the imposition of electroconvulsive therapy or medication. (Location 6069)
Repression should not be viewed as just one defense mechanism among others on a long laundry list of defenses used by neurotics, but rather as the very condition for the possibility of those defenses (such as denial, displacement, isolation of affect, compromise formation, omission, conversion, turning against the self, reaction formation, suppression of affect, and undoing). (Location 6142)
Joyce’s sinthome seems to have been particularly robust and did not require psychoanalytic assistance. Others for whom the imaginary, symbolic, and real are not held together by what we commonly refer to as the Oedipus complex are not always so lucky. A sinthome may have been found or constructed by the individual at one point in time, but it gives way or begins to come undone under the pressure of certain life circumstances that threaten the stability of the individual’s solution to the problem of keeping body and soul together, so to speak. The analyst’s goal in such cases is to help the analysand find a way back to the former stability or find a new situation that will lead to stability of the same or of a slightly different kind. (Location 6204)
In psychosis, we often fail to find such fixity or fixation. What psychoanalysts have pejoratively referred to as “narcissism” (as in “narcissistic personality disorder”) and as “grandiosity” can be better understood as a lack of limitation. For in psychosis no initial button tie is ever established—the paternal (Location 6289)
metaphor is never instated, meaning that Oedipalization does not occur—which implies that no other specifically signifying connections between the realms of experience and meaning can be established either. We do not find in analytic work with psychotics that they return to the same event again and again, each time giving it new meanings that flesh out other facets of the experience.47 They are unable to produce an S2 that would retroactively tie down the meaning of an earlier event (imagine an arrow running backward from S2 to S1 in the fundamental structure of signification just depicted), a new interpretation that would take the place of an old interpretation, thereby constituting a substitu-tional metaphor. What they are able to articulate simply constitutes a series of new events (a series of S1s, so to speak), each of which seems to operate independently of the others, none of them retroactively affecting the prior ones in such a way as to “close signification”—that is, provisionally pin down their signification (Soler, 2002, pp. 95–96). In the case of the neurotic, on the other hand, the production in the course of the analysis of a new S2 has an important impact on the subject as split between conscious and unconscious insofar as the new interpretation hits something that had previously been unconscious. (Location 6292)
Object a, which also appears on the lower line of the fundamental structure of signification presented earlier, localizes jouissance for the neurotic in a durable and enduring manner—indeed, the neurotic often complains that she cannot find anyone, except in fantasy, who will speak to her in the tone of voice in which she wants to be spoken to, or look at her in the manner in which she wants to be looked at, there seeming to be no other way for her to experience jouissance. In psychosis, on the other hand, object a does not operate in the same manner, and the psychotic’s jouissance may, when a break occurs, be difficult if not impossible to localize and limit.50 This all too often leads the psychotic to try to localize and limit her own jouissance by mutilating or cutting out the “offending organs,” the parts of her body that she experiences as becoming invaded by jouissance. As Miller (IRMA, 1997, p. 222) put it, “When castration is not symbolized, it seeks to be carried out in the real,” (Location 6313)