RAUL MONCAYO - Evolving Lacanian Perspectives for Clinical Psychoanalysis

EVOLVING LACANIAN PERSPECTIVES FOR CLINICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS On Narcissism, Sexuation, and the Phases of Analysis in Contemporary Culture

Raul Moncayo

KARNAC

First published in 2008 by Karnac Books Ltd 118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT

Copyright © 2008 by Raul Moncayo

The rights of Raul Moncayo to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data AC.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library ISBN13: 978-1-85575-509-3 Designed, typeset and produced by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon www.florenceproduction.co.uk

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

vi i

Introduction

ix

Part One: Lacanian Theory

1

1

2

3

Forms and Transformations of Narcissism: The Partial Object, the Ideal Ego, the Ego Ideal, and the Empty Subject ° Sexual Difference and Social Equality in the Phallic Function and the Three Registers of Experience Love, Transference, and the Emptiness of the Agalma

Part Two: Lacanian Practice 4

3

48 102

117

New Lacanian Perspectives on Depression: From the Presence of Emptiness to the Emptiness of Presence and Development

119

5

The Multiform Criteria and the Practice of Psychoanalysis

156

6

The Question of Time: Phases of Analysis and Oedipus in Analytic Treatments

195

v

Vi

•

7

The Supervisor Supposed to Know: Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Supervision

223

Cultural Difference and Lacanian Psychoanalysis: From the Master's Discourse to Post-Colonial Analytical Practice

247

8

INDEX

CONTENTS

275

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T

his book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Rene Moncayo, and my stepfather, Jorge Bosch. I always admired my father's pure intelligence and my stepfather's scholarship and erudition. In addition, while growing up, it was my mother Germaine de Bremont Bosch, and her philosophical background, that had the most influence on my intellectual and spiritual curiosity and development. It goes without saying that my analysts, who shall remain anonymous, have had a lasting impact on my life. They form part of the luminous unknown darkness of the unconscious that underpins the ground of my psychical being. Roberto Harari was my first teacher and mentor in psychoanalysis, and he remains a necessary reference for consultation and feedback on questions of treatment and Lacanian scholarship. I wrote certain portions of Chapter V as second author to Roberto. That paper appeared in the Journal of the Lacanian School with the title Principles of Lacanian Clinical Practice. I am also indebted to Andre Patsalides, who is the founding analyst of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis in Berkeley. The section of Chapter V on the three payments of the analyst was previously published as a subsection of a chapter that I wrote for a book on Psychoanalysis and Buddhism edited by Jeremy Safran (Wisdom Books, 2004). As it stands now, Chapter V represents my most tip-to-date and comprehensive statement on what I am now calling the multiform criteria for psychoanalytic and Lacanian clinical vii

Viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

practice. A more basic version of the chapter on narcissism appeared in Psychoanalytic Review, 93(4), August 2006. The. same goes for Chapters II, VII, and VIII. These chapters had a prior history as papers under different titles but were extensively revised and expanded for the purposes of this book. A version of Chapter II appeared in the Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, Vol. 7, Number 2, Autumn 2002, under the title The Configurations of Sexual Difference Across Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary Dimensions. Chapter VII had a prior history in Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol. 23, Number 3, under the title Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Supervision. Chapter VIII also appeared in Psychoanalytic Psychology 1998, Vol. 15, Number 2, under the title Cultural Diversity and the Cultural and Epistemological Structure of Psychoanalysis. For the most part, Chapter III appeared in its present form and under the same title in the Journal for Lacanian Studies, Vol. 3, Number 1 (2005). Finally I want to mention my Zen teacher Mel Weitsman who, although not being in the psychoanalytic field, or having read this book, has helped keep my thinking Real and non-dualistic. Last but not least, I want to dedicate this book to my sons Gabriel and Noam and my partner Deborah Rifkin Roberts for their patience with me during the writing of this book and for Deborah's editorial assistance with the English language. Berkeley, July 30th, 2007

INTRODUCTION

T

his book is the product of over twenty years of work inclinical and academic settings, both in the public and private sectors of the San Francisco Bay Area. I was born in Chile and attended a British school. I began psychoanalytic training in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the early seventies, under the direction of Roberto Harari. In the U.S., I obtained a Ph.D. from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, in the tradition of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, and completed Lacanian training in the Lacanian School of psychoanalysis also in Berkeley. I am bi-cultural, thanks to my Chilean father and North American mothef. My mother's ancestry is French so the interest in a French form of psychoanalysis may not be a coincidence. In addition to a French perspective, I represent a Lacanian-American, and a Latino-American perspective on psychoanalysis. Lacanian-American does not solely refer to the United States, but to the entire American continent, including Latin America and Canada. Establishing a school of Lacanian psychoanalysis in California has been an interesting journey. Up until now in the United States Lacanian psychoanalysis has primarily come to light as part of the wave of French influence on academic culture in the humanities. Whether in Philosophy, Rhetoric, Literature, English, or French departments, Lacan has become a household name alongside Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze, among others. At the same time, secondary to deep divisions or splits within North American academia, Lacanian thought has been largely ignored within the IX

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INTRODUCTION

social science departments that train clinicians in the mental health professions. As a legacy of empiricism clinicians often are of the opinion that abstract thought or theory is of no relevance to best practices within the field of mental health. Even within North American and Anglo-Saxon psychoanalysis, Lacan is recognised as a theoretician but not as a clinical innovator, English and Anglo-American culture are known for empiricism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism. It is also well known that English empiricism severed the link between philosophical and scientific discourse. Although this was an important moment for the development of the natural sciences, it may have come at a high price for the social sciences. French culture or continental European thought never defined a social science exclusively through the methodology of logical empiricism. In other words, within the social sciences, continental Europe preserved the link and continuity between scientific and philosophical theory. Despite being a former English colony, the United States is renowned as a country of immigrants, the site of the English vision of a New World, and as the great social experiment of democracy with regard to ideas, social classes, and cultural formations. The melting pot not only means the place where all cultures are reduced or assimilated to Anglo-American culture, but more importantly, the place of meeting and in-gathering of all nations and cultures. Like the English, the French and the Spanish were defeated militarily, as competing colonisers on North American soil. However, the vanquished always become incorporated into the psyche of the victors. In addition, the different Western powers would probably agree that knowledge must expand to encompass a more universal human dimension rather than simply remaining within the relativity of a particular cultural or national interest, whether cognitive, economic, spiritual, or political. It is also true that the latter are usually disguised under a pretence of objectivity and universality. I define universal as that which includes everything; its own lack, limitation, or emptiness. A tendency to violently reduce everything to a single numerator or master signifier can never attain the status of enduring universality. What then is the relevance of Lacanian theory and practice to the English-speaking world and the New World? This question has to be answered first by addressing the relevance of theory. As already

INTRODUCTION

XJ

stated, empiricism is known for accepting "scientific" rather than "philosophical" theories. The consequence of this within the clinical mental health or behavioural field as it is now called, is that clinicians feel comfortable with a series of techniques applicable to different types of pathologies and treatment, but that do not require them to think theoretically in any way, shape, or form. Even universities (what Lacan calls the university discourse) do not teach critical thinking skills in psychology or psychiatry. It is only in the humanities that critical and theoretical discourses are cultivated and appreciated. The consequence of the repression of critical clinical theory within the social sciences is the continuation of a split within the culture and within the psyche. There are the academics in their ivory tower on one side and the clinicians in the trenches on the other. Clinicians sometimes will say, "Oh! That is academic," as if theory did not have any relevance to clinical practice. Clinicians are left then with a series of fragmented techniques that are applied to clinical diagnoses that are themselves fragmented and disconnected from other diagnoses. What is missing from empiricist scientistic culture in psychology and psychiatry is a structural theoretical understanding. This would bring continuity and coherence to and among psychological development, family and psychical structure, social phenomena, brain function, spiritual development, and psychopathology. The notion of the psyche held the promise of psychiatry being a bridge between the natural sciences and the social sciences. As it stands now, under the banner of scientistic empiricism, biological psychiatry has become a market tool of pharmaceutical companies and Wall Street capitalism. Empirically validated forms of treatment present their findings as foundations for "evidence-based" clinical practices. However, most clinical studies are only six weeks long and are done with subjects who are quite different from the clinical populations that most clinicians encounter. The success rates of many medications do not prove to be nearly as accurate with patients treated in clinical practice. This is particularly the case for antidepressants with chronically and severely depressed populations. I do not mean to question the merits of psychotropic medications but simply to point out that the evidence is not as clear and definite as it is usually presented. The so-called evidence is in the realm of the Imaginary (videre in Latin) and in the presentation of a believable

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image. In actual practice the reliability of the study depends on how the studies are designed, the assumptions behind the questions asked, the populations used, and how the results are presented. The fact that a treatment has proven effective in a clinical trial is no guarantee that it will be effective with a clinical population. Conversely, a treatment that has not been empirically studied in a clinical trial could also be effective with a clinical population. Brain research has already made many positive contributions to psychiatry but these advances are presented, especially in the media, as completely new findings. In actuality many new findings are things that were already well known within psychoanalysis and psychiatry. The only difference is that now we have an expanded understanding of how things may work in different areas of the brain. The problem with scientism in the social sciences is not empirical research, or knowledge derived from the senses, but how it fragments human knowledge and posits one form of knowledge or logic as the sole legitimate and dominant form of knowledge. I agree with the Frankfurt school and critical theory that this is not done for the sake of objective knowledge but to protect political and economic interests. Psychoanalysis relies on the case study method to test the truthvalue and effectiveness of the theory. The single clinical case represents the point of articulation of theory and practice. From a Lacanian perspective, psychoanalysis needs to be reinvented on a case-by-case basis, beginning with the personal analysis of the clinician himself or herself. Therefore, psychical causality and symbolic effectiveness within psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis need not be studied statistically to be effective within clinical practice. If the behavioural field is reduced to evidence-based practices, then entire dimensions of subjectivity will be neglected and ignored to the detriment of the individual and society. What will remain is what Marcuse called a one-dimensional society of robotic people who have eyes but cannot see (seeing also requires the symbolic eye of a theory). Rather than statistics, it is the consumer of services who needs to be the final arbiter of whether a treatment is helpful or not in addressing a particular problem or condition. On the other hand, statistical studies can democratically co-exist side by side with clinical case studies and theoretical formulations, so long as the former are not

INTRODUCTION

XJii

tyrannically positioned as the sole valid form of knowledge determining practice guidelines and reimbursements or payments. In addition, theory construction requires a different set of cognitive skills than empirical research. To read and understand complex theory requires many years of study and reflection utilising abstract thought. In this sense it may be difficult to be a good empirical researcher and a good theoretician because the cognitive skills tend to exclude each other. The same may be true for being an empirical researcher and a clinician. To be a clinician one needs to practice clinical skills and the time allotted to this activity may conflict with the time needed to engage in empirical research. Most empirical researchers are not clinicians or vice versa. Reading and writing theory are more amenable activities for clinical practice. One can read and write between clients and in the evenings and on weekends. This is where democracy with regards to knowledge and power becomes allimportant. A democratic society is one in which different forms of knowledge and logic are supported and allowed their full development and implementation. A theory needs to be scrutinised in the light of a critical analysis of the coherence of its own postulates and how they succeed or fail to explain clinical and/or phenomenological observations. In addition, clinical theory must not only explain/interpret the facts of the field but also must be of help in their treatment and modification. Although there is no punctual correspondence between structural theoretical elements and empirical facts, theoretical knowledge enables a clinician to work with mental representations and behavioural presentations. No therapy manual will be able to exhaust the wide variety of permutations and combinations possible within human behaviour. Similar phenomena can present themselves in many different forms and conditions. It is a sound theory of subjective structures that helps a clinician understand and treat the many polyvocal manifestations of psychopathology in each specific circumstance and individual encountered. Lacan insisted on the point that the frame for treatment needs to be designed on a case-by-case basis. Standardised and manual based treatments cannot but end up applying the logic of "one size fits all" criteria. Not only the treatment needs to vary according to diagnoses, but he also insisted upon the variability of time for each session and

Xiv

INTRODUCTION

for each singular treatment. The variability in the length of the session, and of the treatment, is not only related to what Lacan called logical time but also to the fact that psychiatric and psychological/ psychical interventions are interventions within language. Behavioural facts are discursive facts or facts within discourse. Thus Lacan privileged the understanding of language for the understanding of human development, and of psychopathology and its treatment. Lacan views language as an embodied language. Language is not only a cognitive function, but it is also intrinsically tied to emotional life and the familial context of human development. Language is acquired within the workings of what Lacan called the paternal function within Oedipal structure. In addition, the linguistic signifier is a regulator of what Lacan called jouissance (pleasure/pain). Although Lacan's theory of the function of the linguistic signifier within psychical structure is relatively well known, his theories of jouissance, of love, sexuation, and narcissism are less known. The latter refers to the formation of a sexed sense of self within culture and to the emotional underpinnings of subjective and psychical structure. Many people in the English-speaking world and in other places, both within and outside psychoanalysis, believe that Lacanian psychoanalysis overemphasises the linguistic and the intellectual to the detriment of the affective, non-symbolic, and clinical aspects of experience. In the later Lacan the signifier not only regulates jouissance but also is itself a form of phallic jouissance regulated or limited by a higher order jouissance beyond the phallus. I formulate a distinctly Freudian-Lacanian conception of narcissism that broadens the understanding of narcissism while highlighting its relationship to partial objects, formations of the ego and the subject, and different forms of jouissance within the registers of experience. The Lacanian concepts of the objet a, and of jouissance, allow for a re-formulation and articulation of Freud's drive theory that is not without intersubjective dimensions, but also beyond egoic, and personalistic constructs. Psychopathology is intrinsically intertwined with larger historical changes in family structure, cultural definitions of sex and gender, and the social regulation of impulses and emotional life. It is well known that the postmodern family in the West is in crisis. Relationships between the sexes are experiencing enormous difficulties, the culture is struggling between traditional

INTRODUCTION

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and contemporary definitions of sex and gender, and spirituality has become an increasingly important aspect of human experience. This book is not only sensitive with respect to presenting Lacanian ideas within the context of current clinical practices within the mental healthfield,but also within the context of minority mental health (both ethnic and sexual), and within the context of contemporary nonLacanian psychoanalytic thought. I engage in a'critical analysis and inclusion of many intersubjective, object relations, and attachment theories. In many respects, Anglo-Saxon object-relations theory, the prevalent version of psychoanalysis in the English-speaking world, has neglefcted both sexuality and the function of the father. This is partly in compensation for an alleged neglect of trauma, the mother, and the pre-oedipal in Freud's theory, but also because of the feminist critique of Freudian and Lacanian phallocentrism. However, the price paid for the neglect of sexuality and the function of the father is coextensive to the confusion and malaise regarding sex and gender prevalent in Western culture. Despite the many necessary advances in women's socio-economic conditions brought about by feminism, at a psychical/familial level, feminism confuses the difference between the imaginary phallus/father and the symbolic father/phallus. Lacan makes this distinction clearer and to a further degree than Freud. The master's discourse, the discourse of patriarchal domination and power, is the discourse of the imaginary father. By turning the critique of patriarchal domination on its head, it is possible to argue that certain versions of feminism, and mother-centric discourse, also help reinforce the discourse of the imaginary father, and the master. The question of cultural difference and diversity also has become of utmost importance for the mental health field in a postmodern world. Nowadays, clinicians must be culturally competent to treat individuals from many different cultures. The last chapter of this book addresses the issue of cultural difference from the point of view of a Lacanian reading of Latino American experience. Many people from traditional non-Western cultures rely on religion, spirituality, or culture, to address the questions posed by psychopathology and psychical or mental suffering. Most books on Lacanian topics do not address the relevance of Lacanian psychoanalysis for the treatment of ethnic groups. Lacanian-American perspectives are also consistent with postcolonial theory in that, although careful and respectful with regard

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to Lacanian scholarship, analytical training, and the complexity of Lacan's thought, it dares to appropriate a European discourse, and present it in a distinctly continental American voice. To do otherwise is to continue to reinforce a colonialist mentality and a social transference whereby the French may be placed in the position of the master and the "one who knows/7 There is more than one way to interpret Lacan since Lacan left many contradictions open within his work and his thought also changed over time. Lacan purposefully wrote in a style that left the question of interpretation open rather than closed. Two, three, or perhaps four, individuals (but not many more than this), can arrive at different or opposite conclusions regarding what Lacan meant to say about a particular concept. Difference and diversity within interpretation is consistent with and predicted by the very logic of what Lacan called the Borromean knot. The Borromean knot is composed of two things: three dimensions that intersect one another and a fourth that tie the other three together. A concept, word, or idea, can acquire different meaning according to the perspective of the register in question (Real, Symbolic, or Imaginary). In contrast to other books, the intent of this book is to provide the reader with a Lacanian or Borromean perspective rather than a closed or authoritative interpretation or introduction to Lacan's work. However, when deviating from accepted or supposedly authoritative interpretations of Lacan's work, I am careful to provide a rationale, and how I believe certain alternative formulations may help clarify dialectical tensions within Lacan's own thinking, but without ever pretending to provide a final synthesis or interpretation. Lacan understood the name of the father, as the fourth dimension that ties the other three together, as the names (in plural) rather than THE name of the father (in the singular and exclusive version). On the other hand, the name of the father, to qualify as such, has to have something of the one, but primarily of the zero of castration. Otherwise plural versions of the father, without the zero of a symbolic debt or inheritance, would be no different than perversion (pere-version: the versions of the father). Lacan was expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association for his clinical practices, and to this day, Lacanian clinical practice is not taught or practiced within the psychoanalytic

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XVJi

institutes affiliated with the IPA. This is the final point of resistance to Lacan's contribution to psychoanalysis and psychiatry in general. Paradoxically, it may be that it is precisely the Lacanian approach to the psychoanalytic frame which may help psychoanalysis continue to be relevant for contemporary culture and clinical practice. Psychoanalysis nowadays is considered to be too long, rigid, and expensive to be of use for people with private insurance, ethnic groups, public mental health, the poor, and the severely disturbed with substance abuse problems. Lacan's return to Freud included not only a return to Freudian ideas, but also to Freud's more flexible clinical practices. From a Lacanian perspective, the classical frame for analysis can be regarded as a postfreudian rather than a Freudian development, and as only one of the possible formats/tools of clinical psychoanalysis. Lacan insisted on the singularity of each session, subject, and treatment. For cultural as well as clinical reasons, psychoanalysis cannot be practiced according to the "one size fits all" criteria. Finally, in addition to presenting a multiform criterion to the psychoanalytic frame, this book also applies Lacanian ideas to the elucidation and treatment of depression. Lacan dedicated a seminar to the symptom of anxiety but did not focus on the problem of depression that has become the most widespread psychical malaise within contemporary culture. As anxiety was the malaise of traditional and modern Western culture at the turn of the century, depression has become the main symptom of a postmodern period linked to a loss of traditional ideals and aspirations..

PART ONE

LACANIAN THEORY

CHAPTER

ONE

Forms and Transformations of Narcissism: The Partial Object, the Idea! Ego, the Ego Ideal, and the Empty Subject Introduction

O

verall, Freud's theory has a built-in tension and ambiguity between a developmental and a structural concept of narcissism. On the developmental side, Freud (1911) first conceived of narcissism as a phase of sexual development where the individual begins taking its own body as a love object. In line with this perspective, Freud defined primary narcissism as corresponding to the ego-representation involved in this sexual phase of development, where the ego loves the image of his/her own body. Secondary narcissism was then defined as a regressive and pathological return to the primary narcissism of early childhood. Narcissism in this account is a primitive and temporary phase of development that, if unchecked, becomes ultimately pathological. The narcissistic or ego-centred phase of development in which an object relationship does not exist needs to be abandoned in favour of a more advanced object-oriented phase of development. However, the limitation of establishing an absolute developmental difference between a narcissistic and an object phase of development is that subject and object co-arise or mutually determine each other. Narcissistic and object love are interrelated. On the other hand, in his paper on narcissism, Freud (1914) considers the ego as a reservoir of libidinal cathexis from whence the latter are issued towards objects. Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) 3

4

LACANIAN THEORY

have pointed out that such an energetic definition presupposes a structural rather than a stadial or temporal conception of narcissism. These authors also note that Freud differentiated autoerotism from narcissism by emphasising a lack of an inborn unity to the ego. This distinction seems to allude to an implicit dialectic between the developmental and structural perspectives. In other words, the unity. of the ego as a mental agency/representation is not inborn but is rather established by a particular psychical or mental action. But once the unity of the ego of narcissism is established, it remains as a more or less permanent and non-pathological structure of the subject. With his concept of the mirror phase, Lacan (1951) purported to explain the precise nature of the particular mental action intuited by Freud regarding the formation of the ego in the so-called narcissistic phase of development. In Lacan's theory, the ego, as a particular form of unity within the psyche or as a manifestation of psychical unity, appears correlated if not consequential to the formation of a body image or a bodily schema. Once the organism becomes a body image presented to the mind, the body as specular image not only becomes a precipitant of mental organisation but in turn the mental representation of the body also facilitates motor development and dexterity. Lacanian theory converges with the prevailing intersubjective theory of narcissism and Lacan, in fact, may have been one of its precursors. Lacan has been credited with coining the term intersubjective. The image the child acquires of himself/herself is modelled aftej: the other and the other's object of desire. Narcissism does not in fact represent the absence of an "object relation" given that the self-object (the specular image) pre-exists as an object of the mother's desire. Thus, as Laplanche and Pontalis also point out, Freud's concept of narcissism represents identification with the other and the internalisation of a relationship with the other. Narcissism, whether primary or secondary, never precedes loving others because in loving himself/herself the ego loves the other. Self-love cannot be the originary form of love, because the existence of the object precedes that of the ego. However, in his second topography of the mind, where Freud (1923) developed the concepts of id, ego and super-ego, Freud defined primary narcissism as a primordial state prior to the formation of the ego, the prototype of which would be intra-uterine life.

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

5

It remains unclear what would be narcissistic about this state given that there is no rudiment of a differentiated ego-representation that could be cathected or loved. Thus, this conception of primary narcissism differs from the earlier view where primary narcissism represented the first form of ego representations and secondary narcissism was a regressive and pathological return to the primary narcissism of early childhood. In this second view of primary narcissism, the principal characteristic of primary narcissism is not a first form of ego representation or an absence of a relationship to an object but a lack of differentiation or the presence of a fusion between subject and object, self and other. Primary narcissism, is only narcissistic in the sense that it is characterised by an absence of a differentiated and conscious relationship to the external environment. This could not be otherwise given that the primary objects in the infant's world represent the environment and these have not yet been differentiated from the ego. Differentiation has to wait until identification of the primary objects takes place. The first perceptual identity with the object constitutes the first part-representation of the ego but where the latter has not yet differentiated from the former. Following Lacan, the beginning of a differentiation between self and other, subject and object, needs to be considered according to the mirror phase whereby the ego or ideal ego is defined by the specular image (image in the mirror) that results from identification with the mother's desire. The specular image would constitute a structural form of secondary narcissism. In contrast to this, the notion of secondary narcissism as regression to the narcissism of early childhood needs to be understood as a defence formation in response to Oedipal configurations that come to redefine and re-articulate structural and necessary narcissism. Such Oedipal configurations will be discussed further on. This chapter will also postulate the existence of further structural differentiations within narcissism generated by the establishment of the ego-ideal and of the symbolic function of the father. In these instances, a third or fourth degree within narcissism does not refer to psychopathology but to structural permutations within subjectivity. Such a formulation attempts, to combine the critical analysis of narcissistic identifications begun by Freud, with the realisation of the necessity and inevitability of subjective structure and the capacity for love, desire and enjoyment. Narcissism only becomes

6

LACANIAN THEORY

psychopathological when these further differentiations within subjectivity have not been established. A differentiation between secondary and tertiary narcissism is postulated following a distinction between the ideal ego of the specular image associated with identification with the mother, and the ego-ideal linked to a symbolic identification with the father. Following Lacan, the ego-ideal constitutes a further or tertiary differentiation within narcissism in relationship to the symbolic recognition of the father. But here Lacan subjects the ego-ideal to a critical analysis not found in Freud, at least in a systematic fashion. Thus, this chapter will postulate a final, end state differentiation within narcissism. It remains an open question whether such a state should still be considered a form or degree of narcissism. The ego ideal refers to an imaginary identification with the father, whereas what I call the empty subject refers to the function of the symbolic father as an empty symbolic function without a name or image but still a function, nonetheless. The task of the analyst is to serve as a support for this function by ultimately being empty of content that could define the identity of the analysand. The recognition of the lack in the Other leads to a fourth degree differentiation within narcissism that coincides with what Kohut (1966) called cosmic narcissism. Such end state form of subjectivity is differentiated from first-degree primary narcissism, because it is the result of the separations introduced by the paternal function. The unborn and absolute primary narcissism For Freud, the state of primary narcissism was narcissistic due to the absence of a relation with the environment similarly to that found in dreams. However, Green (1970) has observed that Freud distinguished between narcissism in sleep and the narcissism of dreaming. Sleeping is the example that Freud uses to describe what he called absolute primary narcissism as an analogous state to the conditions that prevailed in intra-uterine life. In both cases, as Green remarked, the subject is stripped and divested of outer garments, of social links, goods, and possessions. The subject is shielded and removed from external stimuli and investments and remains relaxed, reposed, and at rest. However, if there were no identifiable subject in relationship

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

7

to an object, the distinction between an internal or external world would not apply. Moreover, intra-uterine life does not represent a state of solipsistic encapsulation and separation from the world but rather one of profound connection and interpenetration of life processes. In intra-uterine life the child is intrinsically related to the environment represented by the mother's body. The body of the mother both relates to the external environment and shields the child from it. In this sense, intra-uterine life, as a prototype of primary narcissism, represents an inter-organismic and inter-psychic condition whereby subject and object, mother and child, have not been differentiated. In primary narcissism there is a relationship to the environment but the subjective pole of the relationship has not been differentiated. Intra-uterine life represents a self-experience for the foetus but it would not be narcissistic to the extent that narcissism presupposes a distinction between subject and object. From this vantage point, absolute primary narcissism can be viewed as a principle of quiescence to be distinguished from the elation, expansion, and isolation more commonly associated with the ego or primal object of the narcissism of dreaming and wishing. In contrast to the peace and silence of sleep, dreaming is what refuses to be reduced to silence and which sleep is forced to incorporate and accept in order to avoid its own interruption. Rather than sleep it is dreaming that represents a state of solipsistic encapsulation and separation from the world. According to Freud and Lacan, all the characters that appear in dream are representations of the dreamer himself /herself. In contrast to the narcissism which aims to promote the success of the ego, the other narcissism of sleep carries the subject towards a region of being/non-being wherein the ego vanishes^ The narcissism of sleep can be considered as a form of self-experience that is also a no-ego or a psychical topographical space/place where self and no-self coincide rather than collide. Although these two forms of narcissism are reflections of two different modalities, Freud did not supply a theory that could combine these two orientations into a single theory. Thus, within psychoanalytic theory the notion of an absolute primary narcissism linked to a principle of quiescence and profound connection tends to get lost. On the other hand, this is the basis for the reality ego, although this formulation constitutes a reification of psychical processes that could just as well be described

8

LACANIAN THEORY

as being without self. In what Freud called "perfect ego functioning", the sense of ego is lost to a wider or larger experience of reality better described by Freud's descriptive unconscious, Lacan's subject of the Unconscious or symbolic order and even a notion of a Big self that is not grandiose but reality-based. Coherent and articulate speech is a good example of a functioning wherein the subject, for the most part, has spontaneous and seemingly effortless access to an unconscious (in a descriptive sense) pool of vocabulary, logic, and eloquence. Basically the question of narcissism within psychoanalysis has been an answer to the question of selfhood. Psychoanalysis has ostensibly described the self as a form of libidinal attachment or fixation to ego-representations of various kinds. Within absolute primary narcissism, what Lacan calls a pre-subject (explained further on) functions according to a pre-libidinal organismic energy akin to Lacan's jouissance of the body or of being. No ego exists at this point. Jouissance means both pleasure and pain, and a good example of this would be the process of birth itself. During birth both the mother and child are subjected to the pulsating (contracting and expanding) pangs of the birth process that ultimately culminates in a quiescent holding of the child in the mother's arms. Having newly arrived in the world, for a moment, the child is awake and at rest in his/her own being. The libido proper begins with what Freud called the experience of satisfaction, and the perceptual identity with the object (the breast/objet a). Now the jouissance of the body and of being will become the jouissance of the Other, in relationship to the breast and maternal desire. Thus, it is also possible to formulate the question of self before and beyond the ego. In the pre-subject and in the self as object there is self-experience, even identity in the sense of sameness without difference, and in the sense of identity with the object, as well as energy and libido, but there is no ego. Thus, no-ego does not mean no-identity but a different form of identity. At first the connections of no-self are founded on the biological homeostasis of the body. For example, breathing as an image or function of the body that is connected to different organisms and to the earth through the vehicle of the air and oxygen that we all depend on. Dolto (1997) has identified breathing as the most archaic unconscious, image of the body and as an example of what she calls

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

9

fundamental narcissism. Dolto's fundamental narcissism can also be linked with Green's other narcissism of sleep or Freud's absolute primary narcissism. The other narcissism of sleep and of breathing represents the unconscious homeostasis and function of the organism. Thus, following Dolto, and Lacan, I formulate the notion of a pre-subject and a subject (both pre and post the ego of narcissism) beyond the isolation and illusion represented by narcissism as usually understood. Both the organism and the Lacanian subject can be regarded as forms of subjectivity beyond the ego. Strictly speaking, the ego is Imaginary and is organised by a body image framed by the specular image. The subject is organised within language and contains a necessary tear into the fabric of the ego of narcissism. It is the successive losses within privation, frustration, and castration that constitute the subject and the parameters of phallic puissance under the signifier. Within language as a social body the subject is represented and articulated by the (phallic) signifier. Just like a signifier acquires its meaning by its relational differences with other signifiers, so the name of a human subject, for example, identifies a subject as a particular signifier in relationship to other signifiers and names within the culture. The no-self of the post-ego ideal subject shares a structural connection to the no-self or pre-self of the body prior to the ego and to what Freud called absolute primary narcissism, Dolto called fundamental narcissism, and Kohut called cosmic narcissism. Although the absolute primary narcissism of the pre-subject is first experienced in relationship to the mother, the fourth-degree absolute primary narcissism of the subject is a return to the origins as a result of the paternal function. Such degree or level of narcissism could also be called a primary narcissism degree zero to distinguish it from a relative object-based primary narcissism. On the other hand, it could also be argued that for this category the concept of narcissism'could be dispensed with altogether. The end state narcissism can be regarded as either a differentiation within narcissism or as a differentiation within subjectivity beyond narcissism. In the end, as I will later argue, the early absolute primary narcissism and the organism become incorporated not into the self of narcissism but into the symbolic functioning of the subject.

10

LACANIAN THEORY

Relative primary narcissism After birth, the movement towards a distinction between subject and object, and towards a differentiation of subjective experience, begins when the polarity of the relationship is tilted towards the object. Thus, following Lacan, and many others, this chapter will consider relative primary narcissism as the form of self-experience wherein the self is given by a perceptual identity with a partial object^ representation of the mother. This view would be consistent with Klein (Segal, 1980) where she defines narcissism as identification with what she calls the good object.. In this section, the ego's relationship to the part-object of the mother will be conceptualised according to Lacan's concept of the objet a. Prior to the specular image (the body-image in the mirror) there exists a relationship to the breast as a part object representing the whole mother. The breast, or in some cases the bottle, is the first objet a. The objet (petit) a is a term that Lacan (1964) introduced to designate a partial object "cause of desire" which is imagined or symbolised as separable from the rest of the body (i.e. breast and weaning). The child has to wean and separate from the breast as a part of both his/her body and the mother's body. But just as the breast is not only separable from the mother's body because the mother is also included within the breast, the mother's breast is not only separable from the child's body in weaning but also becomes a part of the child's body in the form of the objet L Because the a has become separated and lost but is also included within the body of the child, it becomes the "presence of a void". I use the term presence of a void, rather than Lacan's "index of a void" to represent the construction of the objet a within a dialectic of presence and absence. On the one hand, the objet a is a presence, on the other hand, as a presence, it is only the index of a void. As a void the objet a can never be attained as a concrete object and thus the term cause of desire. Any posterior object of desire or of the sexual drive is never the objet (petit) a. In the first phase of primary narcissism, before the subject can have a desire for a maternal object, the bodily ego of the child is itself an objet a of the mother. Thus, Lacan will say that the ego is included in the object. Here the child as object represents not only the homeostasis of unborn life, but also the mother's libidinal investment of

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

11

the foetus. The foetus becomes an object cause of the mother's desire. The total body of the child becomes a part of the mother whereas after birth a part of the mother's body (breast as external object or other) will represent the total body of the mother for the child. The objet a is not only an object cause of desire for a subject, a relationship that Lacan (1966) will represent as ($#), because before the ego becomes a subject it is first an object. The first relationship between the bodily ego and the object can be represented with the Lacanian algorhythym: (a - a') that Lacan (1957/1977) uses for his schema L. (Es) S #r-

•►

(ego) (§) O "

- ^

-m ®' other

- O ©other

In this schema, and at the simplest level, the relationship between the mother and the child, as a body-to-body relationship, can be seen on the top line of the schema (S - a'). In French autre means "other", therefore Lacan uses "a" instead of the "o" that could have been used in English. In English "o" also represents zero (in Lacan's later work big A will be written as O to represent totality (O) and the not-all 0). Here a' (prime) would stand for the breast as a partial object and S for the pre-subject before it becomes an ego, in relationship to the mother, and a subject proper by the address of the Other. "S - a'" also stands for absolute primary narcissism, and the homeostasis of the interorganismic mother-infant body that represents a pre-subject and a pre-sexual energetic subject before it becomes enveloped by maternal libido/desire. This (Es) could also be said to be the origin of the it/id where the libido begins to be differentiated from basic material energy. Since this it/id is also the first form of self or absolute primary narcissism, this formulation solves the Freudian contradiction of postulating the

12

LACANIAN THEORY

libido as stored in the id versus postulating the libido as originally stored in the ego or what Lacan considers a pre-subject. A, as a symbol of totality, does not represent the total physical body (which is represented by the specular image) but the total body of the Other as a social-linguistic body that precedes the capacity to discriminate between small or big, total or partial, good or bad parts of the body. The S only becomes a barred $ after the imaginary relation with the mother is crossed by the address of the Other (S..$ - O). A line can also be drawn between S and a representing the ego (S - a). The ego as objet a only represents the subject after it has been captured by the desire of the (m)other. So a, or the ego, represents three things: the phantasy object of the mother, cause of her desire (a' - a), the first ego as the identification with the breast or the thought of the breast, and the U as the specular image or the image in the mirror that Lacan will later represent as i(a). With reference to the relationship to the breast, S - a' can be differentiated from a' - a because the former is before thought whereas the identification with the breast represents the beginning of thinking and memory. However, a limitation of this schema is that it does not have a way of differentiating the ego or a, as the thought of the breast, and the ego or a as the specular image (a and i(a) respectively). To differentiate them, i(a) would have to be written as a point on a straight line to the right of a (see my modified schema L below). In this schema, the relation between the body of the subject and the specular image is represented by a line between S and a. The specular image is also the ideal ego. The real image of the subject as a bodily ego is mediated by the specular image, and the specular image is mediated by a' representing both the mother as breast and her own desire for a phantasy object. So in the Imaginary we have a first triangle composed of three relations: S - a'; S - a; and a' - a. For the subject, the total image of the body is given by the specular image, because without a reflection the subject cannot see a total image of its own body. At the same time the total image of the ego represents the part-object k of the mother (i[a]), and the total image of the mother is represented by a part-object (a' or the breast). The subject cannot see the back of his/her body or his/her own gaze/face without the aid of a mirror or a reflection in the other and of the other as mirror. Without the mirror/Other the subject cannot see his/her own face as seen by the other. Without the mirror/Other the subject cannot see how or from what place the other is seeing

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

13

him/her. The other, however, can speak to the subject about his/her face and eyes, and have/hold his back for him/her, so to speak. Thus, the subject's relationships to his/her face, eyes, and back is mediated by the mirror/ Other. It is as if in the face of the other, or when faced with the other, the subject receives his/her own face. It is only in the reflection and in the ego as specular image or a reflected surface image that the subject can see his/her face as seen by the other. The gaze represents the eyes as seen and spoken by the Other, and the gaze as containing the eyes of both the ego and the Other. The gaze contains both what the eyes see as well as what they cannot see, what they see and what they are looking at, the eyes of the subject and the eyes of the other, the conscious eyes and the eye of the unconscious. But what about the total image of the m(other) or i(a'). What is the relationship between the part-object or the child's objet a, and the mother as a total image or as the first small other of an interpersonal/ intersubjective relationship? When is the mother perceived as a whole or total object beyond the relationship to the presence and absence of the good and bad breast, and beyond the perception of the mother's face and eyes? In other words, when does a' and - a ' become i(a') or the whole image of the other? In schema L the partobject and the small other appear fused and confused or undiffereritiated: a' is commonly defined as other. As with the case of the gaze, i(a') requires the intervention of the Other. But the presence of the Other first appears within the Imaginary register in the form of the small other or i(a'). In schema L, i(a') would have to be written as a point on a straight line to the right of a'.

df other i(aO

® other

14

LACANIAN THEORY

The mother is perceived as a total real image or object at the same time that she is symbolised as both present and absent, and as a gratifying and frustrating mother. However, now the child will have his/her own total image to compensate for the frustrations of the symbolic mother. In addition, the perception of the mother as a total real image or as other will also co-arise with the beginning recognition of a significant other or a signifier of the father as the other of the mother. But before the father is symbolised as a father, and before the Other is symbolised as father, the other of the mother will be prefigured in the figure of the sibling, as the human neighbour/brother member of the same species. In addition, the hole within the whole mother, cause of her desire for the father, will be first represented as a hole within the specular image that will compel the ego to turn towards the small other or sibling as the alter ego and away from the ideal ego of the specular image. To do otherwise produces afixationto both a narcissistic body image and to a representation of the mother as the phallic total mother. The whole mother has to have a hole in her for her to be truly whole in the sense of a good enough symbolic mother. Thus, with the introduction of the other as the total image of the mother (with hole), and the ego as specular image (with hole), and the hole as the dawning of the presence of the Other, we arrive at the second Symbolic triangle of schema L composed of three relations: i(-a) as ego or specular image with hole, i(-a') as total image of the other with hole, and the Other proper (which includes the lack in language and in the symbolic order). The ego as the thought of the breast, that I am calling relative N primary narcissism, or the partial object as the breast of the mother (a'), would not have a relationship to the Other that is not mediated by i(a) or the specular image and i(a') or the total image of the (m)other. In addition, for this second triangle to be truly symbolic there has to be a hole or something missing in the totality of both images. This reality could be written as i(a' - a') and i(a - a). Here the line between the a's represents a minus sign rather than a line. The Imaginary introduces totality but as the same time the totality of the Imaginary is intersected by a symbolic not-all iri the form of a hole within the image.

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

15

In schema L, lower case (a) stands for "the ego as object", while (a') prime stands for the part-object proper, and for the (m)other as. a part object. As aforementioned, the ego as specular image would be written as i(a) whereas the mother as small other or as a total image would be i(a'). The fact that the bodily ego is first an object has a double meaning supported by both sides of the mother-infant relationship. The child identifies with the part-object of the mother because the mother has identified the child as her part-object. The child is the mother's objet a and the part-mother is the child's objet a (a' in the schema). It is in this sense that the ego as object signifies both the ego as objet a of the mother (the real total image of the child as a differentiated part of the mother's body), and the first ego identification with the part object before there is a differentiated subject. Lacan (1966/2002, p. 303; and Harari, 1993) provides more than one list of primal or alpha objects which fall under the category of objet a. Among them are included the breast, faeces, the phallus, the voice, and the gaze. All of these partial objects have the quality of being primary causes of desire and yet of having been lost. In many ways the. list of objet a coincides with Freud's concept of the unconscious equation wherein breast, faeces, phallus, infants, and gifts all have symbolic equivalence. Lacan does not add the baby to his lists of objet a hut in many places spoke of the baby as Vpetit a. In addition, the concept of the gift was central to his theorising. Lacan saw the mother as endowed with the power of the gift of love. Any gift derives its power as a symbol of love by virtue of occupying the place of the objet a. Finally, the double negative and positive function of the objet a, of on the one hand being lost and disappeared, and yet designating a limited number of privileged partial objects on the other, also leads Lacan to speak of the objets a as having a stop-gap function. In Lacan's (1973) final list of objets a, the phallus drops from the list and instead becomes the denominator for an unconscious equation where the bottom term represents the lack of the phallic object and the objet a becomes the numerator that provides the illusion of closing the gap left by the missing object (d/cp). The missing object in this equation is the missing phallus or the phallus of the phallic function of symbolic castration. The objet a concept is important not only to understand the value and significance that the breast has for the infant but also for the

16

LACANIAN THEORY

mother. Before the breast becomes a nurturing object for the child, the breast has existed as a sexual object of the mother. The breast is a gift that the mother has to give that speaks in more than one voice. It says something about the value of a woman's body, as a sexual object of desire, and at the same time possesses a biological value for the species. The child will experience the breast as a gift from the mother not too unlike how the father may have experienced the mother as gifted and capable of the gift and proof of love. As a sexual object of desire, the breast is offered as allure to the gaze of the other or to a woman's own gaze in front of the mirror: "Look at what I have." Prior to its function of gift vis-a-vis the child, the breast has given pleasure to the mother not only in the literal and physical act of sex, but also as an object of gift. The mother is endowed with the gift of the breast, as a beautiful object of desire, and as such it can help compensate for the losses associated with the mirror phase described below. The relationship to the objet. a has a direct bearing on whether or not the mother will be capable of sharing her breast with the infant. In order for the breast to become an object h cause of the infant's desire,.the mother has to be able to let go of her own bieast/objet a. This involves a transformation in the "stop gap" objet a function of the breast. Instead of being a stopgap object, the breast has to become capable of being lost. This predicament often adopts a concrete form in the mother and father's preoccupation that, as a result of breastfeeding, the breast may lose its beautiful shape and value as a sexual object. If the mother cannot let go of her object, then the infant may also have a more difficult time with weaning once the breast is withdrawn. Hassoun (1997) has identified this fact as a predisposing factor for melancholia. In this regard, the bottle, as an oral objet a, may have the advantage of being an object that is easier to detach from the body of both mother and child. However, the bottle is more of a transitional object than an internal object. Following Winnicott (1953) the transitional object is a "possession" that can occupy the place of the objet h as an internal object. Given its nutritional and biological importance, the breast is the first part-object of symbolic exchange between mother and child. It is said that at six days the newborn can detect the breast pad utilised by the mother. This fact points not only to the breast but also to the association of the breast with its odour. The newborn can also

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

17

distinguish between the mother's and a stranger's voice and between two and three months the infant can recognise the organisation of the mother's face (Bukatko and Dzehler, 1995). The experience of satisfying nutritional needs is inextricably tied to the desire to be loved by the mother. In fact, both dimensions fall under what Freud (1900) called the experience of satisfaction. Moreover, the experience of satisfaction is also linked to the mother's odour, voice, and face, all of which represent different sense information. A particular feature of the mother's face is a basic part-object or trace of visual sensation (i.e. the eyes), the voice is a registration of a'sound sensation, while the breast and the bottle represent multimodal engagements: vision, smell, taste, and touch. All these objects of the senses are part objects that, prior to perception proper, exist as punctual, asymmetrical and fragmentary occurrences that, nevertheless, define self-experience. But how does perception first introduce order and meaning into the basic elements of sensation? It is my contention that, psychoanalytically speaking, perception organises sensation through a dialectic of presence and absence characteristic of the objet a. Each of the different objet a seem to correspond and be paradigmatic of the different sense presentations. The gaze represents visual sensation, the voice represents souncT sensation, the breast represents taste, faeces represent smell, and the phallus represents touch. In addition, the objet a, that is to say the voice, gaze, breast of the mother, although they define the first fragmentary registration of the self, all have the quality of "now you see it, now-you don't"; here in a moment, gone the next. The basis for symbolic equivalence, mutual reciprocity and substitutive ability of the various maternal partobjects lie in the fact that the objects involved in a symbolic equation share the characteristic of separability and the quality of being lost at one point or another. At four months, this feature will crystallise in the infant beginning a search for objects that may have dropped from view, disappeared, or lie hidden somewhere. The absent, dropped, and disappeared quality of a privileged objet a also led Lacan to add "the nothing" to his list of objets a. The nothing as an object can be thought of as the absent quality of every objet a or as the denomination given by the missing phallus. The objet a alternates between being something very special to being nothing or the index of a void. The anorexic would be the clinical example of the oral

18

LACANIAN THEORY

search for the objet a as a nothing. Nothing enters the anorexic's body and if it enters it must be expelled, as seen in the case of bulimia. For the mother, the infant may have the illusory or imaginary function of being a part of herself and of providing her a sense of completion as a woman and mother. And yet the good enough symbolic mother function also requires that she also be apart from her infant and want things beyond the child. As a privileged objet a, the infant has to be separable from the mother. It is this very necessary separation from the child being merely a product of the mother that the infant will experience as the antithesis of the experience of satisfaction. The mother's absence or her having dropped from view will generate in the child an experience of the absence of the a: no voice, no gaze, no face, and no breast. Following Lacan (1957/1995), more than a frustration that refers to some kind of prohibition, this experience may more accurately be depicted as a privation or a symbolic lack of a real object. On the other hand, it could also qualify as a frustration in that what is being deprived is not a biological need but a wish to repeat the experience of satisfaction. The mother could in fact say, "You had enough of the breast, do without it for a while." This phrase would be a good example of what Klein called the maternal super-ego constructed on the basis of the absence of the breast and the projection of the attacks on the breast. However, it is also true that it is often the father that insists on weaning the child from the breast to secure his sleep and phallic jouissance. Mothers usually have more difficulty not responding to repeated cries for more breast. In fact there are competing super-egos and schools of thought regarding the need to gratify/frustrate the repeated and insatiable demands for the breast. The differences between the two schools of thought could be characterised as the struggle between two camps: the fathers on the one camp, and the mothers and sons/children on the other. When the child as a privileged objet a of the mother becomes separable from her, the partial registrations of the mother also become an objet a for the child. In the absence of the multimodal image, taste, touch, and smell of the breast (or of the bottle and the associated registrations of the mother), what is produced in their place is a primary process which Freud (1900) called hallucinatory wish fulfilment. The absence of the breast/mother and the dissatisfaction therewith will give rise to the first thought in the form of the

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

19

invocation of the sensorial registrations of the partial object and the associated experience of satisfaction. Along these lines, Bion (1993) also followed Freud in defining thought as the mating of a preconception (breast) with a frustration (no breast). Freud had argued: "Thought is after all nothing but a substitute for a hallucinatory wish" (1900, p. 606). But what needs emphasis is that the first form of thinking arises as a form of identifying with the object of satisfaction as a partial representation of the maternal body. In invoking and working over mental registrations, the self arises in the process of identifying a partial object-representation of the mother. Perception and thinking become identified and this identification becomes the most rudimentary form of self or ego-identity based on the thought of the object as an internal representation. This would be the most salient feature of relative primary narcissism. Nevertheless, although thought replaces the breast or makes the breast a self-representation, thought is also inadequate to the task of representing the breast. The other differs from the idea of the other as an internal object. The illusion of the object is only a semblance of the actual object. Eventually thought becomes non-identical with the other and this realisation is registered as an experience of dissatisfaction and emotional pain. The presence and absence of the breast as a part ofthe other, or of the associated maternal partobjects, is pleasurable and painful or satisfying and dissatisfying before they are good and bad in the ethical and symbolic sense of the terms. Thinking is the first attempt to stabilise the dual emotional valence related to the presence and absence of the other. However, soon after, thinking itself becomes entangled with the same emotional ambivalence experienced towards the breast. Hallucinatory wish fulfilment fails to produce a stable identity with the other. The ideal-ego and the specular image Both the absence of the part-other and the inadequacy of thought vis-a-vis the other leads the search for certain stability in the specular image. At six months, the pleasant and unpleasant experiences with the breast and the thought of the breast achieve a certain degree of resolution in the perception and fascination with the coherent or total representation of the child in the mirror. Now the objection could be raised that the perception of the self-image in the mirror does not

20

LACANIAN THEORY

occur with sufficient frequency in the life of the child for it to have such a central significance. In this regard there seems to be a core ambiguity built into Lacan mirror phase concept. For on the one hand the specular image particularly refers to the image in the mirror, while on the other it also refers to the more general notion of how the image of self is modelled after the perception of the image of the other, or the mother in this case. If the specular image as a total image is thought more in terms of the total image of the mother, then the concept would fit better with the more common and frequent experience of the mother's mirroring behaviour. However, although the total image of the mother could give the child a first total representation of the other, it does not yet constitute a specific differentiated ego representation as is the case with the image in the mirror. The child would confuse his/her body for the body of the mother. One possible way out of this conundrum is to consider the infrequent, although qualitatively significant and critical, perception of the image in the mirror as an anchoring point or vessel through which the mirroring experiences with the mother are processed. The perception of the specular image or the ideal ego/ real image of the total bodily ego comes before and mediates the perception of the real image of the mother's total body. This imageto-image relationship between mother and child also allows for the child to perceive the mother as containing the image of the child, as well as vice versa. This would be the Lacanian explanation for the phenomenon that object relations theorists know as projective identification. Once imaginary totality is introduced then the mother can be perceived as holding or containing the attacks on the body of the mother. However, for the alpha or containing function of the mother (as Bion calls it) to function as a symbolic function, the boxlike image of the mother has to contain a hole or vacuum in it. The hole in the image is also a vanishing point for the mother, linked to her relationship to the father and the phallus, and that allows her to postpone her own narcissism in favour of the ego or narcissism of the child. At about six months of age, children become fascinated with their image in the mirror (Lacan, 1955). At this point the child can sit down and look at their image reflected in a floor-level mirror. Most commonly, the child will be held while they look at their image in the mirror under the gaze and recognition of the other. The objet a

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

21

as the object cause of the mother's desire is the nucleus of the specular image that Lacan represents as: i(a). The image is the garment or envelope of the objet a. The latter is the core more than the pit of the fruit of the specular image. The objet a is the object which is separable from the body of the mother and constitutes what the mother has lost and what motivates her search for an impossible reunion or reintegration of the object. Given that the child has been a part of the mother's bo^ly that was separated from her, the child is a natural objet a for the mother. However, the child is more like a natural fit with the formal features of the cavity or matrix left by a prior loss of the object. As aforementioned, the child provides the mother with a sense of completion as a woman and a mother without whom she would experience herself as lacking or incomplete. Many women do not want to have children precisely because it implies the recognition of a prior symbolic lack. The ideal bodily ego or the specular image occupies the place of the object cause of the mother's desire: "I am a cute child and my mother loves me," or "You see, you can love the image, because it is similar to the (part) object," (Freud, 1923, p. 30). The image is the beautiful object, joy of the mother's desire. The image is the apple, peach, girl or pupil of the eye. Various languages have different names and expressions for it. In lieu of the absence and the privations/frustrations of the part-other and of the illusions of primal hallucinatory wishful thinking, the child discovers the specular image. But for the child to discover the specular image, the mother has to give off her part-object arid accept the lack and the void thereof so that the child may enjoy her breast and the object in the image. The relative failures of the mother's parting with, mourning and giving up of the object will hinder the child's ability to stabilise the ambivalence towards the part-object in the specular image. In this case the specular image may acquire an increased persecutory quality tinged with depressive feelings of not being good enough to match the esteem and value that the objet & has in the mother's eyes. The relations between mother, child and objet a are illustrated in the following example. A client of a supervisee of mine, who was responsible for raising her two grandchildren, was allegedly concerned that the children were fighting over who was the grandmother's favourite. To reassure them, she said: "I have a little key

22

LACANIAN THEORY

next to my heart which you can use to open it any time you want to know how much love there is in my heart for either one of you." In this vignette, the "little key" stands for the key objet a of the mother's desire which the mother is lending to the children for their use. The heart represents the part-other or the breast whereas love is the intangible jouissance of the Other. In addition, if the grandmother gave the children an actual key to remember her by, then the key would become a transitional object between the internal objet a and the external other. The objet a, as the core of the specular image, has the positive function of libidinising, energising, and animating the body image with the jouissance (pleasure/pain) of the body and the part-object. In this sense, the ego is closely linked to the partial object that was involved in the experience of satisfaction, and that later will function as the object of the sexual drive. Here Lacan follows Freud (1920) who, in his final theory of drives, put the ego and sexuality under the umbrella of the life drive. Psychoanalysis shows how the sexual drive in human beings is closely linked to fantasy elements and representations of both ego and object. The sexual drive is intrinsically tied to the problem of narcissism. In normal development sexual satisfaction involves the ego, although the sexes later on, in the phallic phase, become differentiated by virtue of a differential relationship to the ego in the phallic function. Feminine sexual jouissance, represents the hole in the image, which, as minus-phi, functions as a vanishing point for the ego, whereas masculine phallic jouissance holds on to the totality of the image as a reinforcement of the ego. A container or a box with a hole in it represents the image of the body of the mother (with hole) that contains the images of the ego/ child, with the consequent vanishing of her own image. In addition, a container is also as metaphor for a feininine jouissance that contains phallic jouissance and something beyond phallic jouissance. The experience of satisfaction produced in the process of the mother satisfying the biological needs of the child results in the laying down of the first partial registrations of the maternal other. The partial object is at once a psychical registration of the external mother (the part-other) and a psychical representative of an internal bodily and biological experience of satisfaction. But the psychical representative is differentiated from the psychical registration because it acquires a degree of internal independence from the external agency

FORMS AND TRANSFORMATIONS OF NARCISSISM

23

of the other. The psychical representative becomes the infant's own object which will be used to satisfy psychical desires beyond the satisfaction of biological, needs. The child identifies with the object and moulds the registration of the object to suit its own particular wishes. The other gives rise to wishing and then wishing proceeds to mould an internal fantasised representation of the object that from then on will mediate the relationship to the environmental other. But before the first partial object mediates the relationship to new others, it must first mediate the relationship to the specular image. The ego will draw from the reservoir of libido within the specular image to invest new others with the qualities of the first object. But it is the objet a as the core of the bodily image, which constitutes the libidinal reservoir of the ego. The ego as the bodily ego or specular image is libidinised by the object of the drive (objet a) and the specular image becomes, so to speak, a reservoir of light and libido. The stasis and stability of the specular image is like a dark figure in the mirror that retains and does not reflect any of the light that it receives. Then whatever lights the mirror projects onto the objects of the environment includes the shadow of the specular image as the visual and imaginary representations of the ego contained within the black box figure in the mirror. The shado\y of the ego has fallen upon the object. The shadow or dark image of the ego includes all the libidinal cathexis of the pre-specular part-objects associated with the experience of satisfaction as a prototype of what later will become the sexual drive. Thus, the first ego is an object of the drive for both mother and child. These relations can be represented as a two faced egostructure: the specular image as objet a of the child and the child as objet a of the mother. The absence of a part of the mother (breast), which is carried into the objet a as the registration of the object qua absentia and in absentia, is also continued into the mirror phase where the objet a, as the index of a void, is also absent from the image. The objet a, as an absence, can be visually represented in the image in the mirror with the metaphor of a blank spot or hole within the image. This hole or blank spot will represent the objet a that is missing in the ego and that the ego will look for in the other. In other words, the ego will continue to live in the shadow of the absence of the object, as Freud put it. It is the hole in the image of narcissism that guarantees a continuing

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relationship to the other, qua object, and that the ideal of ego of narcissism will have to be replaced by symbolic identifications. The ego cannot fill the absence of the object. The objet a is absent from the specular image. In this sense, the necessary negative function of the a is like the empty core or cavity which holds the pit of a peach. To eat a peach or to make a peach perform its function for the subject, the pit must be taken out and discarded. The void of the a is meant to remain empty like a mirror which can reflect back all the light and images it receives. This potential emptiness of the mirror will only be realised with the introduction of the Big O of the symbolic Other. Lacan identified the Other with the emptiness of the mirror. The child cannot be the "be all and end all" of the mother, otherwise this would be truly "pit-tiful" (the neologism pit-full) and a sign of the failure of the mother to separate from her intrapsychic~(ob/e£ a) and extrapsychic object (child). If the a does not remain empty within the specular image, and instead becomes identical to it, then the specular image becomes the equivalent of a black pit that cannot be swallowed. The negative function of the a generates an absence and a translucency within the specular image that, on the one hand, prepares the mind for the symbolic function, and on the other, introduces a dialectical uncertainty unto the certainty of the image. The uncertainty of the image takes the form of the question: "Is the ideal ego or the specular image really the a of the mother?" Since the specular image is only a semblance of the a, and the a is not in it or is in it as a hole, the specular image is haunted by a doubt and an uncertainty—am I the a, cause of the mother's desire? This leads to the negation—it is not I. The ideal image is an alter ego, identity as an image is necessarily untrue or different. This question will lead to the projection of the a unto a new other in the sense of a peer of the ego. Via projective identification the peer will be identified as the holder of the love object. As such the other will become the double of the ego, the alter ego and the ego's other half that will be sought in the love-object. The other becomes an object of desire via the projection of the objet a that has been found to be missing in the specular image. Thus, at this point the metamorphosis of the object of desire has undergone three phases: from partial object to specular image and from specular image to a new other as a love

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object. Perhaps more than phases, these may be three structural faces of the objet a. Later on, upon entry into the Symbolic, and the discovery of sexual difference, the object a will assume its phallic and genital function as an object of the sexual drive proper. In the adult, the partial object representation will survive in the function of thought as a phantasised internal representation of the image of the object. Although later on the image of the other reflected in the internal mirror of the mind may be a total image, the actual enjoyment of the body of the other will be specific to parts and areas of the body. In addition, the narcissistic function of the total image of the other in the mirror of the mind is reflected in the alter ego quality of the reflection. The image of the other in the mirror of the mind stands for the double of the ego or the ego's other half that is found missing from the specular image. Lacan also associated the ego with sibling rivalry and envy, where the other seen or recognised as a brother and a like-minded member of the same species, is seen/perceived as capable of displacing and occupying the very place that the ego holds vis-a-vis the mother. Here the image will be hated for not being the a and the alter ego will be equally loved and hated for allegedly being the a. Just like the ambivalence towards the breast will be resolved in the specular image, the ambivalence towards the specular image will be resolved in the figure of the other, and eventually the ambivalence towards the other/sibling will be resolved in relationship to the father, and so on. Finally, it is important to emphasise that the ambivalence towards -the image is not necessarily due to the absence of good enough mothering or lack of mirroring on the part of the mother. It all depends on how good-enough mothering is defined. Usually people think of it as the common-sense experience of being cared and loved by the mother. But as I have mentioned elsewhere, good-enough mothering is a complex function composed of the imaginary and symbolic mother. The imaginary mother desires the child as an object whereas the symbolic mother desires the child as a subject. The desire for the child as an object has to first be installed and then abandoned. What regulates this is the presence/absence of the objet a. The ambivalence towards the specular image is the consequence of a necessary separation and lack of fit between the objet & of the mother and the specular image as the total body of the child.

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Contrary to this, the mother of the psychotic, for example, has not been able to let go of the objet a and therefore function as a symbolic mother. The child remains in the position of the object of the mother's desire and cannot gain access to a unified body-image. If the mother has no lack because she is completely satisfied by the child as her own product, then the child cannot have access to its own image separate from the mother. The child's body remains in parts and pieces, fragmented and without sufficient coordination. If the specular image is established as a unified image then this means that at least there has been movement in the direction of the father and the Symbolic. However, once the specular image is established the image cannot but reflect the alternation of presence and absence of the objet a. Just like the objet a needed to be absent in the mother in order for the image to be installed in the child, now the objet a will need to be present but also absent from the image itself. It is the absence of the objet a from the image that prevents the child from being totally captivated by and fixated to the image. However, the price paid for the release from the tyranny and alienation of the Imaginary is the normal feeling of dislike for a lack, defect or hole within the image. It is the latter that propels the subject towards the other of his/her peers and the Other of the father and the Symbolic. The introduction of a part or a piece missing within the image allows for the symbolisation of the image. In turn, the symbolisation of the image permits those positive and negative emotional charges to coexist in relationship to the totality of the image. Without this, the subject will fluctuate between being completely alienated within a narcissistic identification with the image as the object of the mother's desire, or will have only partial access to an otherwise hated body image. The emotional ambivalence towards the mother/breast is inevitable and necessary for separation to take place and is an integral aspect of the presence and absence of the objet a. This phenomenon falls under what Freud describes as the imbrication of the drives. I define imbrication as the layering or knotting/knitting of the same with the different: love with hate, presence with absence, appearance with disappearance, subject with object, life with death, union with separation, connection or attachment with disconnection and detachment, construction with destruction. The ambivalence towards the breast is stabilised in the specular image. It is the absence and

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the hate or the infant raging at the breast that pushes the ego as object to attach to the specular image. The infant rages also disrupt the stability of the mother's own narcissism and this will also be conducive to the mother co-constructing a self-image for the child that will soothe and provide an alternative to the .mother. The child dropping the mother as a and the mother dropping the child as a will culminate in the establishment of the specular image. When the a is not dropped or separated in a symbolic sense, then this could result in a concrete violent fall of the child. Hate or anger function as a sign of the disappearance of the object but in such a way that the attachment to the object is included in its absence. But the stabilisation of the ambivalence towards the k in the specular image is only temporary. The specular image will also become ambivalent, indicating the presence and absence of the a in the image, and therefore the ambivalence towards the specular image will have to be abandoned and resolved in the direction of the other/Other. A fixation to the'ideal ego, as a temporary and changing phase appropriate figure of the objet a, preserves the intense emotional ambivalence towards the body/self image. This state of affairs represents the conditions faced by severe character disorders. Given that the like and dislike for the image are not symbolically articulated, the image isNeither totally loved or totally hated. This condition matches or reflects the disavowal rather than foreclosure of the name of the father. If the name of the father was foreclosed rather than disavowed, then the specular image would not exist or at least function for the subject. Given that the mother alternates between avowing and disavowing the name of the father> the subject repeats the same alternation towards the specular image. Given that the lack in the mother and the father is disavowed rather than symbolised, the child cannot symbolise the lack in the specular image. What helps accept the lack within the image and tolerate ambivalent feelings towards it is the symbolisation of the lack and the ratification of the image by the gaze and name of the father. The ideal ego will live on in the next phase-appropriate figure of the ego ideal. This is something that the character disordered subject has not been able to do. Consider the case of a patient who complained both of not having an identity and of hating his father's name. In rejection and disavowal

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of the name of his father, he adopted a name that in Spanish means "no land". The patient did not respect his father because, in his opinion, the father was completely dominated by the patient's mother and paternal grandmother. This patient met the criteria for a severe character disorder: he had transient psychotic symptoms during periods of stress, experienced confusion regarding his cultural and sexual identity, and an inability to tolerate social situations and maintain social relationships. He could not experience love towards parents or people in general. The patient felt and appeared cold and aloof. In addition, he complained of not knowing how to approach people and of not knowing how to speak. He reported leaving his country in order not to be around his family, whom he hated. He also hated Spaniards for exerting cultural and political dominion over Catalonia, and refused to speak Spanish after the age of 18. The patient associated his social withdrawal and not knowing how to speak with people to his mother imposing silence at home. He called it a curfew, like the one Spaniards would also impose on Catalonians. The patient stopped being brilliant in school when his mother stopped being perfect in his eyes. Since the mother had said that he was as perfect as she was, her perceived lack of perfection had a direct impact on his functioning despite the fact that at times he still continued to think that he was perfect. This is an example of how the patient functioned as the mother's object or imaginary phallus. He was perfect because she was perfect and vice versa. Her son was treated as an objectified reflection of her own perfection because she could not accept the lack or absence of her objects. Her son could not be a subject that could want anything other than her. Given that patient's self-image was identical with the mother's imaginary phallus, he could not have access to his own image independently from the mother. Thus, his own image had to be rejected because he and his mother had disavowed the symbolic castration of the mother/son symbiosis by the name of the father. In addition, his paternal grandmother liked to kiss him because he looked like his grandfather and his mother would like to peek through the keyhole and come into the bathroom to rub his back and touch his genitals. Nevertheless, despite his feelings of perfection and the attention and jouissance of his mother and grandmother, the patient intensively disliked himself and his body, particularly in

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relationship to women. On the other hand, the father was not entirely foreclosed, because although dominated by the mother, he was not absent from the family or from Oedipal structure. In another related memory, the patient came to his parents7 bedroom while they were having sex. He knocked on the door anyway, and his mother told him not to come in. The patient went into the room despite the "no" while his father hid under the covers. The ego-ideal and the field of language The difference from the other begins to be established, towards the end of the mirror phase with the articulation of the ideal ego and the alter ego in the field of the Other, the father and language. The ego and the other as the alter ego become subjects and signifiers within language. The relationship between subjects takes place along the axis of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. In the imaginary axis the following aforementioned relations exist: 1. between the objet a and the ego; 2. between the ego and the specular image; and 3. between the specular image and the alter ego. Then within the Symbolic, the imaginary relation is articulated in the context of a symbolic relation between the subject and the Other represented by the father and language. The recognition of the whole mother coincides with the beginning of recognition of the father. As the specular image was linked to the recognition of the mother and her desire, the ego ideal is linked to the recognition of the father and his desire. The core of the a which is not in the specular image, and which is represented as a blank spot, something missing or a hole in the image, eventually leads the child to turn around to seek the recognition and the gaze of the father. The child becomes a subject observed by the father. Around the time of the specular image, where the appearance and disappearance of the partial object comes to be related to the appearance and disappearance of the total image in the mirror, the child can distinguish phonemes that are sounds that affect the meaning of a word, Phonemes are basic sounds and units of language upon the combination of which all languages are built. Freud (1920) made the by now legendary observation of his grandson uttering the German words f(0)rt to represent the disappearance of mother and toy (and I would include the image in the mirror), and d(A) when

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the mother and the toy (and the image) reappeared. O and A are the two phonemes operating within the words "fort" and "da". At the age of Freud's grandson, the sound and articulation of phonemes within words overshadow the logical and grammatical significance of words as a higher unit level of the signifier. Thus, it could be argued that phonemes are associated with the mother's voice and the objet a cause of her desire. The combination of phonemes into words and sentences are linked instead to the recognition of the father, the name of the father and the articulation of the subject in the field of language (the Other). Lacan establishes equivalence between the Freudian concept of representation and the linguistic concept of the signifier. The concept of representation in psychoanalysis refers to drive representations, object representations, and ego representations. Within linguistics, signifiers are units of signification such as phonemes, words, and sentences. I have already spoken of the polyvalent meaning of the objet a as object of the drive, partial-object representation of the mother and as the nucleus of the ego-representation (specular image). The appearance of the father on the scene, and of the phallus as partobject representation of the father, coincides with the increasing cognitive capacity for linguistic forms and metaphoric representation. So if the phonemic aspect of the signifier is linked to the vicissitudes of the objet a and the mother's desire, then words and sentences, as higher units of signification, would be linked to grammar rules and to the name of the father as a phallic signifier of the mother's desire. The word "phallus" in Sanskrit is ligga and it means both phallus and signifier. Both the phallus and the signifier are what link or join (liga in Spanish) different bodies or signifying elements. The increasing significance of words, sentences and the laws of language, are co-extensive with the growing realisation of the phallic significance of the objet a and the impending effect of Oedipal structure upon the subject. This process will culminate in what Lacan calls the paternal metaphor, which is described below. The father provides a symbolic ratification of the image and, at the same time, the capacity to represent objects and ideas in linguistic forms brings profound changes in perception. The identification with the will and desire of the father will bring desire and the ideal ego into a relationship with the law. The father says, "Make me proud, do what I say and as I say, not because I say so but because it is your

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desire/' Just as the child identified with the objet k in answering the question "What does the mother want from me?", the child identifies with the father in fulfilment of the father's will and desire for the law. Thus, Freud's (1900) concept of wish fulfilment also has an ethical dimension. As Harari (1993) has pointed out, wish fulfilment, in the sense of fulfilling the father's wishes, signifies the fulfilment of an ethical obligation that has the function of binding desire to the law. According to Lacan (1960) the internalisation of the father's will takes the form of an inscription of what he calls a. unary trace that symbolically represents both the name and gaze of the father. In this sense, the child is always observed by an omnipresent and everpresent gaze of the father as a sign of love. The love, gaze, and name of the father are established as central features of the ego ideal that will regulate the subject's relation to itself via the mediation of language. The gaze and words of the father come to represent the objet h that is not in the specular image of the ideal ego. The contours of the hole at the core of the specular image will be written with the words of the father. The linguistic signifier comes to represent what is not in the image. Finally, the identification with symbolic laws enables the subject e grieved by both sexes, whether because of having it and then losing it or due to not having it to begin with. The gaze and words/name of the father come to represent the objet a that is not in the specular image of the ideal ego. The contours of the hole at the core of the specular image will be written with the words of the father. The ,linguistic signifier comes to represent what is not in the image. Finally, the identification with symbolic laws enables the subject to become free of the captivity of the imaginary and the narcissism of the ideal ego and of having to seek for the object in the imaginary field. When the hole at the core of the specular image is not symbolically written or inscribed with the words/name of the father, then it will literally be written/engraved on the flesh in the form of skin marks or in the form of concrete cutting, tattooing or body piercing. The latter is a characteristic of present day character disorders. Depression in Hysteria and Obsessional Neurosis Hysteria defends against the structural symbolic loss/lack of the Other and of the object that takes place during the phallic phase by parading the imaginary phallus as a title or as a special and unique mark or signifier. As Dor (1999) has pointed out, the hysteric has the subjective feeling of not having been loved enough. The hysteric often experiences himself/herself as not having been loved enough by the other, or as not having been privileged enough by the mother. In this way the hysteric remains dependent on the recognition and love or adoration of the other. They subordinate their desire to what they suppose or imagine to be the desire of the other. The

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dependence of fhe hysteric is on the master whether as object or self/ object. Master here means a ruling signifier, a dominant man but not necessarily a male, because a dominant man could also be a female. In this regard, Lacan defined fhe existential question of hysteria in terms of fhe question: "Am I a man or a woman?" Because the hysteric interprets symbolic castration, under the father and fhe law of culture, as an imaginary form of castration, he remains prone to depression. Since fhe desiring and lacking gaze and recognition of the other regulates the hysteric's self-esteem and selfworth, if the other does not desire or fear them they then experience a sense of loss and depression. Hysterics want to experience themselves as either having the master signifier of desire or as being loved, desired, and/or missed by the perceived master. If they are no longer desired by the master or if the master is no longer perceived as a master, then this will generate feelings of loss and depression in the hysterical structure. Moreover, since, as Lacan put it, "the hysteric wants a master to rule over", the structure is necessarily unstable because it produces failure and depression as a necessary consequence. If the master rules, the hysteric has found a master, but they themselves cannot rule. If the master becomes their slave, by the many private and public strategies that hysterics have at their disposal, then the hysteric also fails, because their desire for a master signifier or an ideal Other is not realised., The obsessive in turn fantasises that they were deprived not of the object but of the loss of the phallic object by being special to the mother or father and defeating the rival. The alternating retentive and expulsive, defiant and compliant traits also reinforce fhe sense of triumph associated with the anal phase. Therefore, he/she feels they need to pay with remorse, guilt, inhibition, and an inability to express self. The obsessive struggles to dethrone and reinstate the rival, both of which trigger feelings of remorse and regret that are coextensive with depression. The obsessive also cannot place demands or express desires and feelings. In contrast to the hysteric, the obsessional has the opposite subjective feeling of having been spoiled and loved too much. Unlike the hysteric, fhe obsessional feels that his/her mother loved him/her too much but without disavowing of foreclosing the name of the

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father. As a child, the obsessional was typically his/her mother's favourite. This spoiling of the obsessional leads to an increased sexualisation of the object, as seen in hedonistic and masturbatory obsessions, while at the same time the obsessional remains highly inhibited with regards to the object and his/her own desire. It is the difficulty with formulating a demand to the other that leaves the obsessional isolated within the circle of the obsession and prone to depressive feelings. The tension between the increased sexualisation and the encounter with the prohibition of incest and the fear of castration causes a regression to issues of compliance and defiance typical of the anal phase. The obsessional has lost the phallus that the mother had given him, and spends his time trying to best the imaginary father and the super ego in intellectual terms. The common observation that a depressed subject is very "needy" needs to be differentially understood according to the type of neurotic structure. The hysteric will place aggressive oral demands on the other, whereas the obsessional will be obsessed with his/her desires but express them in a much more passive and intellectual manner. The obsessive has desire but cannot demand and does not tolerate desire in the other. Depression as a symptom across structures shares with the obsessional the inhibition of desire in self and other that leads to the death of desire and to a general loss of life and vitality. The search for a desire without lack and without castration threatens to extinguish life and desire for the obsessive. Although, for the most part, the obsessional does not commit suicide, the depressed patient and the obsessive are an example of the living dead, or of those, while alive, living within a pure culture of death. Thus, Lacan defined the existential question of obsessional neurosis in terms of the question: "Am I alive or dead?" Finally, aggressive defiance, via the mediation of the super-ego, in both hysterics and obsessives generates depression. In the hysteric the fulfilment of the wish to defeat the master, via public humiliation, for example, leads first to elation and then to depression. In the obsessive, defeating the master by being more perfect that he/ she is leads to the same result. If the master rules either the hysteric or obsessive, the super-ego humiliates their ego. If the master is defeated by each of their unique strategies, then the super-ego will

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extract punishment and not allow them to enjoy their advantage. This is a no-win situation resulting from a win-win neurotic strategy. The only way to win is to first lose, and grieve, by accepting and processing the loss, If a neurotic structure suffers an accidental loss/death of the master, then the structural loss will be quantitatively and qualitatively aggravated. First, because death is perceived as worse than defeat (the opposite may be true for the master), and second because the unconscious crime and guilt over the killing of the master is qualitatively more serious than his/her defeat and humiliation. Depression in the Borderline Character Temperament can be considered the genetic/biological and emotional basis of character. Temperament is either reactive/ impulsive, or calm, even-tempered, and responsive. The first is related to aggressivity and sexuality, the second to homeostatic selfregulation prior to the existence of the ego. Conventional or common speech uses the word character in antithetical ways. Somebody can either be quite a character or have character. Lacan uses the categories of being and having in order to distinguish different phases of Oedipal structure and different types of phallic puissance. I will use them to distinguish two types of character organisation that also correlate with different forms of cultural organisation: traditional and modern character versus the character of late modernity and postmodernism. To be a character represents or emphasises being different with regards to convention. Oedipally, being a character signifies being the imaginary phallus of the mother's desire and holding on to the object of her desire instead of losing it and turning toward the father and the social other. A character can be irrepressible and charming, whereas somebody who has character is either welldisciplined/restrained or is downright repressed. Having a character falls under the category of imaginary castration within the second phase of Oedipus. To have character represents being able to do without the imaginary phallus that only the imaginary father is allowed to possess. The notion of having character is consistent with Fenichers (1945) classification of character into sublimatory and reactive types. The sublimatory character is like an old wine that over time and under

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the right conditions acquires a unique characteristic. A mature wine that has character symbolises the Freudian and ego psychological notion of a realistic ego or ego ideal as a relatively harmonious combination of nature and culture, the id and the ego ideal. The sublimatory character is able to enjoy phallic puissance as well an Other puissance beyond the phallus. To enjoy phallic puissance requires acceptance of symbolic castration and having passed to the third phase of Oedipus and beyond. Acceptance of symbolic castration involves recognising not the only the lack in the subject but also in the Other (the father as a sigriifier of a lack and the mother as lacking a signifier). The reactive character represents a neurotic moral character characterised by inhibitions, anxiety, and depression, as well as rigid boundaries between self and other. To have a social character, a persona or social mask means to be divided with regards to one's own being. In this sense, to have a character whatsoever means to be neurotic. Traditional hysterical and obsessive structures with or without diagnosable symptoms of anxiety or depression would fall under the category of a reactive character and the category of neurosis. For some only those with blatant ego-dystonic clinical symptoms would qualify as a neurosis in a strict sense. However, both the sublimatory and the traditional reactive moral character could be and are considered normal in society. In the United States, for example, a liberal Democrat would be an example of the first, a conservative Republican, exemplifying the second. In the UK, the distinction would be between the Labour party type and the Conservatives. What I am calling being a character needs to be differentiated from the sublimatory type within the traditional character structure. Being a character falls more under the category of the eccentric, the odd, and the unconventional. The sublimatory character has access to the unconscious primary process, to desire, and to the id, but is also able to control it. The sublimatory character has permeable boundaries, whereas someone who is a character may suffer from lack of boundaries. In contrast to the reactive character, being a character includes conscious and unconscious experience, the presence of being and the lack of being, but in contrast to the sublimatory character, the lack of being and the unconscious are not consciously symbolised.

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A character or a personality is composed of biological/genetic, psychical or mental factors, and social-cultural-spiritual factors. Different types of personality are given by varying combinations of all these factors. For example, having a reactive character describes the personality and neurotic pathology of traditional religious culture and early secular modernity, whereas what I am calling being a character describes the pathology of late modernity and postmodernism. Beyond the distinctions between traditional culture, modernity, and postmodernity, cultures in general tend to oscillate between asceticism and hedonism. The former represents having a character, the latter being a character. In terms of family structure, the former are patriarchal or father-centred, the latter are matriarchal or mother-centred. Both can be problematic for different reasons. The ideal-ego is the first basis of social character. Bodily identity is derived from the maternal object of the drive and of desire, and the body image is a site of interaction and intersubjectivity with siblings and peers. Often the ideal-ego and the alter ego are related to intense feelings and bodily sensations. But it is the ego ideal that represents culture and the social Other via the mediation of the father. It is the love of the father and for the father that is transferred unto a love of social ideals. The traditional character has internalised and identified with the will, voice, and gaze of the father, and suffers under the tyranny and neurosis of the imaginary father. Because the borderline character suffers from a lack of boundaries, the borderline character is often found at the border between neurosis, psychoses, and perversions. The borderline character has acquired a specular image, but remains fixated to the image and has not symbolised its surfaces, orifices, and defects or imperfections. The access to the name of the father that helps symbolise the boundaries and borders of the body has been compromised or disavowed' and therefore the borderline remains fixated at lower levels of development. Clinical Vignettes EXAMPLE # 1: N E W HYSTERIA OR BORDERLINE C O N D I T I O N ?

In this section I will attempt to establish some criteria to differentiate between a severe symptomatic form of hysteria and the borderline

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character. The acting out in the borderline personality is more akin to perversion than to neurosis (drug addictions and various sexual behaviours, for example), although the phantasies that are acted out are more similar to hysteria than to perversion. In traditional hysteria, bisexuality is more unconscious rather than the conscious behavioural sexual identity diffusion seen in the borderline condition. In addition, in classical hysteria acting out often required dissociation, which is not the case in the borderline personality. Finally, the cutting behaviour and body piercing typical of the borderline conditions seems like a new form of encroachment of perverse sadomasochistic behaviour, in the form of an "acting on the body", in contrast to the classical "speaking with the body" observed in hysteria. But is there a structural feature that warrants a fourth category (borderline character) beyond that of neurosis, psychoses, and perversion? The fourth category of the borderline condition precisely manifests at the intersecting borders of each form of psychopathology, but has one characteristic structural feature. Following Lacanian theory, I postulate that the borderline character is characterised by the presence of the objet a in the specular or ideal body image/ego (presence of a in i). Hysteria and neurosis and perversion in general, are differentiated from the borderline condition by the absence of the objet a from the specular or ideal body image/ego. In perversion there is a regressive fixation to the absence of this partial object, whereas neurosis moves on to weave the a to a dialectic with the imaginary phallus under the^ symbolic function of the castration complex. The borderline needs to grieve the loss of the object that did not take place whereas the hysteric needs to grieve the loss of the imaginary phallus. Ultimately, it may be that what serves as a warrantor of normality and symbolic functioning is a retroactive dialectic between the symbolic phallus and the objet a. But this lies beyond the scope of this chapter. Now to the case example. A thirty-year-old patient presented all the typical symptoms of the borderline personality: self-cutting behaviour, difficulty controlling impulses to steal and use drugs, to have unprotected sex with males and females. Her life and identity were unstable. When she entered treatment, she was almost homeless. She had moved from one country to another more than once. She complained of depression and feelings of emptiness, with crying spells and symptoms of

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general anxiety and panic attacks. She disliked her body, although she was quite attractive and received constant attention from men. She occasionally prostituted herself with older men. She hated her country of origin and also hated the United States. She had trouble holding on to jobs, houses, and relationships. She perceived herself as stupid, and at the same time smarter than those around her. She was often aggressive towards strangers and friends alike. At the same time, she felt very bad about the downtrodden and wanted to help them. She had political ideals that were inconsistent with her behaviour. She did not have goals in life, but thought that maybe she wanted to study. She did not want to get married, but wanted to have a child. Sometimes she had nostalgia and envy for the traditional.and stable life of marriage and family but had difficulty holding on to relationships. She did not like men to try to control her, and she was commonly unfaithful in her relationships. At the same time she liked to be "fucked hard" and aggressively by very masculine males with big penises. She did not like men with small penises. She often dumped the males after having sex with them or once they developed tender feelings for her. She liked having sex with traditionally masculine men but did not like them for relationships. Her relationships had been with "weaker" or more feminine men that she initially thought were gay and that she eventually rejected. She could only develop love feelings towards men if she felt that they were not very interested in her. In her history she reported that her mother and biological father did not stay together and that her biological father rejected her. At the time of her pregnancy the mother was not interested in marriage or a relationship with the client's father, she simply wanted a child, and it did not matter so much who the father was. The mother remarried when the client was three and the client considers her stepfather as the father who loved and recognised her. The father was described as an intellectual who had polio, wore crutches, and was not around very much. Her mother was an alcoholic, who may have been unfaithful to her father, and the client feels as if her mother, who also disrespected her father, had not loved her enough. Her sister is beautiful but the client complains that the sister never loved her and always avoided her and her mother always preferred the sister who did not confront the mother with her alcohol abuse.

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Her mother told her that mother and sister had grown apart from the client because she was too aggressive and rebellious, and led an impulsive and unstable life. The client says that the father also told her to make a better life for herself but that she did not listen to him. The father died about five years ago and this was a cause of great grief for her. Her sister accuses her of not having taken care of their father when he was sick. The client also has a close relationship with her maternal grandmother whom she describes as very kind, traditionally feminine, and motherly. The client perceives these qualities as signifiers of weakness (imaginary castration) and feels loved by her grandmother but also has been abusive towards her and does not respect the kind of woman her grandmother is. In this case it is difficult to distinguish the conflict with abandonment as stemming from dynamics typical of the borderline personality from the dynamics of hysteria. Many questions can be asked. Are the fixations occurring in the early oral and mirror phase, or the phallic phase? Is the fear of abandonment due to not having abandoned the a in the i, or due to imaginary castration (the experience of not having the received the object of love)? If the mother had not loved her, in a symbolic sense, as commonly believed by naive observers who lack theoretical constructs, we would expect a psychotic structure. And how is one to distinguish the ontological or phenomenal differences from the epistemological and ideological differences between frameworks and clinicians? Some clinicians don't like to address sexuality, or sexual differences associated with the phallic phase, the father, and the castration complex. They may prefer to conceptualise problems in terms of oral dependency needs vis-a-vis the mother. But if the phallic fixation is true, they may perform a service to the patient, on the one hand, but a disservice, on the other. The same could be argued the other way around, mutatis mutandis. The ideological preferences of clinicians may go a long way in explaining the popularity of the borderline diagnoses and how it has replaced that of hysteria. On the other hand, as aforementioned, there are clear differences between the borderline condition as a new postmoderm character disorder and hysteria as a traditional character structure. Some Lacanians in Europe call the borderline the new hysteria.

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But how do the oral dependency conflicts of the borderline differ from those of hysteria and psychosis? Let's say that the mother does desire the child and the father, but she happens to be unavailable or neglectful due to an illness, be it depression or alcoholism, how would this be different from the hysteric's phantasised experience of not having felt loved enough by the mother? In female hysteria this experience is mediated by a phantasy, namely that the mother did not give them the imaginary phallus or did not equip them with what it takes to be a woman. In addition, the rejection is Oedipal in nature. The mother loved the father or the sibling instead of them. In the case of the client above, she complains of being alone and abandoned but it is not at all clear what came first, maternal abandonment or her aggressive rejection of her mother, or both in varying combinations. In addition, the letters from her mother show a mother who goes out of her way to tell her how much she loves her. The client dismisses this as false pretence to assuage the mother's own guilt feelings for her behaviour towards daughter. The mother often sends her money when in need. In addition, the client's mother seems to be very submissive towards daughter and in fear of her. It is possible that since her biological father did not want her, and her parents mutually rejected each other when she was born, that the daughter stayed in the position of the a of the mother for a longer and more extended period of time. The biological father and mother have different versions of what happened. The biological father told the client that her mother was in love with him but that he was not and that her mother wanted a child from him. The mother says she was not in love with him and only wanted a child from him. But then what happens to those subjects who are not faced with grieving the loss of the a in the i and are retarded in the development of a symbolic identification with the father? In the case of this client she remained in the position of the a of the mother until the mother married the stepfather. In the transference she does respond to my availability and presence and to my perceived lack of a sexual interest in her. When while in treatment she was able to develop a longer-lasting relationship with a man, who functioned as a stable father figure for her, she became disgusted by their sexual relation. She was also disgusted

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about having any kind of sexual thought towards me or discussing her sexuality with me. She could only discuss her sexuality as a challenge of me, or of society. She mostly came to appointments and left me messages in between sessions to voice her concerns when in crisis. She said she saw me as a father who will set limits and help her order her thinking and improve her judgment. At the same time she liked to mock me and make fun of that figure she has projected unto me. I took delight in interpreting both aspects of the father representation. . This client, who was not quite an analysand, due to not having taken responsibility for her symptoms, had a unified body image but she alternated between loving and hating her image. She spoke of her body image as ugly, and her mother as being beautiful, but when she showed me a picture of her mother, her mother did not seem very beautiful whereas she is quite beautiful indeed, and everybody thought so, especially men. She had not symbolised the lack in the image or the lack in the mother or the father. Thus she used and was ambivalently aware of her sex appeal with men but at the same time saw her body in toto as defective. She also saw her husband as ugly and disgusting although initially she described him as a great lover who could make her have an orgasm. After I linked her own ambivalence towards her body, or her sense of her own lack, with her ambivalence towards his body, or her sense of his lack, this seemed to stabilise her relationship to him. The father was not present in the mother's speech, the father was absent, his crutches were perceived as imaginary castration and, therefore, his limits and boundaries were only partially internalised. She was always seeking her father, giving men an erection, and then killing them the same way the father died literally and symbolically. With me she sought a strong father that will set limits with her, and at the same time not succumb to her seduction, and end up lacking her, seeking her approval, or desiring to be loved by her. Instead the analyst had to respond with interpretations and at the same time help her symbolise the lack or limitations that she perceived in me, without resorting to either idealisation or devaluation. In the borderline condition being the a and the jouissance of the Other are presented as a formal challenge to the father (either/or logic) rather than being in a dialectical relationship to the same. The

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problem is not solely that she was not the a of the mother and was abandoned, but that she was the a and the a was not lost, grieved, and abandoned. However, in contrast to the pervert, the borderline is amenable to a relationship with the father, however ambivalent. Thus the behaviour of the borderline requires a modification in analytic technique to supplement the weak root of the name of the father in relationship to the objet a. This is consistent with Kerriberg's (1989) introduction of conditions and of an analytical contract in the treatment of the borderline condition. There are certain things the patient has to do for the analyst to be willing to enter into a therapeutic relationship with a borderline client. But the difference between the notion of an analytical contract with the borderline and the Lacanian perspective is twofold. First, within the Lacanian orientation these interventions are seen in relationship to the paternal function; and second, Lacan considers these interventions as strategies within the transference. Only if there is first transference to the subject supposed to know(ing) can these interventions work within an analytical relationship. In this case, for example, the sessions became conditional on her not stealing,. after she had been caught twice and sent to jail. In her mind, stealing was also linked to using cocaine, and prostituting herself. The idea of conditions for treatment also has some loose roots in Ferenczi's active technique where he applied the rule of abstinence to the analysand. There were certain actions of the analysand that needed to be curtailed in the service of undoing intrapsychic repression. I said "loose roots" because what we are referring to is acting out outside or in between sessions, rather than action or activity within sessions as was the case with Ferenczi's application of the rule of abstinence to the analysand. Finally, contrary to popular belief, the idea of the analytic contract, in the sense of the holding environment and the stability of schedules, may be counterproductive in the treatment of the borderline condition. Since the client is in the place of the objet a of the mother/ analyst as well as vice versa, maternal holding may be experienced as engulfing or seductive, and the client will not show to appointments. Sessions need to be taken on a one by one basis, and the client needs to be left with the responsibility and desire for a next session. This is particularly true in the public clinic where services are provided at low cost or no cost at all to the client with public entitlements.

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EXAMPLE #2: A CASE OF DEPRESSION A N D ORAL ABANDONMENT THEMES IN A HYSTERICAL STRUCTURE

A client, whose first and last name can be translated into "the one who sees into the loss of being", came into treatment complaining of depression. She met the DSMIV criteria for dysthymic disorder. This case is offered by way of example of three things: first, how what appears to be a simple depression is rooted in a hysterical subjective structure; second, of how what appears to be an anaclitic depression with oral dependency themes is actually rooted in later developmental phases; and thirdly, the importance of rectifying or refraining the presenting symptom at the onset or early phase of the treatment. When asked about her depression she complained of the experience of always being abandoned or left by others. Punning on her name, her symptom can be translated into "the other has caused a loss of being in me". Based on the relationship between the symbolic meaning of the proper name and the patronymic, in contrast to the manifest meaning of the presenting symptom, the analyst observed an inverse unconscious relation between the name and the symptom. The ego defences of the analysand transform active into passive: from an active act of seeing into the lack in the other into a passive act of being left by the other due to her own shortcomings or defects. The client herself at a different time stated that she "sees things in the other". However, by this she meant to express pride in her abilities as a "seer" rather than recognition of a character flaw of always looking for the defects and devaluing the other. She complained that her husband left her and how could he dare to do this, since after all he was the needy and weak one of the two. She was surprised and devastated when he left. He had been the one to adore and idealise her. He admired her way with words and her ability to communicate. She instead perceived him as incompetent and lacking in the use of language although she recognised that he was a good provider and that she very much enjoyed how well he treated her, esspecially financially. Having said this, she said that she brought a basket of communication to the marriage but that he brought nothing instead. The client was not aware when she said this that a food basket usually refers to the ability to provide for basic needs. She accused him of not bringing a basket when she herself

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recognised that he was a good provider and he in turn recognised her ability to communicate. Despite the little respect she had for him at the beginning and especially after he left her, she continued to use his last name (the name that means loss of being). She felt more secure using his name. So his name served as a stopgap for her own lack and at the same times the name and her husband signified the lack of being and of the Other. The client liked to think of her theme of abandonment by others as repeating a prior abandonment by her mother and father. This much had been told to her by her previous therapists. However, her relationship to her parents had the same kind of features as her relationship to her husband. The analysand stated that her mother did not love her and preferred her sister. But the next moment she proceeded to say that her mother thought she (the client) was the most beautiful of the girls and that her sister was not very attractive and was in fact very sickly throughout childhood. She of course does not say how much she challenged her mother or that her mother was not very attractive either, or that her father was very handsome and that she was her father's beautiful girl. All this came out later in the course of the analysis and led to a reformulation of her symptom of being abandoned. The reformulation of the patient's symptom of abandonment established by prior psychotherapy is consistent with what Svolos (2004) called, following Lacan, a rectification of the subject's relation to the symptom. Only by co-construction of a new psychoanalytic symptom or object (as Bion would call it), with the participation of both analyst and analysand, can the analysis proceed to a second phase of working through fundamental phantasies, and then to termination under the co-direction of the unconscious and the desire of the analyst, in the strict Lacanian sense of the term. In the case of this analysand, the fears or feelings of abandonment are part of a phantasy of abandonment by her father. The alleged abandonment constitutes an actual Oedipal rejection. Because of the incest prohibition she could not have the father (due to the incest prohibition). Despite the client's own Oedipal challenges, it is the mother who receives the paternal phallus and not the daughter. If anything the client succeeded too much in Oedipus and then spent her life working to lose.

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A memory and a dream reported by the client provided strong evidence to this effect. Her sister once dressed her up in one of her mother's beautiful dresses and had her show up to the door of their house. The client looked so much like a beautiful grown-up woman that her mother mistook her for her father's alleged "other woman". The client reported this memory in a naive and innocent way but without comprehending its meaning. In contrast to this, in other instances the client was very willing, able, and ready to interpret her experience and her dreams in terms of her abandonment script. Finally, in her dream she dreamed that it was very clear that she was supposed to have a child with her father. This example shows how much a pre-Oedipal interpretation of subjectivity fits well with the ego's conscious level of comprehension. The ego wants to know and receive from the other what their defences know all too well. The analyst has to ignore both the knowledge of the patient's ego as well as his/her own common-sense understanding. Instead, the analyst listens for the words of the Other that the patient seems to ignore. With pre-packaged knowledge the analyst can only give back to the analysand what she already knows. But what she already knows is equivocal. What her ego knows only seems to make matters worse: it reinforces her abandonment destiny. In truth the analyst can only give her back what she already knows (unconscious knowing) but does not know that she knows. It is the patient's ego-speech that has to be abandoned so that the analysand can put a stop to her masochistic symptom and jouissance (suffering) of being abandoned in relationships. This requires an empathy with the words of the unconscious Other or the subject rather th^n the ego. But such empathy may not be experienced as very empathic with the conscious ego defences of the analysand. Analysis may be tough and bitter medicine but is not sadomasochistic. I say this because Lacanian clinical practice is often critiqued as being too punitive. By comparison, the maternal function of the analyst in the other schools of analysis seeks to contain and repair the losses that the analysand appears to have sustained within the context of their childhood environment. The analyst says to the analysand: "Yes, you have been abandoned, and I will not abandon you." But this at best can only represent a white lie or necessary fiction because the analyst

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will have to abandon the patient for there to be an end to the analysis. Otherwise the patient grows too dependent on the analyst and the analysis will never end. EXAMPLE #3: MAJOR DEPRESSION A N D THE HYSTERICAL STRUCTURE IN A LESBIAN FEMALE

The third example corresponds to the first vignette given in Clinical Interlude II of the chapter on sexuation. This vignette serves to illustrate the interaction between a chronic DSMIV major depression and the functioning of the hysterical structure within a lesbian female. In this context I offered a postmodern perspective on the use of a Lacanian or postmodern psychoanalytic framework in the treatment of homosexual neurotic structures. In her treatment this client had to grieve three things: the lack of separation from the mother; the lack of the imaginary phallus; and the death of the father whom she loved. Her depression improved when she could reconcile the loss of the imaginary phallus with the possibility of retaining a masculine identification but as a female. Then she could not only accept symbolic castration but also recover her capacity to enjoy her feminine female partner. It was her idealisation of masculinity that leads her to devaluate and lose her interest in her partner, whom she saw either as representing a rejected femininity or as not very masculine. Her chronic depression also improved when I confronted her with the reality of her mother's death and that after her death she could incorporate her into herself. She could not tolerate the thought of the mother dying. She would prefer dying first or to die when she died. However, what stopped her from this thought was the belief that if she committed suicide she would go to hell and not be reunited with her mother at the time of death. I emphasised that she would survive the mother's death. She said that all her siblings are too attached to her mother. All her siblings still feel compelled to speak with her every day. The mother is the family's heroine. She was very loving with her children. The father did not represent the law in the family and did not facilitate the necessary separation of the children from the mother and vice versa. The mother was the one that represented, for example, the expectation that the children finish high school. The client had a lot of remorse over lying to the mother that she

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completed high school when she had not. The father was absent in this regard. Father was an alcoholic and had many affairs. He was insecure in relation to the mother because she was white and very beautiful whereas he was dark-skinned and not very attractive. He always felt insecure of the mother's love for him. Both of the client's brothers were addicted to heroin. Conclusion: the resolution of mourning the loss of the object

Using his theory of the different phases of development, Freud attempted to explain the existence of different types of depression. He tried to understand the heterogeneity of depression, in terms of the unity of different forms of grief that take place in different phases of development in relationship to permutations of a partial object. In contrast to Blatt and others who sever the link between two forms of depression and between the oral and phallic phases of development, I link these two forms of depression to the ideal ego and the ego ideal respectively. In addition, following Lacan, depression can also be precipitated by the absence of phase-appropriate loss and separation rather than simply by a forced loss of the object and separation from the other. Depression is not given by forced separation from the mother or father nor is it overcome by identification with the father or mother. Both sexes need to grieve and accept the loss of a partial object in different registers. It is this loss, and the grief thereof, that inscribe the subject unto a social symbolic order. Positive self-esteem is founded on the child being the objet a of the mother and not being the objet a at the same time. Being the object leads to acquiring a stable body image, while not being the object prevents narcissistic fixation from taking place and moves the child in the direction of the father and the Symbolic. Positive self-esteem will be further reinforced by the love of the father and of ideals and by being or having the phallus, whether as subject or object. But the absence of the phallus, under the phallic function of castration, will promote structural change and prevent the stagnation, fixation, and domination under the patriarchal master's discourse. The absence of the phallic function of symbolic castration, whether in subjective experience or at the level of the theory, far from liberating the subject from patriarchal discourse fixates the subject to imaginary

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permutations of the master's discourse under the guise and banner of liberation. Defences against phase-appropriate loss and separation contribute to the development of depression. Defence against loss in the mirror phase produces fixation to a narcissistic character, defence against the loss of symbolic castration produces regression to the oral phase in hysteria, and the anal phase in obsessional neurosis. Defences against the loss of the breast or the absolute absence of the breast play a role in the development of schizophrenia and paranoid difficulties with establishing a specular image. Finally, accidental losses may condition depression for several reasons: 1) if the grief is denied; 2) if it prevents necessary losses/separations from taking place; 3) if a developmental loss is aggravated beyond the normal. The mourning of structural developmental losses shares the same structure with that of mourning the death or loss of a loved one. It is "normal" grief during the phases of development that prepares the subject for the accidental or eventual death of the object or of the subject. However, Freud and Melanie Klein had opposing views with respect to the resolution of mourning. Freud believed that the object cathexis of the lost object needed to be destroyed before new cathexes and relationships could be established. Klein instead insisted that the object cathexis needed to be preserved in order for new relationships to become possible. The love of the object prevails over the hate and the object is preserved as an inner good object. I believe that the views of Freud and Klein are reconciled with the help of the work of Abraham and Torok (1980). They distinguish between two ways of internalising a lost object: incorporation and introjection. In introjection the object is assimilated into the ego as a good object or an objet a of the subject. After my father's death and for about six months I distinctly could both see and feel a piece of his face arid gaze inside the bodily location of my heart. The feeling of this "piece" was very warm and peaceful. This is an example of a negative dialectic between the originally maternal objet a in the Real of being and the body and the symbolic function of the dead father. Non-being or the loss of being, produced by the absence of the objet h, in dialectic with the symbolic father, becomes the basis for true being. In contrast to this, in incorporation the object is internalised but as a persecutory, toxic, and critical bad object that remains ego-

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dystonic to the subject yet inside rather than outside the mind. This is the object cathexis that needs to be destroyed in Freud's view. An example of this would be the self-criticism and negative thinking experienced in depression. This is the work of mourning and of super-ego and Oedipal deconstruction and transformation that I had to do in my own analysis before I could possibly introject a piece of my father's gaze and true face upon his death. Now he is always with me but as a piece of me and the peace of my own mind. But this process is not at all that different from what the subject experiences in the oral, anal, and phallic phases of development. In weaning, the breast is lost or dies and at the same time the mother is preserved in the specular image as both a presence of the image as well as an absence within it. Abraham and Torok argued that in the introjection of the loss of the mother the absence of the mother is established as an empty space from which speech emerges. However, this empty space is seen as a negative space of absence rather than as an emptiness of presence. Space defined as an emptiness of presence refers instead to the interdependence of object and subject, breast and mouth, the child as objet a of the mother and the mother as objet a of the child. Each term is empty without the Other of the structural relation. When the object is empty in this sense it is also present in the subject as well as vice versa. Within the Lacanian framework, emptiness of presence can be linked to the register of the Real in inseparable relationship to the registers of the Symbolic and Imaginary. Although a body image is gained in the mirror phase, during the anal phase something in the body needs to be relinquished. The ego loses the faecal pleasure object, yet gains the will and words of the parents that will now represent the empty bowels/vowels of the subject. Finally, through symbolic castration, both sexes lose the imaginary phallus as both object of the other and of the self, but regain the symbolic phallus as an emptiness that facilitates the functioning of metaphor and metonymy within language and the social symbolic order. What I am calling the dialectic of the emptiness of presence intrinsic to the phases of development within Freudian theory alsb finds support in Freud's writing on mourning in his paper On Transience (1916). During one of Freud's proverbial walks, he helped a friend who had difficulty enjoying the smiling countryside for fear

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of its destruction under a raging world war. In an almost Japanese aesthetic moment, Freud comments that it is the very transience or impermanence of the object in the gaze of the subject that constitutes an intrinsic aspect of its beauty. In the moment of beauty and transience, the subject is empty before the object, and the object is also empty because it is merely a moment or an instance/instant of beauty preserved within the subject. This aspect of mourning is related not only to the imaginary world of phantasy and the image of the real object, but to the symbolic order that organises the perception of social reality. With the loss of the object, the object becomes a phantasy of the subject; but without the subject, or with the loss of the ego, the object world, and the symbolic order,, acquires the beauty usually ascribed to phantasies. As a defence against the loss of the object, the ego builds a sense of self via the phantasy of the object. This facilitates the relinquishing of the object but at the same time the building up of an ego, or an ego defence against the loss of the object, prevents the resolution of mourning. When the loss at the level of the ego is mourned rather than defended against, then a new morning and beginning becomes possible for the subject. The resolution of mourning involves various ways of introjecting and dissolving, preserving and destroying subjective relationships to the object. To the extent that the loss of the object impacts subjective representations of the ego, a loss may be experienced with the affective intensity more typical of depression than simple grief. Thus on the one hand it is useful to use this criterion to differentiate between depression and grief, but on the other hand grief and mourning, as a result of the loss of a significant object, will always be felt as an ego loss, to one degree or another. It is not so much that the ego, as an intrapsychic structure or agency, is first weakened and then strengthened, with the introjection and assimilation of the lost object, but that the ideal ego, the super ego, and the ego ideal are transformed in the direction of the subject. The love of the object, which determines the emotional impact of a loss, is predicated on a prior loss of jouissance that caused desire. The ego looks for his or her being in the object. At the same time such archaic tendency of the ego is mitigated by the establishment of the ego ideal as the self-representation and life project that is independent from the love of the object cause of desire. The love of ideals

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and of one's work should never be completely subsumed under the love and loss of the object. It is the vicissitudes of the love of the father that gives the subject a separate identity from the mother and the love object. As previously mentioned, the super ego and the ego ideal are a function of the name of the father that in the paternal metaphor replaces the desire of and for the mother. Prior to this the love for the mother is replaced by the love for the ideal ego and the body image. Although this internalisation helps the child mourn the separation from the mother, at the same time the ideal ego continues to be haunted by the dialectic of being and not being the a of the mother, and by looking for this narcissistic object in the other. The dependence on a narcissistic object (of the mother) is mitigated by the love of the father and the ego ideal. Something of the object is preserved in the ideal ego, but the ideal ego has to be replaced by the ego ideal. It is the name of the father that inoculates the ego against the loss of the object. By fulfilling the goals of the ego ideal, the subject has to turn the name of the father into his/her own name. But the super ego and the ego ideal, as well as the imaginary aspect of the name of the father, or of the imaginary father, still function as a stop-gap for the lack in the subject and the lack of a subject that perpetuates the experience of lack and imaginary castration. The father or the object is preserved and performs a constructive function for the subject but at the same time it perpetuates the division and lack of the subject. Thus, as Freud argues, the object cathexis within the ego ideal also need to be destroyed and transformed in the direction of the subject. When the subject attempts to be something more than simply a place and a signifier within a symbolic order, the goals and ambitions of the super ego and ego ideal always threaten the subject with failure. Super ego and ego ideal formations ultimately render the ego and the subject more vulnerable to depression. The relinquishing and mourning of ego ideals allow for the emergence of a more fundamental dimension of the subject, as a consequence of mourning the essential emptiness of the subject. This way one can argue that the distinction between grief and depression or melancholia is not absolute and a loss at the level of the ego, and grief itself takes place within three dimensions.

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When a loss generates a loss at the level of the ideal ego, without the buffer provided by the ego ideal, this loss can result in the most profound form of depression and melancholia. When the love object occupied the place of the ideal ego, as was the case with the specular image occupying the place of the objet a, then the loss of the object represents a total loss of both ego and object. This is a clear example of the difference between depression and grief, or between a more profound borderline depression and that found in grief and/or neurotic depression. When the ego has the buffer of the ego ideal to inoculate itself against the loss of the object, then the loss of the object does not threaten the ego with total destruction (of both ego and object). However, this should not lead one to believe that the ego ideal does not make the ego vulnerable to the possibility that the loss of the object will have a direct impact on self-esteem or the sense of selfworth. In the form of a primitive super ego, the ego ideal will blame and punish the ego for the loss of the object. This is what transpires in the case of neurotic depression. The inoculation or immunisation against the depression that can be triggered by the defensive structure of the super ego and ego ideal comes as a result of the mourning of the lack in the Other or the emptiness of the Other and of the subject. Ultimately there is no Other, only a subject. In addition, there is no substantial subject, only the interdependence and co-arising of subjects, material elements, and signifiers. Although each subject or signifier has an independent existence, the identity of the one is given by the available elements within the structure, and the differences between them. The ultimate form of existential mourning for the transience and impermanence of life also involves the processing of a loss at the level of the super ego and ego ideal. These unsubstantial subjective structures have to be deconstructed and dissolved /transformed into the effective operation of an imperfect structure. It is the latter that ensures that humans do not turn into robotic machines. Through mourning and loss the subject retains a feeling of symbolic empathy for the lack in the Other who is both different and similar to the self. To conclude, the symbolic order and the ego ideal are impermanent and under perpetual construction and reconstruction/ permutation. We have to continue to mourn the changing and disappointing face of our cultural ego ideals in order to approximate

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the actual emptiness, selflessness, and interdependence of the subject and the symbolic order.

Bibliography Abraham, K. (1911). Notes on the psychoanalytical investigation and treatment of manic-depressive insanity and allied conditions. In: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis. London: Maresfield Library, 1988. Abraham N., & Torok, M. (1980). Introjection-incorporation: mourning or melancholia. In Psychoanalysis in France, ed. S. Lebovici & D. Widlocher. New York: International University Press, pp. 3-16. Blatt, S. J. (1974). Levels of object representation in anaclitic and introjective depression. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 29,107-151. . (1997) Contributions of psychoanalysis to the understanding and treatment of depression. JAP A 46: 723-52. Chodorow, N. (1978). The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press. Derrida, J. (1996). By force of mourning. Critical Enquiry 22:171-192. Dor, J. (1999). Clinical Lacan. New York: the Other Press. Fenichel, O. (1945). The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis. New York: Norton. Freud, S. (1916). On Transience. S. E., 14: 305-307. London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. S. E., 14: 243-258. London:' Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1923). The Ego and the Id. S.E., 19:12-66. London: Hogarth Press. Green, A. (1986). The dead mother. In: On Private Madness. London: Hogarth Press. Hassoun, J. (1997). The Cruelty of Depression: On Melancholy. Boston: Addison Wesley. Kernberg, O. et al.(1989). Psychodynamic Psychotherapy of Borderline Patients. New York: Basic Books. Klein, M. (1934). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic depressive states. In: Contributions to Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth Press, 1948, pp.282-310. Kristeva, J. (1989). Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press. Lacan, J. (1957). La relacion de objeto. El Seminario, Libro 4. Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1995. Svolos, T. (2004). Introducing the symptom. International Lacanian Review: www.lacanianreview.com Vergote, A. (2003). Depression as neurosis. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, Vol. 26 (2), pp. 223-276.

CHAPTER

FIVE

The Multiform Criteria and the Practice of Psychoanalysis

Introduction

This chapter introduces basic notions of Lacanian clinical practice, paying equal attention to Lacan's reformulations of Freudian principles as well as original Lacanian contributions to Freud's work —for example, the notion of cure direction which Lacan outlined in The direction of the treatment and the principles of its power (Lacan,

1979). In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the two elements of direction and power are correlated: for there to be a direction to the cure the analyst has to not use the power granted to him/her by the analysand's transference. Lacan in France, arid his followers in Argentina, have emphasised the need to call the analysand "analizante" instead of "analizado" (analised). The English word "analysand" implies a position of empowerment, analytical activity, and responsibility. The unconscious of the analysand knows the textual truth (the signifying chain resembles a latent text) manifesting through the symptom, but due to repression and concomitant disguises the subject appears to ignore it. From this place of ignorance the analysand searches for a master in the analyst. Once this transference has been resolved at the end of an analysis, the subject could be called the analysed, in the past tense, without implying a master analysing analyst and a passive "analysed"(by the analyst). The analysed is the product or effect of the transformative power of the unconscious. Freud (1921/1959) described the wish of people to look for leaders to hold authority over them. The analysand comes into analysis asking to be ordered or,-at least, wanting the analyst to wield a curative 156

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power over him/her. Because of this, Lacan always insisted upon differentiating psychoanalysis from the direction of souls or pastoral counselling or any other variety of counselling. Subjected to the demand of the Other, the neurotic cannot tolerate being in a situation where he/she may have to speak with his or her own words rather than with those of the Other. Lacan finds antecedents for the position of the analyst in the Stoics and the Socratic mayeutics. Socrates went around town engaging people in conversation about different subjects, appearing to know nothing and being willing to learn from everyone who professed to know. Socrates made profession of no knowledge except of that of his own not knowing. He believed that people know both less and more than what they think they do. To those who appeared to know he showed them that they actually did not know; to those who appeared not to know, he showed them that in fact they did know. In the case of the practice of analysis, the analysand comes either positively or negatively predisposed to a therapeutic encounter/ interaction. Entering the psychotherapeutic field already requires a certain ego-deflation or symbolic castration oh the part of the patient. He/she has to be willing to acknowledge a certain degree of suffering and inability to help-himself /herself on his/her own. From this place of suffering, stagnation and helplessness the patient reaches out to the therapist/analyst. This is the place of not knowing, of the subject of the unconscious, and of expecting and sometimes demanding that the analyst know something and wields a curative power. When negatively predisposed, the ego of the analysand will display resistance and a devaluation of the knowledge of the analyst: "I know who I am, and nobody knows more about myself than me, and I do not think you can help me, and actually I am not doing so bad after all/7 Using Lacanian theory one can distinguish between the ego and the subject at the onset of the treatment. The ego is the small mind that already knows it all and has nothing to learn from anybody. The ego or I, in this case, is at the centre of all statements. The ego says, "I know, I have attained/' The subject corresponds to the empty Big mind of the beginner which is innocent, does not claim to know, and is open and ready for surprises and new possibilities. But the key point is that access to the larger subject often requires a symbolic ego-death. Although the ego claims to know, in reality it does not know, because it is the subject that in truth knows.

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Conversely, although the ego claims not to know, in reality it does know because the subject knows. At this juncture it becomes all-important that analysts not respond to the patient from the place of their own ego. If the analysand, in the transference, asks for a master of knowledge, the analyst should act from the place of not knowing, the equivalent of Socrates showing people that in fact they did know. But it is the unconscious subject of the analysand who knows, not the ego. In the analytic situation, this truth is brought forth by a renunciation on the part of the analyst. If the analysand claims to know and that the analyst does not, the analyst still responds—without self-consciousness—from the place of a knowing that does not know that it knows. The analyst needs to acknowledge that the individual knows but point in the direction of unconscious knowing by the subject and not the ego. Therefore, in order for the analysand to work through the idealising transference to the analyst as the doctor/master supposed to know, and the transference-power that the analysand gives the analyst at the outset of analysis, the analyst must make three payments: with words, with his/her person and with the core of his/her being. Such payments will be considered one at a time. Payment with One's Person To let go of the social ego requires a form of subjective destitution, at least a partial retreat from social behaviours and conditions, and a letting go of what Jung called the social mask or persona, our favourite ego-images and verbal platitudes. The analytic or therapeutic relationship is not a social relationship because it differs from professional work relations with peers, superiors, and subordinates and it differs from relationships with lovers, teachers, family, and friends. It also differs from relationships with priests in that the analyst is not a moral guide or a guru. The analyst, like the Buddha, is no more than an arrow pointing inwards to the patient's own intrinsic mind as the locus of truth and liberation. In work relations, a certain measure of success, of goals, and objectives are expected from the ego. The ego is expected to know something under the performance requirements governing work relations. Nothing of this sort is expected in analytical practice.

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Analysis is the place where the ego can fail miserably, and ego ideals are suspect and subject to deconstruction. Even the most ungrammatical form of language will be accepted in analysis. Moreover, psychoanalysis thrives on mistakes as access points or gateways to the unconscious. A Zen saying describes the life history of a Zen teacher as that of one continuous mistake or of one mistake after another. In addition, for the analysand the renunciation of a social relationship suspends the mental defences operative through social discourse and results in openness to inner experience. In social, sexual, and familiar relations the ego desires, expects, and even demands things from others. The analyst pays with his persbn when not using these dispositions in relation to the analysand. The analyst must ultimately renounce even the desire to cure or provide a successful treatment to the patient. Not that the analyst is not interested in relieving the symptoms of the analysand, but that a direct gain orientation or idea only intensifies the ego-resistance of the patient to the treatment and to the cure. In addition, if the analysand perceives that the ego of the analyst is involved in the success of the treatment then, like a child with a parent, the patient will defeat or oppose the analyst/doctor by compromising his or her own success. But then what are the gratifications "permitted" to the analyst? Although money and livelihood are legitimate and explicit needs of an analyst, this should not lead one to think that greediness towards money on the part of the analyst could not become a hindrance to the treatment and the therapeutic relationship. Ultimately the practice of analysis is a spiritual satisfaction. Analysis satisfies an inmost request for unconscious knowing and understanding. Paying with one's person also requires not using personal values. Does this mean that there are no values implied in the analytical situation? I want to argue that the abstention of judgment implies values of a different.order or metavalues. Renunciation of values implies that values are there, and we should not ignore them or be value-blind but need to go beyond and not act on them. This renunciation of values includes renouncing renunciation as a value. We renounce values in order to achieve values on a different level. This point about metavalues will be elaborated and expounded further on.

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For example, whenever an analyst encounters homophobia or dislike for homosexuality, or heterophobia or dislike for heterosexuality, sexism or dislike for men or women, addiction to prostitution or racism and anti-Semitism, it is not fruitful to try to reform the analysand into adopting the correct values. This will only engender argument, ego battles, and wreck the therapeutic relationship. Rather, abstaining from preaching one's values will facilitate an exploration of the themes and conflicts that lie at the root of such ethical failures. In the long run, such method stands a much better chance of preventing problematic social attitudes and values. I am not advocating a value-free or "objective" scientific approach. As established elsewhere (1998a), subjectivity is always implicit in any relationship between a knower and a known. It is not possible to avoid a subjective position. The question becomes one of how to work with our subjectivity in order to realise subjectivity without a subject and affect a subjective destitution. Truth is rectified error within the context of a permutation of subjective experience. As aforementioned, psychoanalysis thrives on mistakes as gateways to unconscious truths and an analyst is, therefore, established by his/ her mistakes. Ego-ideas and ideals, in the sense of ideological or defensive false views that block symbolic understanding, must be let go moment to moment, one piece at a time. To acknowledge being wrong and give up ego attachments to wrong beliefs and assumptions requires a certain humility and sobriety of mind that is a basic subjective characteristic of the. scientific attitude. It is this attitude that clears and prepares the mind for new insights to arise. To Pay with Words, the Language of the Unconscious and of Non-Duality

The second payment is with words. Another aspect wherein the therapeutic relationship differs from a social relationship is the type of dialogue that characterises the use of language in analysis. This aspect of analysis coincides with what Dogen, a Japanese Zen teacher, calls one of the eight awarenesses of an enlightened subject: avoiding idle speech. In contrast to a symmetrical dialogue where somebody talks and somebody responds, an interpretation, in the analytic sense of the term, means that somebody speaks more and somebody speaks less. In addition, the analyst not only has to speak

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less but also has to speak in a different manner. Within the psychoanalytic situation dreams and unconventional linguistic formations, such as slips, puns, jokes, etc., are matched by the use of interpretative speech on the part of the analyst. As Harari (1985) has pointed out, interpretation requires fine-tuning and a skilful use of words meant to evoke something different from conventional or ordinary speech. Moreover, interpretative speech is not the speech of ordinary life in two significant respects: 1. in analysis the analyst needs to allow what is equivocal, paradoxical and ambiguous instead of expecting and utilising forms of linear directive speech; 2. as aforementioned, an interpretation should not be a move whose goal is to obtain something. In other words, interpretative speech needs to be distinguished from any form of instrumental or communicative discourse. Interpretation does not aim at communication as a means for something else or to ask someone to do something, but rather simply to evoke and invoke a particular signification. In passing, it should be noted that Jung (1953) had already realised the significance of paradox for the practice of interpretation. He pointed to the existence of statements that contain logical contradictions that are impossible in principle. Only paradox comes near to expressing the non-dual basis of life and the unconscious. Nonambiguity and non-contradiction are one sided and therefore unsuited to express non-duality. According to Lacan, lalangue, as the text or language of the unconscious, escapes the grammatical or formal logical organisation of discourse. The signifying chain is composed of key signifiers which are polyvocal and equivocal in nature. Moreover, what is evoked by a paralogical use of language is the experience of the unconscious expressed by a non-dualistic or unconventional use of conventional language. Metaphorical intuitive utterance transgresses and elevates the ordinary meaning of words. To reveal within language a core unconscious experience beyond language and symbolisation requires a different use of language from that of formal social/logical language and the language of science. A deviant, innovative, and surprising utterance plays with the binary structure of formal language to make it say something that escapes the determining duality of the Symbolic in terms of social language. But from a purely social conventional point of view, such

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speech constitutes a payment with one's person because it risks being perceived as unusual, peculiar, foolish, and even downright deviant. Lacan also made a distinction between empty and full speech. The analysand often wastes time by focusing on trivialities or rationalisations that remain far removed from the causal core of the subject's suffering. Thus analysis as the discourse of the unconscious is concerned with unfolding not so much the well-known story line, but rather the unknown dreams and unconscious core themes and phantasies. In listening, the analyst needs to localise in the flux of speech the capital elements or signifiers, the signifying diamonds and nuggets within the coal and dross of ordinary speech. Thus, to pay with words is to elevate the use of words as done by the dream-work. It implies a conversion of being to a more truthful and essential state. But just as the dream-work is constructed or woven by a larger unconscious subjectivity than the ego, so in interpretative speech the speaking ego or enunciator should be cancelled as much as possible in favour of the enunciation from the place of non-self. In order to raise the analytical function, the analyst needs to speak from the place of no-self (the unknown knowing subject) where the ego as the enunciator is cancelled as much as possible in favour of allowing the power of the signifier to transform and illuminate the subject. The aphanisis (disappearance) of the ego results in the epiphany (appearance) of the subject (true subject is no ego—Moncayo, 1998c). Thus, the cognitive ego is not the agent of insight but rather it is the subject who bears witness to the lightening of wit and knowing contained within the treasure chest of the signifier. In addition, the interpretative saying should be brief and concise, with less emphasis on rational syntaxes and conjunction. Sayings should be surprising and fresh and imply an enunciation from the place of non-self and the corresponding aphanisis or disappearance of the ego. Thus, the fact that the Lacanian dimension of the Real exists outside language does not mean that we are left in a position of riot being able to say anything about the core of our experience. Silence does not necessarily possess more truth-value to express the Real— although sometimes it may. By now it is well known that Lacan's aphorism—the unconscious is structured like a language—should not be interpreted as meaning that the structure of the unconscious

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is identical to the structure of social language. Rather, the unconscious has the structure of a different kind of language—the language of the unconscious. This is precisely the meaning that we give to our statement that the evocation and expression of the Real requires a different use of language. As aforementioned, Lacan even gave a different name to the symbolic language of the unconscious: lalangue. Lalangue thrives on the homophonic or metaphorical rather than grammatical or syntactic elements of language. Herewith are presented two case vignettes as examples of lalangue. The first will primarily exemplify the homophonic element, the second the metaphoric. An analysand, whom I will call J., had been struggling over not wanting to have "two sessions a week". He was also in conflict with seeing his struggle as having anything to do with the analyst. At the beginning of the next session he made a comment regarding the waiting room, saying: "Your waiting room is 'too weak'." I have said that lalangue appears as a deviant or peculiar predication. Somebody could say: "This must be a grammatical mistake; no English speaker would say your waiting room is 'too weak'!" And yet the fact remains that this was an educated, native English speaker. The analyst, or the subject that is me but also an imaginary ego, responded by saying: "Two a week is too weak." Again, a deviant predication is matched by a peculiar interpretation. The analysand represented here by the letter J. (the signifier is what represents the subject for another signifier—the analyst) and who was marked and effected/affected by being named after an aunt whom his father envied (the subject appears first in the Other), was caught in an imaginary ego-struggle with the analyst. To the resistance of his imaginary ego, two sessions a week represented an imaginary form of castration. I say imaginary, because he was not ready for a symbolic renunciation (castration) of his ego-resistance. Thus, he wanted to tell me in some way that it was not he but I that was weak. He chose the small size and poor taste of the waiting room to say this. On the other hand, the unconscious text chose a word or signifier (weak) that was homophonically linked to the two signifiers that represented castration in his mind (two a week). The analysand was making an imaginary or ego-defensive use of the symbolic link, whereas the analyst appeals to the aphanisis or disappearance of the imaginary ego and the appearance or epiphany of the metaphoric subject as an effect of the signifier. Once the text of lalangue becomes

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linked via the act of interpretation, it is no longer a question of an imaginary ego-to-ego relationship. The signifier and the laws of the Symbolic represent the subject. In the second example, an analysand is telling me how he has been able to be effortless and timely in his current university studies. He makes a joke, saying that he is dictating and that I should write down what he is saying. He associates this to being effortless in playing the trumpet as a young boy until he had to put in effort to match the high notes of another student. Both of these comments served as introductions to his problem of not being able to put any effort into writing and finally finishing his dissertation. Then his associations go to his obsessive thoughts that his parents will die. He grew up in fear that his mother would die and says that his father wants to live forever but that he wants him to die. I interpreted that his efforts are geared towards remaining a child of his mother and not to grow up. If his parents die then he has to be a man instead of his mother's boy. Being a man for him means paying a price, such as losing his hair and not having feminine objects of desire. (In prior sessions, the analysand had spoken about his fears and desires to be a grown-up, responsible man. He feared losing his hair like his father. He also had a dream where he was pregnant with a boy). His response to my intervention was to quote a revered figure of his to the effect that being a man means having the baton of the phallus. "That's having something whereas for you being a man has represented not having hair like your father. Boldness is the baton/' I said, and ended the session. "Boldness is the baton" represents the symbolic phallus as a resisted absence that nevertheless generates a symbolic consistency and efficacy for the subject. What is being let go is the ego as the imaginary phallus of the mother's desire. The Third Payment with the Core of One's Being, the Desire of the Analyst and the Question of Metavalues

The third payment is payment with the core of one's being. Lacan takes this expression from Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900/1965), in which Freud says that desiring or wishing is the core of our being. Therefore, the third payment aims at the question of desire and directly leads to Lacan's notion of the desire of the analyst.

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Lacan invents the concept of the desire of the analyst and declares it to be the nodular point or hub around which the whole analysis turns. Why? Because Lacan believed that Freud not only created a new discursive situation but also invented a new subjective position: that of the analyst. Lacan states that the desire of the analyst is something different from the other, desire or the desire of the other, as well as stating that it is neither the vocational desire to be an analyst nor the personal desire of each analyst: it is an impersonal desire for death, not of dying, but of death. The desire for death or of death is not a self-destructive or masochistic imaginary death wish in the usual sense of the aim of the death drive in terms of hetero or autoaggressivity. A desire of death involves not doing what is customary with desire, which is to attempt to be desired. The analyst must first seek to be desired but then procure that the analysand directs this desire toward others. This is the most difficult renunciation to accept because it requires that the analyst relinquish the ideal (egoic) position in which the analysand has placed him/her. This is what is stoic about the analyst in the sense of auto-inducing or selfintroducing a narcissistic wound so as to push narcissism to further degrees of differentiation and transformation. At this juncture the importance of termination can be clearly discerned. There is something deadly both in the desire of the analyst and the termination of analysis in the sense of the cutting off and non-attachment associated with the death drive. This appears to be contrary to Eros that always leans towards union and synthesis. From this vantage point, one can understand why the analyst's desire is a special subjective position requiring a payment with the core of one's being. The analyst must work on something having to do with his/her own desire. This makes it the most decisive and fundamental of the three payments. It is only on the basis of such payment that one can tolerate paying with words and with one's person. Only if the analyst declines to put himself/herself in the position of being desired for life can he/she transform his/her own ego-identity by temporarily leaving aside values, choices and other narcissistic gratifications. The notion of the third payment with the core of one's being is. also related to the question of the ethics of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic situation. I mentioned earlier that the values emanating from the level of the tree of life of non-duality (of good

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and evil) correspond to those associated with the practice of analysis. Values related to a sublimated death drive or with a death drive that in the end (of aims/ends), crosses over to the other side, and the side of Eros. Regarding so-called health values, the Buddha, like Freud, is known to have used the well-known parable of the surgeon. In order to help someone who has been shot with an arrow (of love, perhaps) the doctor has to extract the arrow from the body by cutting, opening up the wound, and temporarily causing more pain in order for the wound and the body to heal and live. The practice of cutting, separating, desetring or emptying, discarding, letting go, and nonattachment, are all the manifestations of a non-dual good connected with the symbolic register of the death drive. It is in this sense that Lacan linked the Symbolic order to the function of the death drive. I am also linking a sublime reach of death or nirvana with Eros, which is something that Lacan did not explicitly do. Thus, elsewhere I have stated that there is a life that leads to death and a death which leads to life or, put dialectically and non-dualistically, there is life within death (under the nirvana principle) and death within life (under the pleasure principle). I argue that the Eros which I associate with what Lacan called the second death under the Symbolic precisely refers to a distinction between the jouissance of the Other and an Other jouissance that others (Miller, 1997) have found implicit in Lacan's work. The Other jouissance is the jouissance of the mystic and of feminine sexuality. Mystical experience and Lacanian psychoanalysis share a practice of what Lacan calls subjective or mental/ psychical destitution and benevolent depersbnalisation. The same can be said with respect to paying with one's person as a form of negation of personal values. I argue that the abstention of judgment implies values of a different order or metavalues. In a way I am using Maslow's (1968) concept of metavalues but conceive of them in the context of a Zen Buddhist concept of non-duality, the Freudian/Lacanian/Buddhist understanding of a symbolic death, and the Freudian/Nietszchian notion of a transvaluation of psychical values. It is well known that moral values, or what I am calling superego values, operate within a classical dual relationship to desire. In addition, super-ego values are often fervently desired and compel one to forbidden desire. The dividing, aggressive component of super-ego judgments, although having a social utility, nevertheless need to be neutralised

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under the influence of a non-dual Eros which is not the opposite of hate and which is cultivated and evoked by the renunciations contained within the desire of the analyst. The life of the desire of the other, of dual love, quickly turns into hate and deadly aggressivity, and hate, once socialised, quickly turns into dual morality and resentment. Thus both dual desire and morality end up on the shore of a death that is the end of life. I have also mentioned that the desire of the analyst, which is a desire for emptiness or for no particular object, can be seen as a desire for death, for Nirvana, for the serenity of a symbolic death that gives rather than ends life. It gives life because a desire for emptiness or the emptiness at the root of desire regenerates rather than negates or ends desire. A desire not to desire would still be just another desire. Emptiness as the end/aim of desire is not the end or extinction of desire. Thus, the desire of the analyst is also Buddha's desire. And Buddha's desire or the desire of the analyst, although beginning from the condition of death and suffering produced by a dual life of desire and morality, generates a transvaluation of psychical values which illuminates the meaning of a second symbolic death at the service of life and "rebirth". In this latter shore, life and death, Eros and Nirvana do not constitute polar elements but constitute two sides of the same ground. Freud spoke of the transvaluation of psychical values in reference to the workings of repression: what was pleasant becomes unpleasant, and vice versa. The moral good replaces the good of pleasure by turning the latter into something bad and the bad of frustration into something good. The practice of analysis reverses this process: the moral good or super-ego becomes suspect and the bad of desire becomes once again something good and acceptable to the analyst. But since psychoanalysis is not hedonism, this cannot be the end of the story. Becoming intimate with one's desire is not equivalent to the fulfilment of human desire, which is something impossible. The dialectical reversal and transvaluation whereby the good becomes bad, the bad becomes good, life becomes death and death life, the crossing over to the other side, are classical examples not only of the workings of the psyche but also of analysis as a therapeutic practice. In addition, this dialectical reversal also operates in intersubjective relations. For example, at first the analysand comes representing the side of suffering, division, death, the "I am dying, I cannot live like

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this", and the analyst represents the possibility of life, of unity, of love, and reconciliation. At the end of analysis a transvaluation of these values needs to take place. The analyst needs to move to the place of the second death, of a spiritual death that renews life by renouncing the desire to be desired and ultimately ending the relationship with the analysand. The analysand needs to move from the place of death and suffering to the place of recovering the possibility of love and of loving someone else, not the analyst. The place of the second death is that of the freeing the libido from archaic objects in the transference and therefore also eventually from the analyst/therapist. It is an experience equivalent to grief; grieving the lost objects as images that define the ego or with which the ego is identified, and therefore the second death also represents a loss at the level of the ego, a subjective permutation and psychical destitution. Finally, the peace of Nirvana, of the second death, is associated with non-pathological grief because it represents freedom from attachment and an eventual return to the natural quiescence of the mind. Finally, it can also be argued that the desire of the analyst produces what Maslow (1968) named a B-cognition or a knowing of being (Bion's tranformations in O) which is impersonal or transpersonal, without human desire (the desire to be desired), non-attached and not ego-centred or ego-based. Maslow likened the B-cognition to what Krishnamurti called choiceless or desireless awareness. It is the latter which bestows the ability to perceive the ineffable, that which cannot be put into words. A choiceless awareness, Freud's free floating attention, Bion's negative capability (the capacity of the analyst to be without memory or desire), or the desire of the analyst, are different ways of talking about paying with one's person in terms of not using personal choices and preferences and paying with the core of one's being in the sense of a desire not to be desired. A transformation at the core of being implies a negation (nonbeing) and a transformation of wanting to be something for someone (being someone or an imaginary phallus), of deriving our desire from the desire of the other, or looking for our being in the object. A transformation at the core of being reveals a more essential or pure being, a being in itself. This being in itself, or suchness, is already connected to others and transforms independently from the ego that wants to be someone or something for others. In relationship to thou,

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I can be your analyst, your husband, or your father, but neither of these identities or structural positions captures what is most essential and empty in my own being. If the latter is lost, then I am also lost, but if the latter is revealed or disclosed then I can be most myself as well as your analyst, husband, friend, or father. The Subject Supposed to Know(ing) Having explored the three payments that enable the analyst to work with the transference of the analysand, I will now address Lacan's teachings on the question of the transference. Lacan redefines the classical psychoanalytic concept of transference around the question of knowing (savoir in French or saber in Spanish). Knowing is not knowledge (conocimiento in Spanish and connaissance in French) because Lacan makes a distinction between the referential knowledge of science and a textual knowing in the psychoanalytic situation regarding the text of the unconscious. In formulating this conception of the transference, Lacan is redefining classical concepts derived from Freud's metapsychological papers. Freud insists that unconscious feelings do not exist. Feelings can be displaced but always remain capable of consciousness. Instead, the unconscious has to do with an associative chain of representations that convey a knowing about sexuality apparently ignored by the ego. The analysand does not know that he/she knows. Thusly, Lacan can be understood when he says that analysis is about a searching for a knowing that is not based on book knowledge. In other words, in every session the analysand is looking for an "unknown knowing". This is a serious game and not just mere word play. How does unknown knowing take place in the transference? The analysand often says: "I do not know what is wrong with me." The analysand knows that the symptom means something, although this something is unknown. So the analysand is looking for this knowing, all the while expecting something from the analyst. Lacan has coined the expression "subject supposed to knowing" to account for the crucial place of knowing in the analytic situation. This is my translation of Lacan's sujet suppose savoir (the S.s.S. position). Alan Sheridan (1977) has translated it as the subject who is supposed to know. However, such translation does not underscore the fact that the subject is not the source of "knowing"; rather it is the subject who is being

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attributed to knowing. Sheridan's translation emphasises the imaginary ego that is expected to know something; mine the subject who is secondary to knowing and a vehicle for the unconscious and the Symbolic order. As in the case of the English word "understanding", the subject is standing under this unknown knowing. Lacan distinguishes between what he calls the referential knowledge of science and what can be called the contextual "knowing" in the analytic situation. This latter form of knowing would not be characterised by cognitive ego-processes. From this vantage point, the credibility of the analyst is based on two elements: 1. the fact that the psychical symptom is something unknown and uncontrolled by the subject; and 2. the fact that the patient attributes knowledge to the doctor regarding the symptom. For Lacanians, these elements are understood as the basis for a positive transference relationship. The latter is what functions as a structural basis for the perceived credibility of the psychotherapist and constitutes a basis for a therapeutic alliance. As such, it provides the initial immediate gratification (benefit) needed to engage an individual in a treatment relationship. In fact, a reduction in symptomatology is often reported in the very early phase of psychotherapy. Within the psychoanalytic field, this phenomenon is known as a "transference cure". Thus, on the one hand, the analyst-therapist needs to establish his or her credibility on the basis of knowledge regarding psychopathology, psychical/developmental structures, and psychotherapeutic processes. This is the basis for a positive transference and for a working alliance with the subject/analyst supposed to know something. On the other hand, analysis proper is regulated by the desire of the analyst as a desire for lack, for emptiness, and not knowing. In the transference the desire of the analyst manifests as a desire not to be idealised or desired/loved as a subject supposed to know. The desire of the analyst represents a subjective fruit of the personal analysis, a transformation of jouissance, and not an objective form of neutrality, abstinence, and anonymity. By virtue of the desire of the analyst the therapist/analyst does not use the power and privilege given to him/her by educational, claiss, and professional differences as well as the transference of the patient/analysand. Here the curative factor comes not from the knowledge of the analyst (the master's and university discourse) but from an unconscious knowing

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not based on formal education that the suffering subject (the client or analysand) does not know that he/she knows. Now the analyst is a subject to whom the analysand has attributed his/her own unconscious knowing. When the analyst desires unconscious knowing about puissance, and renounces the ego knowledge or expertise of the master's discourse, he/she functions out of an attitude of not knowing (in the non-dual sense of a not-knowing, which includes knowing by the subject and not the ego), and becomes a vehicle for the non repressed "unknown-knowing" and understanding contained within the Symbolic, or what Lacan calls the treasure chest of the signifier. "Unknown knowing" here includes both the repressed signifying chain of the analysand and the participation of the analyst in the larger unknown (unconscious in $ descriptive sense) structure of language and the Symbolic. On this side of the dialectic, credibility is achieved by a symbolic horizontal levelling of the ego-based authority of the analyst-psychotherapist in favour of the transformative power of the unconscious. Redefining the transference on the basis of knowing clarifies the problem of how the transference can be resolved and dissolved so there can be both a direction to the cure and an end to analysis. If the analyst remains in a position of being the "subject supposed to know", then again we would be faced with the discourse of a Master who comes to "own" (ownership is an essential characteristic of lordship or mastery in the Hegelian sense of the term) the analysand for life. Interminable analyses that last twenty and twentyfive years would be such an example. The subject remains dependent on the knowledge or the love of the analyst rather than ending the analysis by virtue of the textual power of his/her "own" unknown knowing. The transference to the authority of the doctor on the basis of the "subject supposed to know" functions as a resistance to recover unconscious knowing about experiences of lack and of loss, whether real, imagined, or symbolic: privation, frustration, and castration. It is the knowing of the subject within the analyst that can use the attribution of unconscious knowing to the analyst in the transference. The analyst is one step ahead of the patient because he/she knows that he does not know. The analyst is enlightened about his own ignorance and therefore can help the patient discover what they know within themselves.

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The Singular Frame and the Multiform Criteria for the Practice of Analysis Lacan's concept of cure direction also needs to be contrasted with the post-Freudian classical notion of an analytical contract. The latter implies a series of quasi-legislative standard norms that define a "proper" analytical frame. Such attempts at strict uniformity and conformity constitute what Octave Mannoni called a Procrustean couch: if someone does not fit into the frame then you cut an arm, then a leg, etc. Lacan insisted that the question of the frame be considered on a case-by-case basis and not in standard fashion. The standard-length session, for example, is only one of the clinical tools available to a psychoanalyst, and in fact may be more appropriate for psychotherapy than psychoanalysis. I call the standard frame post-Freudian because Freud practiced in many different ways with his patients. He did pieces of analytical work walking, on horseback, and in cafes. I do not advise conducting analyses in this fashion, but such examples help to highlight the elasticity of analytic practice as practiced by its founder. I also consider that a consistency between a theory and a practice of analysis is of the utmost importance. Once this internal consistency is achieved, then external consistency across models would be the next desirable objective to be achieved through a peaceful and mature dialogue of opinions between the different schools of psychoanalysis. This is an alternative view to that of a naive empiricism from wherein wide theoretical differences are acceptable as long as the formal rules of a scientific practice remain unchanged (i.e. the standard frame). Theoretical differences will inevitably lead to different ways of practicing analysis no matter how much one attempts to maintain the homogeneity of a standard clinical frame. Theory and practice cannot be dissociated. For example, if the differences between the first phase of Oedipus (the pre-Oedipal for other schools) with the mother, and the second phase of Oedipus (Oedipus proper) with the father are collapsed, the result will not only be a confusion between registers and levels, but this will have a direct impact on the nature of the therapeutic relationship, and the kind of material that is evoked and worked through in the session. Often the Other of the unconscious will be reduced to the other of an interpersonal

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relationship, and to issues taking place in the imaginary ego-to-ego relationship between analyst and analysand. One of the main things that will get excluded in the process is the question of sexuality. In other schools, there are entire analyses carried out mostly focused on issues of trust and attachment. The clinical validity of this approach to analysis stems from the fact that there are psychotherapy clients where these questions figure prominently. These are clients who received inadequate maternal or parental support and where, therefore, the questions of desire and sexuality are obscured and appear secondary to fixations to the first phase of Oedipus. However, as happened with the borderline diagnosis, these examples are often generalised to the overall clinical population to justify an approach to psychoanalysis without an emphasis on Oedipal structure,)the father/or the questions of the phallus and sexual difference. I believe that Lacan called the pre-Oedipal the first phase of Oedipus in order to prevent this kind of split between the pre-Oedipal and the Oedipal proper. In the first phase of Oedipus, the unconscious object is the objet a but, as shown in previous chapters, the objet a bears a structural relationship to the phallus. From this perspective it is possible to argue that the Freudian unconscious has all but disappeared from both the conceptual and clinical horizon of such schools as object relations and selfpsychology, despite the strict observance of a classical analytic frame. The standard frame only gives the formal appearance of continuity between the practices of contemporary schools of psychoanalysis and the tradition of Freudian analysis. In' reality, the former are widely divergent from the latter at both theoretical and practical levels. The cutting of the session, as a capital point in the Lacanian clinic, is closely related to Lacan's unconventional definition of the analytical frame. This is difficult to write about in the United States because of the prevailing object-relations view regarding the analytic frame as a holding environment, and because Lacan was expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) for the introduction of this practice. Lacan (1972) established a difference between what he called logical and chronological time. Logical time is composed of the following interrelated elements: 1. the instant of the glance; 2. a time for understanding; and 3. a moment of concluding. This conceptual tool was used to establish an operational mode that would address

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the evanescent pulsation of the unconscious according to a different temporal dimension than that of the ego-consciousness associated with ordinary speech. The instant of the glance and the moment of concluding refer to the surprising opening and closing of the unconscious as revealed, for example, in a disruptive slip of the tongue or parapraxis. In this respect, Lacan teaches that the moment of concluding retroactively precipitates the time for understanding. The unconscious has to open and close before the time for understanding can begin. What is at stake is to reproduce, during an analytical session, an operation that would have the same effect of precipitating the time for understanding both within and outside the session, for the session does not end when it ends. The Lacanian analyst does not ego-consciously mimic the unconscious but rather does what the unconscious does, not from a place of ego-knowledge or ego-ignorance (the dualistic "I know" and "I don't know" of ignorance), but instead from the psychical/ topological space of a knowing that does not know that it knows (the non-dual "I don't know" of knowing or of a not-knowing which, in not being the opposite of knowing, includes knowing in a dialectical moment). Through the act of ending a session, the analyst is betting on the moment of understanding. To be sure, such a bet involves the risk that the analyst ma[y have chosen a mistaken moment to end a session. Nevertheless, the advantages derived from this practice far outweigh the negative consequences that could arise from a mistake at this level. Conversely, the advantage of neutralising such risk with the standard length of a session is small in comparison to the risk of a stagnated analysis under a standard frame. The cutting of the session, as a way of punctuating an unconscious knowing that has erupted in the discourse of the analysand, like a lapsus or a parapraxis, reaffirms the meaning that the message has come from the Other (and not from the ego defences of the analyst). As an act, the cutting of the session does not abandon the analytical scene or situation (this is how acting out is commonly defined) but points rather to the discourse of the Other. In addition, through a personal analysis, the analyst has come to know his/her own subjective position in order to sufficiently distinguish a defensive

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reaction from a responsive act in accordance with the unconscious (of the analysand). In the cutting of a session the question becomes one of elevating an act to the dignity of a silent interpretation and of utilising an act in the same way that an unconscious formation can be revealed through an act and not only through a word or group of words. In the same way that an interpretation should match the synchronistic enunciations of the discourse of the Other, so the cutting of a session should manifest the opening and closing of the unconscious at the level of an act. Moreover, just as the analyst does not know what he/she has said or whether the interpretation will be effective until an interpretation has been uttered and received by the analysand, so the pertinence of the act of cutting a session is only known a posteriori.

In addition, and among other things on a more practical level, the standard fifty minutes produces in the analyst a feeling of boredom if not outright sleepiness. Especially with obsessive, ruminating analysands, the analyst is often looking at a watch waiting for the end of the session. Thus, many analysts who work this way end up burned out, tired, and bored. With the standard session an analyst can almost predict how all the sessions will go in any given workday. Someone may say, "Here he/she comes to speak about this, and I will say this other, they will respond with that/' etc. All of this eliminates something decisive about analysis: the element of surprise. Without the element of surprise, all that remains is a stagnated situation that leads nowhere. In this regard, Lacan argues that a chronometrical halt ignores what transpires within the session. Instead, what he purported to do was to cut in accordance with the content and process of a session. Thus each session acquires a singular characteristic. In addition, in accord with the non-linear syhchronic time of the unconscious, a session, as a piece of psychical work, cannot be measured on a linear timescale. Incidentally, the same applies to the analyst's fees. The analysand is not paying for a linear accumulation of minutes that are owed to him/her but for the psychical work accomplished in each session regardless of the time taken to do so. This line of thought makes it important not to dilute or minimise a significant point reached in a session by continuing to work on

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something else. Moreover, such an analytical tool is used so ,as to discriminate between what Lacan called empty and full speech. Perhaps "empty" is not the happiest expression for this context since it conveys only a negative view of emptiness, whereas Lacan also used this term to describe Das ding (the Thing or No-thing) as a dignified void at the centre of the Real. The analysand often "believes" that his or her well-rehearsed and rationalised psychotherapeutic story line or problem presentation is very meaningful indeed. However, as Andre Patsalides (1993) has emphasised, analysis as the discourse of the unconscious is concerned with unfolding not so much the well-known story line but rather the oftenignored phantasms or unconscious core phantasies. Thus, it behoves an analyst to discriminate between the false or idle, but maybe meaningful, ordered and rational speech and the true, senseless speech regarding the phantasm. Session-cutting may be used for just such a purpose. A common objection to the cutting of the session is that it represents an abusive, arbitrary, autocratic, or authoritarian and sadistic action on the part of the analyst perpetrated on a masochistic and submissive analysand. It is true that there are patients, particularly in psychotherapy, who will not tolerate or even need the variable length session. The point here is that the cutting of the session can also be introduced gently and in democratic fashion. The analyst may say, "Is this a good place to stop?" or "Is there anything else, or is this a good place to stop?" If the analysand wishes to continue to something else that proves to be productive and meaningful then at the end of that associative or signifying chain, and the working through of the affects thereof, the analyst once again introduces the cut to end the session. There will be times when the analyst also ends the session in an abrupt way to underscore and punctuate the emergence of something significant within the analysis. Lacan had five-minute sessions but this was greatly, if not entirely, due to the number of patients waiting to be seen. At some point, due to the high demand for his services, Lacan stopped giving appointments. People simply gathered in his waiting room and waited to be signalled into his office. The following example derived from clinical practice helps to illustrate the rationale behind the cutting of a session. A Spanish-speaking analysand with obsessive and procrastinating characteristics came

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into a session describing his conflict over deciding whether to mail a letter he had written to his mother for the purpose of disclosing his sexual orientation. He felt very indecisive and afraid, understandably so, of sending such a letter. During the session the analysand made a repeated slip of the tongue. In Spanish the correct translation for postal letter is carta but instead he used the word letra that corresponds to letter of the alphabet in English. In association to letra, a childhood memory came to mind of a grandfather having given the analysand an "ink-pen". The analysand interpreted this memory as one of momentarily getting from a grandfather the "recognition" (and phallus) he did not get from his father. In addition, the slip also indicated that the English language, which this bilingual analysand was using in his daily life, was also involved in the articulation of the signifying chain (postal letter translated as letra instead of carta). Thus, "not mailing" stood for "not male", which is what he feared communicating to his mother. The difficulty in sending the letter signified his own difficulty with knowing something about (homo) sexuality and sexual difference (not male) and not only the fear about how the mother would respond to knowing something different about his sexual orientation (this is something he had talked about at length in previous sessions). At this point the analyst rose from the chair and signalled the end of the session. Rather than to intellectualise, dilute or add anything redundant or extra to the analysand's own knowing of the unconscious, the ending of the session at this point produced a punctuation that supports a change in psychical structure. Therefore, cutting the session after an important knowing has occurred may very well be an important overall criterion to observe as a way of focusing, punctuating, and . promoting the working through of significant material. Finally, after the aforementioned session the analysand sent the letter and was surprised to discover, some time later, that his mother responded rather positively to his disclosure. Returning to the question of the cutting of the session in analysis, Lacan refers to the cutting of the session as being similar to the scansion of verses in poetry. The latter is the action of differentiating verses by their rhythmic components or by the accents and syllables of an expression. From this perspective, one cannot fail to notice the interpenetration of the practice of analysis with the analysis of discourse and with the utilisation of available resources within

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language. In addition, closely associated with scansion is the aforementioned concept of punctuation that should be taken in its usual grammatical sense: namely, to locate a full stop, a comma, a question mark. The scan or division of words within the analysand's discourse constitutes another form of scansion practice. Thus, in the example given directly above, the analysand said: "I cannot mail it/7 and the analyst responded: "Not male/' In passing it should be noted that this analytic and linguistic practice of deconstructing ordinary language has illustrious precedence in the Jewish Talmud and Kabbalah. There the practices of notarikon and temurah have to do with dividing, permutating or rearranging and condensing words. These common devices are used as vehicles for reaching new meaning and releasing the primary libidinal sparks contained within the letters. Notarikon makes words by condensing the first or last letters of a word with the last or first letters of another word. Temurah changes words by altering the order of the letters. For example, in Hebrew oneg means pleasure and nega is associated with the meaning of pain. The letters in a different order describe opposite but interrelated terms. This is precisely the meaning of the Lacanian concept of puissance (the common root of pleasure and pain). In relation to the act of cutting of a session, Lacan introduces another clinical notion: that of the "horror of the act". When Lacan says that the analyst has a horror of his/her act, he is referring to the act of interpretation. Every analyst can recognise this phenomenon in his/her own subjectivity when a doubt arises in the form of: "Should I tell him/her this or not; and if I tell him/her what will happen; how will the person react; will there be anger, will I have to apologise or placate?" Therefore, the horror of the act (of cutting a session) has an important role to play in determining a strict and rigid observance of the fifty-minute hour. In addition, the observance of the fifty-minute session is also related to the aforementioned concept of analytic "holding" and the maternal influence embedded in this notion. However, the decisive point that Lacan is introducing has to do with the function of the symbolic father as the bearer of the law. Such law, far from being arbitrary, is what enables the analyst to discriminate between empty and full speech. This law is also closely associated to the fundamental

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rule of free association: say anything or please speak. To be precise, speak so the analyst may see how much weed may need to be cut so that something of the register and ring of truth may remain within the discourse and experience of the analysand. If the analyst encourages analysands to speak something foolish, it is not for the sake of foolishness per se, but rather so that they may arrive at the core of their being. From a Lacanian perspective, the structural function of the mother is at play not in the holding frame or environment, but on the love dimension of the fundamental rule of free association. In reference to Plato's Symposium, Lacan states that in the initial phase of analysis, the analyst is in the position of Erastes or lover and the analysand in that of being lovable or Eromenos. It is as if the analyst were saying to the analysand: "You can say anything silly or foolish and you will still be loved/7 Even the most insulting, incoherent, and ungrammatical of sentences will be accepted in analysis. Thus, the rule of free association can be seen as a declaration of unconditional love. Moreover, the cutting of the sessions creates a range of possible modifications with regards to the practice of analysis. For example, when there is a moment of analytical intensity, one may ask the analysand to return in the afternoon. This breaks with the stability of schedules as it occurs in the standard analytical frame mode. In other cases, the sessions may need to be distanced from one another. This illustrates why Lacan insisted that the question of the frame had to be considered on a case-by-case basis and not in standard fashion. The direction of the cure will be different for every analysand. Modifications and transformations need to be considered in relation to the analysand's demand and aimed at preventing, in relation to the time frame, that the analyst fall into the imaginary role of a mother who is unconditionally available to the analysand. Otherwise, in the transference, the analyst will appear as yet another symptom. Being in analysis becomes the analysand's neurosis. In a similar vein, one cannot think of session frequency in a linear fashion. Such thinking, which is so frequent in many psychoanalytic circles, leads to the kind of logic that says once a week is counselling, two or three times a week is psychotherapy and only four or five times a week is psychoanalysis. Not only is this impractical, especially nowadays, but it is also methodologically flawed. If the analysis

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is conducted five times a week but from the position of the Master, in horror of the act and without any regard for the singularity of the frame in each and every case, such analysis might be going nowhere for session after session. Conversely, if the position and discourse of the analyst is maintained, if the frame is always being fine-tuned with regard to the changing metabolism of the analysand's demand, and the sessions are being cut accordingly, even one session a week could be considered psychoanalysis. Moreover, the position of the analyst is fundamentally more of a psychical position than a physical one. Although psychoanalysis began on the couch and the couch will always remain our analytical field of investigation, an analysis can also be conducted from a chair, although not necessarily in a faceto-face set-up. When using a chair at times it may be especially important to be able to avoid eye contact since, as Freud pointed out, analysands usually communicate their phantasm with a sense of shame and embarrassment. In addition, many analysands are prone to develop very intense transference reactions from very early on in the analysis. Therefore, strictly speaking, what differentiates psychotherapy from psychoanalysis is neither the couch nor the frequency of sessions but rather all the other criteria that have been considered thus far (i.e. the psychical position of the analyst, the three payments, the direction of the cure, and the full, senseless speech regarding the phantasm). Having said this, it is also true that, for the most part, it is important to differentiate at the beginning of a treatment whether the treatment will be psychotherapy or if it constitutes a request/demand for analysis. Here the difference between the two can be the explicitly defined length of the treatment (at least three years for an analysis) and the frequency of the sessions (optimally three a week for analysis). On the other hand, I have conducted once a week treatments of several years that in the end also lead to significant analytical material and a working through of a transference neurosis resulting in structural psychical/characterological transformations. In such cases of once-a-week psychotherapy that produces and works through material equivalent to an analysis, the work may in fact take longer than the three times a week, three year time frame outlined above. The possibility and conditions for a brief analysis will be considered in the next chapter.

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Clinical Psychoanalysis in the Public Clinic The singular frame is also very important for the practice of analysis within a public or institutional setting. If only the post-Freudian classical frame is considered psychoanalysis, then psychoanalysis risks becoming irrelevant for large portions of the public mental health field. This is precisely what happened in the United States to a large degree. Psychoanalysis was stereotyped and dismissed as a private practice model used with white affluent or European analysands. It was also considered too long, costly, and ineffective in the long run. Nevertheless, the fifty per cent no-show rate of psychotherapy appointments within public mental health settings happens within the context of the standard frame or the holding environment that prescribes a regular appointment, at a regular time the same day of the week, every week, or every other week: "Tuesday at 2pm is your time, and your responsibility is to show up on time and mine is to be here to see you on time/7 This is the idea of the psychotherapy contract, the standard frame, and the holding environment all in one. It is paradoxical that clients would decide not to continue attending a caring and predictable environment that promises to psychically hold them and satisfy deep oral dependency needs. By being a better mother than the mother, the mother therapist offers her goods/breasts to the client and upholds a love promise to satisfy oral demands for reliability and trust. Critics could naturally raise the objection that it is precisely because people are so wounded in their trust that they run away at the prospect of being hurt and retraumatised all over again. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it makes some mistaken assumptions about human nature. Infants are assumed to be good and loving. Things would remain this way if a nurturing and predictable maternal environment met infants and children. In this view, fixation to oral demands and wounds is solely the product of a depriving environment. It is the lack of authenticity in the parents that causes psychopathology in the children. Although these assumptions have obvious clinical value, the reality still remains that attachment, not to reality objects/subjects but to phantasy objects, takes place even in the best of environments. This phantasy object is an occurrence for both parties. The child is a phantasy object for the mother and the mother is a phantasy object

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for the child. It is the unavoidable attachment to the phantasy object that results in a difficulty with separation, and not simply the privation of legitimate oral dependency needs for trust and object constancy. From the point of view of the phantasy object, the presence of the object can be as problematic as its absence. It is this reality that explains why clients would avoid regular therapy sessions, and not simply the fear of abandonment and rejection despite repeated reassurances to the contrary. Therefore, it is the singular approach to the frame that actually constitutes an intervention that addresses the sense of engulfment that comes from the merging not so much of child and mother, but of the mother/child with the phantasy object. The cut of the session, and of each session, helps cut or separate/distinguish the reality object from the phantasy object, and frees the client from the sense of being engulfed by the demands and puissance of the therapist. It seems that clients experience the standard environment with demands more characteristic of the anal rather than the oral phase. The client experiences the frame as the anal demands of the Other with regards to the regularity and time of appointments. When therapists use the maternal object and oral demands as the frame for all treatment, clients experience these from an anal and even phallic perspective. Within development it is the relationship to the father that frees the subject from the engulfing experience of the desire of the mother. The father is first experienced as an imaginary father that appears to save the subject from the grip of psychosis or perversion only to throw him/her into the grip of neurosis. Anal demands of the Other appear to have the imaginary father as a source and the mother as his agent. Within public mental health, the symbolic function of the father proper is at work in the singularity of each session. The client is in treatment but each session is different and the time and day may change. At the end of the session, the client has to express a desire for another session. The therapist is willing to let go of the client, a desire that is regulated by the desire of the analyst, which in turn causes the treatment to be regulated by the desire of the client to attend to appointments. The session could stay at the same day, same

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time next week, but this needs to be confirmed at the end of each session and not taken for granted. The singular session (not a one-session treatment) and frame also works better for advanced access to mental health treatment. The analyst/clinician has available hours within which many different analysands could be seen. Most analysands do not have fixed times and many more analysands can be accommodated according to their heed, demand, and readiness for services. The no-show or the inactive treatment need not be seen as no treatment but rather as a different modality of treatment, similar to the work in between sessions, and in between treatment episodes. Being in the caseload of a clinic, or having an open case, functions as belonging to a symbolic register within which clients are still receiving treatment b^ virtue of being part of a symbolic circle of names within a paternal metaphor. While one patient is in the inactive modality of treatment or the between-treatment episodes, or even between sessions and cancelled sessions, other analysands can be seen whose demand and desire for treatment makes them more readily available to benefit from an analytic intervention. The Resistance of the Analyst It is important to understand the techniques of punctuation, scanning, and the problem of the horror of the act in order to also understand, in a clinical context, what Lacan means with his "to shock the bourgeois" aphorism. This aphorism points to the Lacanian understanding of resistance. Lacan begins by emphasising that desire, not the ego, resists. Specifically, within the symptom, it is desire that resists. In this regard, it is important to remember that Freud stated that the sexual life of any psychically distressed subject is found within the symptom. Therefore, the question arises as to why does the symptom insist, persist, and resist—a very different way of formulating the question of resistance than that following from the theory of the intelligent agency of the ego's defence mechanisms. It is well known that the latter concept implies the existence of a fictional little man or homunculus living inside the subject's psychical habitat for the purpose of directing and managing the development of defensive

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operations. Moreover, not only does Lacan critisise Anna Freud's mechanistic and anthropomorphic understanding of defence mechanisms, he also underscores that defensive operations are primarily taking place within language. At this juncture Lacan discovers both a very old and very new discipline: rhetoric. This field can be defined as the study of all the different formations, deformations, and transformations of a discourse in accordance with certain definable forms and figures. Metaphor and metonymy are among the most well known classical figures within the rhetorical field. Thus desire is insisting and resisting through the formation of symptoms and substitutive formations. It is important to remember that, within Freudian theory, repression always fails because its sole purpose is to produce a metaphorical substitute of the repressed. Lacan states that repression and the return of the repressed is one and the same thing. The success of repression consists of an ability to generate the production of a substitute. Therefore, repression is the contorted and distorted way in which desire reappears. Finally, it is precisely because the defence of desire is the defence of the symptom, as representative of desire, that it is so difficult for the subject to accept the direction of the cure. The clinical consequence of this is that the ego should not be believed when it says that it does not want to have anything to do with the symptom. "I want this symptom removed/' says the ego. The ego only appears to want to be rid of the symptom. The more he/she tells us this, the more he/she loves the symptom. Freud used to %say that psychotics love their delusions as much as they love themselves. The same can be said of neurotics and related disorders. Thus, if the analyst resists understanding that the analysand does not want the symptom removed, despite all assertions to the contrary, then, following Lacan, resistance within the analytic situation is primarily the resistance of the analyst to listen and interpret what is at stake in the symptom. Thus appears the question of the therapeutic alliance as an ego-to-ego alliance that ends up strengthening the illusion of the symptom as a foreign intrusion. The analysand often describes the symptom as being like a virus from an unconscious of which he/she knows nothing. What does unconscious mean in this context? This is another neurotic trap; if one falls into it then one is making therapeutic alliances based on a belief in apparent good

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intentions and the division between ego and unconscious. If the analyst believes this, then with Lacan it can be said that the analyst is resisting. Although the existence of a symptom makes someone more ready to enter treatment, this does not mean that they want to change or relinquish the symptom. In contrast to an ego-syntonic character trait, a symptom represents a step forward in the revelation of an unconscious truth regarding desire. However, the step forward represented by an involuntary symptom need not deceive us as to the actual imaginary ego-syntonicity of the rest of the subject's character structure. The symptom has to become a psychoanalytic symptom or object, and be subjectively rectified before a psychoanalytic operation or intervention can succeed in its transformation. } If the analyst believes in the symptom, in the conscious story line or narrative, or in the transference to the subject supposed to know, then the analyst will collude with the resistance of the analysand. This is what Lacan calls resistance, the resistance of the analyst. If, out of sentimental empathy, the analyst allows himself/herself to become .hostage to the presenting symptom of the patient, although initially the client will experience the analyst as empathic, eventually the psychoanalytic symptom proper will appear in acting out outside the session or in boundary violations, cottfitertransference experiences/enactments, or inappropriate self-disclosures of the analyst within the session. It is often analysts or therapists who reject the function of the father, of the phallus, or of castration, and prefer to privilege the socalled pre-Oedipal dimensions of experience, who, when working with analysands whose mothers in collusion with the children disavowed or excluded the paternal function, most often fall prey to transference-countertransference enactments during the middle and properly paternal phase of analytic treatment. On the other hand, the paternal principle and the phallic function have to be understood beyond their imaginary patriarchal dimensions. Clinicians who are identified with the imaginary father and have not realised and accepted the lack in the Other, in the father and the Symbolic, do not have the flexibility/pliability to strategically involve a patient in the romantic and dyadic first phase of treatment and of Oedipus. The initial belief in and empathy for the symptom and the story line has to be purely strategic, or a strategy within the transference

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for purposes of establishing a therapeutic alliance. The analyst knows that it is the subject of the unconscious that knows and not the ego of the patient but, for the time being, he/she pretends that the ego of the analysand knows what he/she is talking about. This is the place of the therapeutic alliance that is an alliance with the patient's ego defences. Thus, a therapeutic alliance is typically a strategic alliance at best. Otherwise one could say that the analyst is resisting. True empathy has to be reserved for unconscious experience that the analysand usually experiences as unempathic and ego-dystonic. On the other hand, there is always the case of the exceptional analysand or ideal candidate that comes to analysis with a subjectively rectified symptom and in disbelief of their symptom. Trauma, Psychical Causality, and the Complementary Series The strategy within transference is even more important in cases coming with a history of moderate to severe trauma. This is another example in which the tendency towards environmentalism and ego psychological object relations within psychoanalysis converges with a psychodynamic and/or social work perspective that makes trauma the exclusive focus of psychopathology and psychotherapeutic treatment. Although it is true that in public mental health there is a greater prevalence of trauma, due to the socio-economic and cultural characteristics of the populations served, it is also true that within the trauma model perspective the notion of psychical causality and unconscious phantasy is in danger of extinction. Psychiatry has a tendency to fold over what is a three- or four-dimensional causal structure into a dualistic behaviour-brain or genetic-social dichotomy. The psychical series and the concept of a structural unconscious tend to eventually disappear from this perspective. What is needed is a model that can hold three or four dimensions of causality firmly in place. The problem with DSMIV, in this respect, is that it collapses the notion of the psyche or psychical causality into a behavioural definition of personality disorders. Although it is true that every instance of post-traumatic stress (PTSD) includes a history of trauma, not every trauma leads to posttraumatic stress. To me this explains the hidden causality of the psychical dimension of the unconscious. What is required for the development of PTSD is the interaction of the trauma with

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unconscious phantasy, and with structural phases of development. In addition, the fact that sexual abuse is the prototypical form of abuse, and that statistically sexual abuse occurs most often within the family and within the parent-child relationship (the father-daughter relationship, though not exclusively since there are plenty examples of mother-son incest), should have alerted clinicians to the presence of psychical causality and to the inevitability of the prohibition of incest as the foundatiori of the Oedipus myth (in the positive meaning of the term myth). What prevents clinicians and professionals from realising the nature of psychical causality lies in the misrecognition of the protophantasy of seduction, and the origin of sexual desire in the desire of the Other. In addition, clinicians and the social order in general tend to collapse the legal/moral and psychical dimensions of trauma. Jeffrey Masson (1984), contributed to the confusion and dichotomy between trauma and phantasy by attempting to regress to Ferenczi's exclusive emphasis on trauma, and holding on to the seduction hypothesis long after Freud had converted the seduction hypothesis into the seduction protophantasy. The seduction hypothesis fits well with the view that wants to deny the existence of childhood sexuality, the prohibition of incest, and the Oedipus myth/complex. In this view, children are innocent and free of sexuality, and if any sexuality is to be found in children it is because of the perversion of the adults around them. In addition, the protophantasy of seduction is consistent with the fact that sexuality comes from the outside, from the desires/phantasies and care-giving behaviour of the parents. This, however, does not mean that all parents sexually abuse their children. The repression of the protophantasy of seduction, at theoretical and subjective levels, can lead to the paranoid view that sexual abuse is widespread and takes place in the majority of households ruled by a patriarchal order. When the inevitable reality of sexual phantasy between parents and children is repressed, this leads to the paranoia that if anything like that exists, it must mean then that there was actual sexual abuse in the family. Therapists at the beginning of their careers, as well as those influenced by a kind of activist and partial political mentality, are particularly prone to this kind of distorted perspective. The fact that children may sexually arouse parents is not sufficient proof that they abused their children, but rather of the cultural necessity of the prohibition of incest. Both the arousal/desire

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of the parent and its prohibition, taken together, give rise to a culturally produced sexuality in children. This is an important point because within certain psychoanalytic circles in the United States, for example, there is the belief that the only alternative to an environmental trauma hypothesis is to rely on a dated concept of a biological drive. Such a view does not take into account how unconscious phantasy, sexuality, and psychical causality are constructed within an unconscious symbolic cultural universe that Lacan called the discourse of the Other. The question of the universality of the prohibition of incest in Anthropology was settled long ago by Levi-Strauss' structuralist response to the functionalist perspective of Malinowsky. Levi-Strauss pointed to the fact that the examples of cultural exceptions to the prohibition of incest were in fact the exceptions that confirm the rule. If the sexual relationship to the parent is not forbidden, there is always a primary family tie or relationship that is forbidden in every culture. In other historical cases, incest has only been allowed for an elite group but forbidden for everyone else. That a child may have wanted to seduce a parent out of their Oedipal wishes, or that they felt seduced by a parent for the same reasons, does not make them legally or ethically responsible for a violation of the incest boundary. On the other hand, when therapists focus exclusively in the symptom of trauma and empathise with the symptom and the patient by telling them that it is not their fault and that their parents violated their otherwise pure childhood innocence, this by itself does not seem to relieve the patient of their PTSD symptomatology. I have treated many clients who already had this form of treatment and were dissatisfied with the results. What they wanted was for someone to listen to their unconscious feelings of guilt due to their Oedipal desires. On the other hand, it is also true that analysts who focus on the psychical to the exclusion of the environmental traumatic series also suffer from the same kind of one-dimensional myopia. To exclude one or another form of causality from the genetic/psychical/ environmental series leads to different kinds of clinical errors (type I and type II errors). With his concept of the complementary causal series for the production of symptomatology, Freud had already provided a solution for the seduction hypothesis/seduction protophantasy dichotomy/dilemma. The latter is part of the psychical

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series, the former part of the environmental/accidental series. What is needed is a dialectical perspective that can simultaneously hold the view of sexuality as traumatic and of sexual trauma as Oedipal in nature. This reality is also coextensive to the relationship between truth and fiction, material reality and psychical reality, and historical memory and screen memory. These pairs are always found in various degrees of combination, and the work of the clinician/ analyst is to recognise their relative contributions to the mental life of the subject. I would dare to say that it is only psychoanalysts who are equipped to make this assessment and diagnoses. Although empirical researchers/psychologists have debunked the notion of repressed memories of trauma (Freud had abandoned the one dimensional trauma theory long ago), and have experimentally shown that children can distort memory with their own fears and wishes, they don't have the theoretical framework to put the pieces back together into a coherent structure. With respect to the therapeutic relationship, the presence of a history of trauma complicates the question of the symptom, the therapeutic alliance, and the phases of the transference. It is very difficult to focus on questions of desire, sexual difference, and sexuality with a patient with a history of severe sexual trauma. It is also difficult to redefine the symptom involved in a repetition of the trauma without risking blaming the victim of the trauma. These clients tend to either be very inhibited with respect to sexuality or engage in a fair amount of sexual acting out and have difficulty controlling their impulses. In either case there is a resistance to symbolise and articulate questions of unconscious sexuality. When there is sexual acting out or a repetition of the abuse, but as perpetrator rather than victim, the perverse abuser has succeeded in transmitting to the victim the basic ingredients of a perverse structure. In these cases, and if the patient stays in treatment, either the focus on the trauma, or the focus on the Oedipal ramifications of the trauma and its manifestation in the transference relationship, has to wait for later phases of the treatment. This waiting does not come without a price, given that in the meantime unconscious guilt continues to generate a significant amount of anxiety for the patient. I have already stated that self-blame does not only come from the trauma but from the unconscious phantasies associated to it. The golden mean between generating excess anxiety by a premature focus

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on trauma and not alleviating excess anxiety by not doing so has to be decided on a case-by-case basis and not in standard fashion. The Calculated or Strategic Vacillation of the Analyst's Neutrality In other areas, even though Lacan's concept of the desire of the analyst is a novel way of re-formulating the classical themes of abstinence and neutrality, he also introduces some technical modifications. One of them he calls the "calculated vacillation of the analyst's neutrality". If there is a calculation then, in some way, one must know what the outcome may be. Lacan introduces this concept in his paper on the Subversion of the Subject and Dialectic of Desire (1977) and he explains it in the following way. Many times when working with a hysteric analysand, a calculated vacillation is worth much more than a series of interpretations that lead nowhere. Only if the analyst is sure that there will be no actual sexual contact between analyst and analysand may the analyst open this possibility in relation to the analysand. In other words, the analysand may believe that a sexual relation with the analyst is possible and although the analyst knows this will never actually take place, he/she does not explicitly or directly say so. What is at stake here is support of the transference in terms of being able to tolerate an erotic transference instead of using a genetic interpretation ("it is not me who you desire, but your father") as a stop-gap; to tolerate an erotic transference instead of avoiding it due to the anxiety in the situation. On the other hand, the above would be true only with a neurotic analysand. With a structurally psychotic, or perverse, or even an acting out severely borderline/hysteric patient, this kind of ambiguity with regards to the erotic transference could be counterproductive. A psychotic patient can easily develop a psychotic transference, and a perverse or sociopathic patient could place the analyst at risk. With the psychotic and perverse/sociopathic patient, for the most part (there are always exceptions) the analyst wants to direct the analysis of the erotic transference away from the therapeutic relationship. The reverse is true with the neurotic analysand: the analyst does well by referencing sexual comments made about other relationships back to the relationship with the analyst. This could be interpreted as a kind of seduction, thus the relevance of the calculated vacillation

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of the analyst's neutrality. On the other hand, it is also true that when the neurotic analysand overtly and directly speaks about the erotic transference, this by itself does not mean that the analyst has to address the issue in the way the analysand is raising it. It is important to remember what Freud said about the transference also being a form of resistance. Conscious phantasies can help sustain the exploration of desire but can also be defences against speaking about the experience of loss within privation, frustration, and castration. The Desire of the Analyst and the Question of the Countertransference Finally, a few words are in order with respect to Lacan's critique of the concept of countertransference. Clearly, what Lacan had in mind with the concept of the desire of the analyst is not what is usually considered to be countertransference. Additionally, Lacan points out that the notion of countertransference is fraught with the danger of reducing the experience of the analyst to a subjective "felt experience" lacking the conditions of transmissibility. In contrast to such a notion, the concept of the signifier provides a more objective reference for understanding the analyst's experience. A paramount example of such would be Freud's paper on "the forgetting of proper names" offered as the first chapter of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1965). Here Freud self-discloses to the public and to future analysts something of his personal experience with the signifier. The purpose of the self-disclosure is nothing more or less than the transmission of psychoanalysis. The forgetting of a proper name occurs together with the return of mistaken names. Freud forgot the name of the painter Signorelli and instead produced the names Boticelli and Boltrafio. Freud develops a schema of the movement of signifiers within a structural understanding of the unconscious. This example shows the scansion or cutting of words and their displacement and condensation into new words. Moreover, it also shows that substitutions do not appear by mere chance. The painters Boticelli and Boltrafio were not chosen for being painters per se but because association linked them given the context of the signifying situation. The repressed thoughts that were associated with a signifying situation located in Bosnia/ Herzegovina had to do with death and sexuality and ultimately with

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reference to the father (Signor and Hen). Nonetheless, the important point is how Freud indicates the way in which something of his own subjective experience is transmissible across time from analyst tp analyst beyond the immanence of subjective experience. With the notion of the countertransference as projective identification, such is lost because, despite all assertions to the contrary, there is increasingly the unilateral belief that all that happens to the analyst in the analytical situation reaches him/her by way of the analysand. In the clinical example given above, I believe that my imaginary ego was identified with the signifier of psychoanalysis as represented by more frequent sessions. This master signifier functioned as a stopgap for my own lack as a subject. When the analysand said, "Your waiting room is too weak", at the imaginary ego level I experienced it as a blow to my professional ambition and imaginary identification with psychoanalysis. My waiting room was too weak to be worthy of a psychoanalyst to whom he would be willing to pay two sessions a week. Had I disclosed my countertransference to this analysand, this would have added more fuel to his negative transference and I would have in fact become the subject who did not know. But this lack and ignorance would have been purely imaginary. As I have shown, being the master who knows is no safe haven either. I got out of this predicament by an appeal to the signifier that represents the subject. "Two a weak is too weak," has a polyvocal and equivocal meaning that linked at least two things. It linked his statement about my waiting room and the frequency of the sessions (the subject of the enunciation) and both of our subjectivities (the enunciating subject). I meant to say that he experienced coming twice a week as further submission to the father figure that he had embodied in the analyst. However, I realise only now, as I write, that my interpretation also told him something about my subjectivity. I associated his statement about the weakness of my waiting room (its lack of aesthetics) to my imaginary identification with the analytical function. Even though I wanted him to come twice a week, I did not consider that twice-aweek sessions constituted psychoanalysis. It is interesting to note that although this analysand resisted increasing his financial/psychical investment in the analysis (he did not have the financial means), and frustrated my demands for more frequent sessions, in the long run I consider it to be a case of long-term psychotherapy that turned out

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to be an analysis in fact. The key point for our current purposes is that, over time, it is the signifier that holds the key to both transference and countertransference, as well as to the transmission of psychoanalysis. It is the desire of the analyst that helps the analyst regulate the countertransference or better his/her transference to the analysand. In this case it was my desire not to remain stuck in the identification with the subject supposed to know or the imaginary ego identification with psychoanalysis. It was my desire for unconscious knowing that allowed me to let go of the imaginary ego and be represented and enlightened by the signifier. The desire of the analyst represents a subjective fruit of the personal.analysis, a transformation of jouissance, and not an objective form of neutrality, abstinence, and anonymity. It is not that my subjectivity was not involved in the situation, and that I was operating as a blank mirror, but that I was able to mirror the symbolic connection between the signifier and the subject, and between his signifiers and mine. The desire of the analyst is the desire not to remain in the position of a beloved master of knowledge or the subject supposed to know. The more the analyst tries to give to the analysand, either love or knowledge, to please or be loved by the analysand, the more countertransference obstacles he/she will experience, and the more the analyst could end up developing a transference neurosis towards his/her analysand. The countertransference needs to be handled through a personal analysis or disclosed to other professionals but not to the analysand of the analyst. If the analyst discloses his/her countertransference to the analysand, then the analysand becomes the analyst's analyst. No matter how much an analysand may want to find the weaknesses or blind spots of their analyst, they don't want to be left without an analyst. When the analysand becomes the analyst of the analyst this is tantamount to winning in Oedipus and therefore can generate a great deal of anxiety and guilt feelings as iatrogenic effects of the treatment. The moral of the story is that no matter how much analysts try to save analysands from the iatrogenic privations, frustrations, and castrations that come with the asymmetry of the analytical situation, the result of many personal disclosures or gifts of the analyst may, in the end, cause even more damage to the patient.

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On the other hand, this should not lead one to believe that the analyst should never make reference to his/her own subjective experience. Winrdcott pointed out that the analyst should not attempt to hide his/her personal failings or mistakes. This is consistent with the Lacanian notion that the analysand needs to come to terms with the lack in the Other, in this case of the analyst. This is particularly true of idealising transferences, or of masochistic analysands who always tend to blame themselves for everything and to raise the analyst to a pedestal of perfection.

Bibliography Freud, S. ([1922] 1959). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. New York: Norton. Freud, S. ([1900] 1965). The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Avon Books. Freud, S. ([1901] 1965). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. New York: Norton. Lacan, J. (1966). The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious. In: Ecrits. New York: Norton, 2002. Lacan, J. ([1961] 1991). Le transfert dans sa disparite subjective, sa pretendue situation, ses excursions techniques. Le Siminaire, Livre VIII. Paris: Seuil. Lacan, J. (1961). The direction of the treatment and the principles of its power. In: Ecrits. New York: Norton, 2002. Lacan, J. (1962/1963). L'angoisse. Le Siminaire X, unpublished. Lacan, J. (1972). El Tiempo Ldgico y el Aserto. de Certidumbre Anticipada. Un Nuevo Sofisma. Escritos I. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores. Lacan, J. ([1973] 1978). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. trans. Alan Sheridan (1977). New York: Norton. Maslow, A. (1999). Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Wiley. Masson, J. (1984). The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Patsalides, A. (1993). Personal conversation. Berkeley.

CHAPTER SIX

The Question of Time: Phases of Analysis and Oedipus in Analytic Treatments

Introduction

L

acan developed what I call ai multiform criterion for the practice of analysis. This does not mean that the Lacanian field has no practice standards but that psychoanalysis cannot be practiced according to the "one size fits all" criteria. Lacan's clinical practice was consistent with his early theoretical cry for a return to Freud. Post-Freudian classical psychoanalysis attempts to be more Freudian than Freud and follows him in his sayings but not in his practices with patients. Typically, Freud's unconventional or nonstandard frame is attributed to him being the first analyst and not having been analysed himself. It is said that Freud was overly active and educative with patients, that he spoke too much, fed them, lent them money, did couple sessions, and conducted analytical sessions in people's houses, walking, on horseback, and in cafes. Freud also advocated having sessions almost every day, or more often than not. His analyses lasted up to one year but certainly not the ten and twenty years that became the norm in the psychoanalysis practiced under the standard frame. On the other hand, Freud often stressed that the unconscious and people's defences need time and this seems to run contrary to the emphasis on short treatments that have become the norm in the mental health field, or the behavioural field as it is now called. 195

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The emphasis on short or brief treatments originates from at least three factors: access to treatment, economic factors, and the call for evidence-based efficient treatments that have been empirically validated. It goes without saying that, for the most part, statistical methods and the clinical trials methodology can only be used with short-term treatments. There have been several studies that have empirically validated the efficiency of psychoanalytic forms of shortterm psychotherapy. The limitation of empirical methodology does not mean, however, that longer-term treatments may not be effective or even necessary. In fact, consumer reports studies have shown that consumers have found long-term psychotherapy more helpful than short-term psychotherapy. Thus, since its inception, psychoanalysis has not relied on statistical sampling methods and control groups but has operated according to the single clinical case study method as a point of articulation between theory and clinical practice. The first factor that influenced the development of short treatments arose in the 1950s when the demands for long-term treatment exceeded the availability of therapists. Short-term therapy was seen as an expedient alternative to long-term analyses. Lacan's short session also had a dimension of accessibility given that he could not cope with the demand for his services. I have mentioned that, at the peak of his popularity, his waiting room was full of people hoping to be seen. Giving each a short session was a way of maximising the number of people he could treat, although to reduce his short session to this practical problem would be to mock his logical and theoretical criteria. The same can be said of the common belief that Freud used a couch solely due to his difficulty or dislike for establishing eye contact with his patients. Finally, sometimes brief therapy may be the only treatment a patient may accept, thereby maximising the access to treatment. The economic factor is also associated with access to treatment, to managed care, the cost of treatment, and to people's ability to pay for a treatment. The third factor of outcome research focuses on the empirical evidence for the efficiency of treatments in achieving symptom reduction or elimination. The last two factors are related, because why should people pay so much money for a treatment the efficacy of which is in doubt? It is also true that, since the beginning of psychoanalysis, the analytical field was also concerned with the question of reducing the length and cost of treatments. Several of

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Freud's students took differing positions with respect to the question of technique, most notably Jung and Ferenczi. The definition of cure and the goal of treatment have also changed from the permanent elimination or suppression of certain symptoms to developing a different relationship to the symptom, particularly in the case of character disorders and when neurotic symptoms are rooted in characterological traits. The goal of treatment is not to eliminate the symptom per se but help the client use their symptoms and their problems as learning opportunities for their own growth and development. The final Lacan focused on the sinthome as a response to the difficulty of removing the symptom and the imperviousness or resistance of the symptom to analytical interpretations. The symptom was no longer a symbolic metaphor th^t could be removed via interpretation, but a form oijouissance in the Real. Tlie Question of Time and the Unconscious Since jouissance seems to defy time, symbolic rationality, and the realm of meaning, Lacan advocated for the senseless or foolish use of the signifier and for different forms or conceptions of time. Effective treatment was not simply a question of waiting until the patient was ready and willing to accept an interpretation and let go of the satisfactions oijouissance provided by the symptom, however neurotic. Once it became clear to Lacan and others that some symptoms are not affected or removed by psychoanalytic interpretations, regardless of the length of the treatment, the question became how to work with the patient's defences in the here and now instead of waiting for something to happen in the future. Freud and the first generation of analysts provided future analysts with the benefit of decades of experience of people in analyses for long periods of time. To work with the future in the present requires a different approach to time and a distinction of different forms of time in the past, present, and future. People not only need time, as Freud believed, but need different types or dimensions of time. As stated in the previous chapter, and as quoted below, Lacan developed the notion of what he called logical time. What he calls logical time would not seem logical to most people. Lacan's definition of time divides time into two categories: diachronic (or chronological) time and

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logical (or synchronic) time. This is a traditional distinction of time: continuous time and discontinuous time, or conscious time and the timelessness of the unconscious, or eternal time in the present versus the time of development in the past and future. Formal linear time can usually be attributed to the function of the father, or to a time tracking, taskmaster boss or obsessive super-ego. This is to be contrasted to the timelessness or circular time of the desire of the mother and of hysteria. Instead of planning and doing in the diachronic linear time of the obsessive, the hysteric wants to let "being-time" emerge according to desire and present conditions and considerations. The caricature of a husband and wife arguing over being late for an event would be a case in point. He is upset over being late and she says to him: "Relax, we won't be late and, if we are, whatever time we arrive will be the right time/7 This timelessness or negation of time in the unconscious should be conceived as a dialectical rather than a formal type of negation. A dialectical negation does not eliminate but rather includes both what it surpasses and what it negates. Synchronic time includes past and future in the present. Large units of time are included in small units of time. In this way, the notion of logical time, or the time of the unconscious, appears related to new notions of time in relativity and quantum theory of physics. Relativity theory requires abandoning the Newtonian idea oJf a universal time that all clocks measure. Instead, everyone has his/her own personal time. The standard frame with regards to time would be a Newtonian idea applied to psychoanalysis. In contrast, the Lacanian singular length session is an Einsteinian and Quantum version of psychoanalytic practice. Standard time runs the same for everyone in every session. Non-standard time runs differently for every session. The time of the unconscious is non-standard and personal and therefore it is relative and symbolic, or imaginary time as it is called in quantum physics. It is not the absence of time but rather a different dimension of time. "Imaginary time is a relatively simple concept that is rather difficult to visualise or conceptualise. In essence, it is another direction of time moving at right angles to ordinary time. In the image below, the light grey (horizontal) lines represent ordinary

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time flowing from right to left—past to future. The dark grey (vertical) lines depict imaginary time, moving at right angles to ordinary time." [Corbett, D., Stafford, K., & Wright, P., 2007]. (The bracketing and the image below are mine.)

The logic of what I will call symbolic time precisely corresponds to the moment of cutting, or concluding the session of analysis. In addition, imaginary, or what I am calling symbolic unconscious time, "is a way of looking at the time dimension as if it were a dimension of space: you can move forward and backward along imaginary time, just like you can move right and left in space" (idem). Imaginary time, as a dimension of time, is the point of articulation between space and time. Time is not only linear from past to present, but it also goes from future or forward to the past and then to the present. This is both the timeless and personal dimension of time. The question of a different dimension of time is a point of consistency between Relativity theory and Quantum theory, both of which work with time-space continuity as a unit. Relativity theory works with the general structure of the universe, whereas Quantum theory works with the infinitesimally small. In the extremely small amounts of matter, time does not appear to be a direct function of movement from one direction to another according to the speed of light. Small units of matter, such as sub-atomic particles, function according to non-locality and can travel instantaneously from one place to another faster than the speed of light. Here time stands still as opposed to only slowing down according to the speed of light. The inclusion of the large in the small (units of time) also includes the inclusion of the long in the short (three years of treatment in thirty sessions) and moving forward and backward, from future to the past, as it appears in the present in symbolic time. With his notion of logical time, Lacan arrives at a new articulation of these two forms

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of time. The traditional function of the father around time is deployed in a new and surprising way to bring forth the question of desire with greater clarity and precision. The future is brought to bear on the past in the present. The future ending of treatment is enacted in the ending of each session. In addition, each ending of a session precipitates the working through of the past in the present and between sessions. The ending of a session does not follow a linear sequence, but rather the future end is brought to bear on the present. As mentioned in the previous chapter: Lacan (1972) established a difference between what he called logical and chronological time. Logical time is composed of the following interrelated elements: 1. an instant of the glance; 2. a time for understanding; and 3. a moment of concluding. This conceptual tool was used to establish an operational mode that would parallel the evanescent pulsation of the unconscious occurring within a different temporal dimension than that of the ego-consciousness associated with ordinary speech. The instant of the glance and the moment of concluding refer to the surprising opening and closing of the unconscious as revealed, for example, in a disruptive slip of the tongue or parapraxis. In this respect, Lacan teaches that the moment of concluding retroactively precipitates the time for understanding. The unconscious has to open and close before the time for understanding can begin. What is at stake is to reproduce, during an analytical session, an operation that would have the same effect of precipitating the time for understanding both within and outside the session, for the session does not end when it ends.

With linear notions of time, we think that we recognise or discover something for the first time, then we understand it, and then it is time for concluding or ending a session. When the unconscious opens in analysis, we are looking at the mind as it was in the past. It is the eruption of the past in the present instant. In contrast to space-time in physics, in the mind-time continuum we don't see the unconscious the way it was then, but the way it is now, whereas the reverse is true in the time-space continuum. The unconscious is over-here not over-there but also appears over-here the way it was in the past. However, given that we do not have space and the speed of light as

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mediating factors, there is no way of confirming exactly how the unconscious was in the past. With the unconscious we only know the past in the present. It is in this sense that Freud said there is no time in the Unconscious. The Unconscious is always in the present time: the present as it was in the past, and as how it arises in the present moment, and as it will be in the future. In this sense, no time is the same as eternal or synchronic time. In the case of the stars, we see them the way they were in the past, but we do not know for a fact how they would appear in the present. The notion of the unconscious as always manifesting in the present moment reveals an interesting paradox given that the unconscious always seems to divide the subject. Although the unconscious comes from the subject it is not under the conscious control of the ego. Although the unconscious does not fail to present the subject with unconscious truths, it is the ego who is not present or in time with the reality of the unconscious. The ego lives in the past and the future (or diachronic time) whereas the unconscious lives in the present moment. The unconscious appears, opens, or erupts over here but it also closes within the session. Typically patients want to continue talking abbut what they were talking about before the unconscious appeared. The patient does not behave like a lover, a mystic, or a scientist who has been waiting a long time for an event to happen. The patient does not want to know the unconscious subject/object, and therefore the moment of understanding cannot begin or take place. Most people are lovers of ignorance rather than unconscious knowing. This is the case because in analysis the Unconscious mostly represents a knowing about lack and loss of both the ego and the object. Despite the resistances to unconscious knowing, the analyst directs his/her efforts to maintain the momentum of the opening of the unconscious. Just like the unconscious appeared in symbolic time, the ending of the session, as a treatment tool, also has to end in symbolic time in order to facilitate the moment of understanding between sessions and not only within sessions. As the appearance of the unconscious refers to the manifestation of the past in the present, the ending of the session refers to the appearance of the future between sessions in the present. Both events are taking place in symbolic time.

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The question regarding the effectiveness of the treatment also has to be understood in a non-conventional way in order to work with the unconscious and with what resists rational and conventional intervention. Even if the patient wants to cooperate with the doctor, the unconscious ego and the symptom may not. For this reason, in order to bypass the resistance of the ego or the symptom, the history of psychoanalysis and medicine in general is interwoven with that of hypnosis and suggestion as therapeutic techniques. A therapeutic intervention takes place on a symbolic net and a mode of jouissance not under the control of the conscious ego of the patient. In most cases, within psychoanalysis, the approach to the symptom is both direct and indirect. It is direct with respect to the identification of the symptom, indirect with respect to its modification. I say in most cases, because there are always exceptions that confirm the norm. In cases of severe and frequent panic attacks, for example, a psychoanalyst, who is also a psychiatrist, may temporarily prescribe anti-anxiety medications, or a psychologist/psychoanalyst may teach the analysand a relaxation exercise. The Unconscious and the elimination of the symptom are like an experience of Zen enlightenment, if you turn towards it and try to grab it, it eludes you. However, if you leave the experience alone, then the Unconscious is right there in the here and now of analytical activity. Both analyst and analysand should be transformed and revived, or feel psychically enlightened by the experience and encounter with the unconscious. This may not always be pleasant but it will certainly be experienced as a form of jouissance. The types of jouissance the analyst experiences will depend on his/her own work and transformation with the different forms of jouissance. The elimination of the symptom is a by-product or a fruit of the manifestation of the unconscious. The objective criterion of effectiveness is subjective and rooted in the subjectivity of the subject in relationship to the object. The subject of the unconscious appears in relationship to its object, which in this case is also another subject (the analyst). Lacan's interest in the non-standard frame and the direction of the treatment is intrinsically tied to the questions of the effectiveness, duration, and cost of the treatment. Treatments that last for a long period tend to become predictable. They go over the same material with the same ineffective interpretations. There is no variation in the

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days of the week, or the amount of time per session. This became the target of Lacan's technical formulations and innovations. The Preliminary Phase and the First Phase of the Treatment Taking a detailed clinical and personal history becomes a necessary precondition for time-limited treatment, including a history of prior treatment. What worked, what did not and why? What was the focus of prior treatment? What is the patient's understanding of the self-knowledge gained in previous treatment? It is not ethical to keep charging fees for the same form of treatment that did not work in the past. ^Like in any clinical situation, the first interview begins with the question regarding the symptom. Although this is a traditional medical and clinical question, it has a particular psychoanalytic meaning regarding the beginning of the treatment. It creates the analytic space in which the analysand begins to distinguish between a malaise or discontent and the manifestation of a psychoanalytic symptom. In his introduction to the case of Dora, Freud said that many patients are particularly vague about the description of their symptoms. A symptom must be identified which will be the focus of the treatment, and this symptom must be understood as egodystonic. The symptom refers to the patient's desire rather than to what others want or have done to them. Thus, clients with a history of severe trauma are usually not good candidates for a brief form of analytic treatment because the question of desire is obscured by the presence of a trauma such as sexual abuse. It is essential to reconcile and integrate the psychical and environmental dimensions of the trauma. This usually cannot be done in brief treatment. An exception to this rule would be a case where the analysand has done a significant amount of trauma work but has not reconciled the trauma experience with the questions posed by their own desires and Oedipal structure. In contrast to other forms of dynamic brief therapies, in a Lacanian brief analysis the symptom will not necessarily be the "theme77 of the treatment, because in phase II the symptom will be linked to emerging unconscious phantasies, dreams, and traumas. It is the latter that will be the thematic and phantasmatic focus of the

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treatment. Thus Lacan described the formula for the phantasm as a "matheme" or the mother of all themes: the primal phantasies. With the history-taking and identification of the symptom, the analysand begins to understand that the knowledge that will help him/her will emerge from them rather than from the professional knowledge of the analyst/clinician. This is important because what I will call a brief analysis need not be modelled after suggestive or behavioural or medical treatments where the therapist will tell the patients what he needs to do or take to change their symptoms. As stated in the previous chapter, In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud (1921/1959) described the wish of people to look for leaders to hold authority over them. In the example of analysis, the analys­ and comes into analysis begging to be ordered or, at least, want­ ing the analyst to wield a curative power over him/her. Because of this, Lacan always insisted upon differentiating psychoanalysis from the direction of souls or pastoral counselling or any other variety of counselling. Subjected to the demand of the Other, the neurotic cannot tolerate being in a situation where he/she may have to speak with his/her own words rather than with those of the Other.

The analysand will have to use their own words and language to describe their experience and symptoms. In doing this, the unconscious signifying chain determining the development of symptomatology within language will begin to emerge and manifest in the treatment. By showing interest in what the analysand has to say or knows, whether consciously or unconsciously, the first phase of a transference relationship is also initiated. In contrast to suggestion or the leader/follower relationship of group psychology, the analyst is first in the position of lover rather than beloved. As presented in Chapter III, I follow Lacan in Seminar VIII on the subject of the transference where he uses the Greek categories of Erastes and Eromenos in order to account for what he calls the metaphor of love as it occurs in psychoanalytic treatment. He speaks of the metaphor of love to account for transformations in the transference during the phases of analysis.

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If we speak of metaphor, we are speaking of substitution with respect to the reciprocal substitution that takes place between analyst and analysand in relation to the places of lover and beloved. Lacan says that, at the outset of an analysis, the analyst is in two places, the place of Erastes (lover) and the place of what he called the subject supposed to know(ing). In Chapter III, I noted that these two places of the metaphor of love and the love transference (towards the subject supposed to know) are somewhat discordant. In the first or beginning phase of analysis, the analysand is in the place of the beloved because he/she is worthy of the analyst's unconditional interest and attention and the analysand is the object and purpose of the analytical operation. The empathic analyst is the lover wanting to know something about the analysand and willing to hear anything they may want to say. Using the term lover, instead of simply speaking of the empathic function of the analyst, has the advantage of introducing the love dimension of the transference, as well as laying the ground for the introduction of the question of sexuality further on in the treatment. On the other hand, the analyst is in the position of the subject supposed to know something about the analysand's suffering. Here the analyst appears to be the one in the position of the beloved. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the analysis, the subject supposed to know is not yet a full blown object of the transference, because the analysand does not yet know what they lack or whether this, lack is Real, Imagined or Symbolic. In addition, the analysand does not know what their unconscious Other knows/desires. The analysand loves the analyst for what they know, but this first takes the form of a conscious therapeutic alliance. The analyst is a foreground lover and a background beloved subject supposed to know. The analysand is a foreground beloved and a background lover (of the subject supposed to know). In the previous chapter, I also made a distinction between the subject supposed to know, which is how sujet suppose savoir is usually translated into English, and what I called subject supposed to knowing. The first would be a better rendition of the transference in the first phase of analysis, and the latter would be a better description of the second phase of transference. In the second phase, the analysand will transfer their unconscious objects on to the analyst. This is known as the transference neurosis,

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and is usually considered to be what distinguishes an analysis from brief therapy. In brief therapy the transference neurosis is not given a full-blown development. What, then, would be the second phase of the transference, for the second phase of a brief analysis, if the transference neurosis and the corresponding regression were not fully actualised? I will return to this later. In the first phase of analysis, the analyst is a foreground lover and a background beloved (as the subject supposed to know), whereas the reverse is true for the analysand. In the foreground, the analysand is beloved by the conscious interest of the analyst, whereas, in the background, the analysand is a lover of the subject supposed to know. However, the subject of the lack and the unconscious signifiers of desire lies latently, waiting to emerge and unfold. The beloved analysand offers himself as a canvas on which the analyst may draw some brilliant designs. However, from the beginning, and thanks to the desire of the analyst, as a fruit of the personal analysis of the analyst, the analyst is not seduced into believing in the transference to subject supposed to know. The analyst seduces the analysand with his/her own knowledge only to the extent that this will facilitate the movement of the treatment through the phases leading to termination. How the analyst functions as lover of the analysand under the desire of the analyst will determine the possibility of a successful termination in phase three of the treatment. The first phase of the treatment also corresponds with the oral and first phase of Oedipal structure in relationship to the mother. By loving the analysand in the sense of expressing an interest and unconditional regard for the free associations of the analysand, the analysand feels as if held by the therapeutic desire and environment of the analyst. This promise and gift of love represents the romantic phase of a love relationship that echoes back to the first phase of Oedipus with the mother. During the first phase of the treatment, the rule of free association is also given in the form of a paradoxical imperative to speak, but freely. Maternal desire and empathy will be experienced in the form of whatever you say, however insignificant or devalued, it will be accepted in analysis. This leads to a safe environment within which the analysand will experience regression in the double meaning of both failure or backsliding and a re-experiencing of past experiences in the present and in relationship to the analyst.

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However, the metaphor of maternal love goes only so far, given that the symbolic function of the father will be the underside of the rule of free association. The imperative to speak, and the listening silence of the analyst, is so that the analyst may know when and how to intervene and punctuate and cut the discourse of the analysand. The symbolic function of the father/analyst will begin to be increasingly felt toward the latter part of the first phase of treatment. The cutting of the session is an integral part of the multiform analytical frame for the practice of psychoanalysis. It also differs from the practice of interpretation because it consists of a formal analysis of discourse rather than an adding or filling the speech of the analysand with new content or meaning coming from the analyst. The scansion of discourse also generates new spaces and holes in the ^discourse of the analysand that will facilitate new symbolic organisation and function within the preconscious of the analysand. The elements of speech are not fragmented but rather reorganised by the yregnanz and pregnancy of the Symbolic order. Symbolic interventions, such as the scansion of speech and the cutting of the session, stop the destructive or pathological aspects of regression and facilitate progression and reorganisation between sessions. This point about limiting the pathological aspects of regression is important for the wider applicability of psychoanalytic treatment, whether in its short- or long-term varieties. The fact that brief therapy had to be used to help patients who would only accept and access brief therapy but had otherwise long-ranging problems originating in early forms of development, also led to the discovery that brief therapy could also be effective with more severe disorders, even as a second best or maintenance forms of treatment. It is not only a question of facilitating regression within sessions but also inhibiting it, and facilitating progression and separation between sessions. The dimension of discontinuity and rupture introduced by the variability of the length of the session is effective in generating repressed unconscious material but at the same time brings the dimension of the future, of ending and separation, to the horizon of the analytic experience. The variable-length session is explained to the future analysand at the beginning of the treatment. The analysand is told that the sessions will last anywhere between twenty and fifty minutes depending on the work of each session. For the most part, the

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analyst schedules sessions on the hour and tailors the singularity of the session on an individual basis. The analysand is told that the analyst will suggest a time to end the session and that they will be given an opportunity to respond by agreeing that it is a good time to stop or by producing more material. If the client does produce more material, then the material is explored to the extent and length that it continues to illuminate the main work of the session. If it turns out to be a defence or a distraction, then the analyst goes along with it only so far and then ends the session. It is also possible that the analysand may choose to end the session in which case, if the analyst agrees, the analyst says until next time (or the day for the next session). The analyst may also ask the analysand to say more about the analysand's wish to end before agreeing to end the session. Some Lacanians believe that a regular thirty-minute brief session can have similar effects to the variable length session: They therefore schedule analysands on the half-hour. This practice raises other questions regarding the number of sessions for the overall treatment, the number of analysands that could be scheduled on any given day, and the cost for each session. However, this is beyond the boundaries of this chapter. Suffice it to say that with the variable length session, if one were to plot an average length of a session for. a treatment, it might very well fall more or less within the thirty-minute range. As far as the number of sessions is concerned, the analyst tells the analysand, that the brief analysis will last around thirty sessions, and that the frequency of sessions may vary. Regarding the latter, and the working through between sessions, the analyst has to weigh the relative importance of maturity over time and experience versus the momentum and the gravitas of the material at hand. Finally, psychoanalysis is not a non-directive treatment, although the direction of the treatment is not given by the therapist as a kind of manager of defensive or coping behaviour, or by telling the patients what to do or how to tiiink (more rationally, etc.). In contrast to the "active technique", the direction and activity of the analyst is given by the larger unconscious mind. The analyst does not merely cite or quote the analysand as a non-directive Rogerian therapist would. The analyst quotes the discourse of the analysand's unconscious, what they dcxn't realise they are saying and points towards an enigma. Thus the direction of the treatment is given by the manifestation of the unconscious in the session. The analyst is in

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active listening mode and in pursuit of the appearance of the unconscious signifying chain within the patient's speech. Just as the treatment may be organised in three phases, the concept of logical time also implies that, at a micro-level, a session may also have three moments or phases. In a session an analyst first listens and scans (as both glancing and cutting) the speech of the analysand. This listening and scansion of speech leads to the instant of the glance/revealing the bird of the unconscious. Secondarily, an analyst has more than one way to handle the moment of understanding. S/he may ask the analysand to say more, s/he may interpret or s/he may end the session. According to Lacan, the moment of understanding retroactively comprises and includes both the moment of concluding and the instance of seeing. The instant of the glance also can be subdivided into three sub-phases: listening, scanning, and glancing. In contrast to other forms of analysis, the moment of understanding may not begin until the moment of concluding has taken place. The Second Phase of the Treatment I will describe this important phase of treatment in terms of the second phase of the transference, the emergence and working through of what Lacan calls the "crossing or traversing of the phantasm77, and the intervention of the father in the second phase of Oedipus. Just like the first phase of Oedipus involved the question of the jouissance of the (m) Other, the second phase of Oedipus involves' the appearance of phallic puissance, With regards to the phases of treatment, the second phase is related to the moment of understanding in a couple of different ways. First, the second phase is where the unconscious primary mathemes will be explored and interpreted in full force as a function of the transformations in the transference relationship. In addition, the mathemes or protothemes first emerged as an effect of analytical interventions during the instant of the glance. Second, the termination phase is present from the very beginning through to the moment of concluding in every session. As stated above, the moment of concluding helps precipitate the moment of understanding and the emergence of the primal phantasies or the phantasm, as Lacan calls it. During the second phase of treatment, the moment of concluding continues to facilitate the working through of significant material..

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The second phase of treatment is also established by the aim/end of analysis. The latter is regulated by the desire of the analyst to see the unconscious manifesting on the surface of speech while not believing in the surface value of the conscious symptom. Moreover, it is the analyst's disbelief in the transference to the subject supposed to know, the desire not to be desired or the non-attachment to results, and to the analysand, that allows for the second phase to emerge and for the treatment to eventually succeed and end. The therapeutic relationship can continue and proceed because the relationship has ended with each session and the end of the romantic phase of the relationship has developed not into stagnation but into the potential psychic growth and productivity contained within phallic jouissance. Once the knowing of the analyst comes to more or less coincide with the unconscious object of desire of the analysand, then the transference, properly speaking, and the second or intermediate phase of analysis has been established. The analyst is now in the foreground position of the beloved, and the analysand is the lover. Obviously this cannot be the end of the story because otherwise there would be no end or termination phase to the analysis. Analyses that last too long never leave the second phase of treatment where the analyst is in the position of the beloved. At first the analyst is in the S.s.S position. The analyst as lover is a master of knowledge but not of truth. Truth begins to appear when the analyst renounces the power attributed to him/her in the transference. This is something that needs to happen during the first phase of analysis. It is in this phase that the S.s.S position will be established and the analyst has to gear his/her efforts to position him/her there. At the same time she/he has to begin to remove himself/herself from the same position and move towards the transformations/permutations in the metaphor of love. The site of knowing has to be transferred from loving the conscious knowledge of the analyst to loving the unconscious knowing of the subject. The analyst's practice of renunciation, together with the transfer of knowledge to the subject, both represent moments in the production of subjective truth. On the one hand, in the first phase of analysis and of the transference, knowledge is transferred from the analyst to the subject of the unconscious in the analysand. On the other, the transference to the analyst will move into its second phase where the analyst takes

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the position of beloved unconscious objet a of the analysand. It is in the second phase of the treatment and of the transference that the analyst, as objet a, will occupy first the place of the presence of a past object, and second, the place of the absence of the object in the present and in the future. In phase I, the analyst is beloved for his/her qualities of attention and knowledge. In phase II, the analyst is beloved for occupying the place of the unconscious part-object of the subject. This move from the perceived qualities of the analyst to the characteristic marks of the unconscious part-object as perceived in the analyst is an important derivative of the work of interpretation and of the subjective destitution of the analyst. It is this transformation within the transference, as well as the manifestation of the objet a as a vanishing object that needs to be relinquished, that will lay down the conditions for a successful termination of the treatment. It is in the second phase of the treatment that the proto or primal phantasies or traumas of the subject will appear in consciousness and in the treatment. The analyst as lover helped to invoke these phantasies and these same phantasies will come to mediate the relationship to the analyst as a phantasy object. Therefore, even in brief treatment, it may become impossible to completely dispense with the transference neurosis as a logical moment of the treatment. The so-called transference neurosis is a necessary moment/phase of psychoanalytic treatment. However, there are treatments in which the transference neurosis does not emerge in full force and its interpretation does not become a sine qua non sign of the treatment. In other words, a treatment can have a relative success without the interpretation of the transference neurosis. In the transference the analyst must first take and point to a place in the unconscious structure of the subject, and then proceed to remove himself/herself from this place for there to be an end to the analysis. This aspect of the second phase of the treatment is structurally related to the second phase of Oedipal structure. As unconditional lover of the analysand, the analyst first represented the symbolic mother that made the whole treatment about the unconscious of the analysand and not the knowledge of the analyst. In the second phase of analysis, the analyst assumes the figure of the Other of the unconscious and faces the risk of becoming a subject

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supposed to know not about the profession but about the uncdnscious of the analysand. This is the point in a treatment where the relationship could become sexualised, when the analyst comes to represent the phallus and the possibility of phallic jouissance. Here is where the encounter with castration enters the scene for both analyst and analysand. Castration represents the symbolic absence of the imaginary phallus for both analysand and analyst. Although the analyst may be perceived as having the imaginary phallus, the analysand cannot have this phallus either as an object or as self/object. This is the symbolic meaning of castration within the context of the treatment relationship. Working through this absence is what will facilitate access to phallic jouissance with someone else, not with the analyst. From the Lacanian perspective on sexual difference and symbolic castration, the third phase of Oedipus is understood in a more complex way than the simple Freudian formulation that the boy has the penis and identifies with the father and the girl does not and identifies with the mother. With regards to the resolution of the Oedipus complex, the question is not so much whether a female will be able to identify with her mother or the female analyst or a male will identify with his father or male analyst. Masculinity, whether in males or females, enters the complex with the sense of having the imaginary phallus but then loses it under symbolic castration vis-avis the father. Masculinity enters the complex by having the imaginary phallus but can only exit or resolve the complex by realising the only way to securely have it: to lose it and grieve the loss thereof. Femininity, in females or males, or a woman, whether female or male, enters Oedipal structure by not having the imaginary phallus or the phallus in the Imaginary register. If she comes to terms with this loss she then may exit Oedipus realising that she has the phallus within the symbolic order both as a metaphor and in relationship to the masculine other. The analysand discussed in the chapter on depression saw herself as a seer into the lack or flaws of others, but was blind to her own. It was the defence against lack that generated the tendency to project and induce lack in the other. She thought that others had abandoned her but did not see how she constructed this abandonment destiny. This analysand perceived me as a Carlos Castaneda type of figure, referring to my qualities as a "seer" or "witch doctor (wish doctor)".

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Her way of saying that I was a worthy Latino was by addressing me by the name of a famous Latino writer. She also flattered me by saying that I was a seer like she was. During the instant of the glance the analyst has to see the manifestation of the unconscious, not as a flaw but as foolish knowing and knowledge, in the analysand and the analyst. For example, the analysand said that her mother did not love her but then said that her mother thought she was the most beautiful of the children. One could say, with Karen Horney, for example, that this is a contradiction the analyst is pointing out to the analysand (her mother does not love her/her mother loves her), or that this is a manifestation of unconscious knowing that the analysand does not know or does not want to know that she knows. Since she does not want to see (here^she is blind) how her mother loves her, or wants to deny it, this knowledge is held by the unconscious. The analyst sees the unconscious as knowing and not as flaw or defect. Both forms of knowledge are correct but need to be re-interpreted or re-framed. This leads to a therapeutic alliance between the positive idealising transference to the analyst supposed to know and the unconscious knowing of the analysand. When the analysand praised me, I did not say, "Thank you, that was a nice thing to say about me," assuming that I liked Carlos Castaneda. Instead I said nothing, or perhaps gave a half-smile, but certainly did not proceed to brag or have small social talk about what I know of Carlos Castaneda, or my training arid accomplishments, etc. The small pleasure and connection that would have come out of this would have been pale in comparison to the criticism it could have generated further on in the treatment. In other words, I did not believe in her transference, and instead used her belief in me to point to her own unconscious knowing. Then as a response to my intervention, instead of feeling that I was taking her mothers side, or the "Other's" point of view against her, she gave me the memory of her sister dressing her as an older, beautiful woman whom the mother mistook as a lover of the father. From this a dream followed that she was supposed to have a child with her father, and so on. Eventually, she felt she had had enough of me and left me rather than the other way, as was usual in her relationships. This is an example of the analyst giving of what he/she does not have, rather than what they have, and of occupying the place of the

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lack or the absent objet a of the subject. As I stated earlier, it is the desire of the analyst, or the desire not to be desired as a beloved, or in this case as a Carlos Castaneda, that functions as the fundamental pivot of the end and aim of psychoanalysis in its entire rigour. In his/her symbolic function the analyst gives the analysand from his own lack of the symbolic phallus, rather than the deception of giving an object that does not exist. This analysand wanted her analyst to either be the objet a of her phantasy, for me to love heir and lack her as my objet a, which is what she wanted and perhaps succeeded to get from her mother, and for me to give her the imaginary phallus that she wanted to receive from her father. I pointed to emptiness within desire rather than to a desire to be desired as a phallic object, by showing the analysand that I accepted the lack within desire, that I was not Carlos Castaneda. My desire remained as a lack without identification with the signifier of the phallus, in this case Carlos Castaneda, or the gaze of the father. The analyst has to keep the lack as it is without identification with the imaginary phallus or with the idealised imaginary father. It is this subjective destitution that helps loosen up, unpack, and reveal the unconscious objects/signifiers at stake in the transference. Being and not being Carlos Castaneda, or having and not having what he had, is what leads the regression from Carlos Castaneda as a signifier of the analysand's desire to her desire for her own father. Now the unconscious knowing of the analysand will replace the knowledge of the analyst. After the transference to the subject supposed to know, the analyst resumes his/her position of lover of the unconscious knowing of the analysand. It is the analysand being in the position of the beloved that will support the analysand in the unpleasant task of recognising unconscious knowing and experience of lack in privation, frustration, and castration. The analysand recognised that she was not abandoned by her mother or father and instead found the signifiers of her own unfulfilled desire. These meant that she was loved and desired but that what she wanted was not something that could be given to her. These discoveries or truths of desire do not in any way diminish or conceal the shortcomings or flaws of her parents. They become, however, an accepted aspect of the lack and inconsistencies of the Other. Had I joined the analysand in her praising of me and proceeded to love her back by pointing out her good qualities and the

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shortcomings of her parents, and supported her in her grievances against parents and lovers, we would have joined in a narcissistic collusion of mutual imaginary admiration and had a wonderful lovefest and romantic first phase of analysis. However, we would have effectively aborted any possibility of real future treatment. Although the beloved analyst helps heal some of the wounds of the subject, the final removal of the analyst from the position of the beloved, and the demystification and deconstruction of this object into the vicissitudes of a narcissistic phallic object, leads the analysand to the end of analysis via a direct, decisive, and final confrontation with the symbolic rock of castration. In turn, it is from this confrontation that desire can be regenerated and turned towards another, not the analyst, no longer in the hope that the other give the subject something that they don't already have. Once the lack of imaginary castration is symbolised, then both having and not having can be a source of enjoyment and puissance for the subject and the Other. I also mentioned that the phases of transference love parallel the phases of love's transference in love relations, but with a few notable exceptions. Seduction represents the first phase of a love relationship. In analysis, seduction, as seen in this case, is the seduction of knowledge or the seduction of the subject supposed to know (the sorcerer or witch doctor). In love relationships, seduction is a promise of love that echoes back to the puissance of the Other and to the first phase of Oedipus with the mother. This is echoed in the first phase of a treatment when the holding environment holds the promise of a good enough mother or of the analyst being a better mother than the analysand's mother. The second phase of a romantic love relationship is the sexual and Oedipal phase of phallic puissance, the phase where the fundamental question is to have or not have the imaginary phallus. Romantic love becomes a question of desire, the desire to have and enjoy the imaginary phallus. In analysis the movement from love to phallic puissance is not enacted. Instead phallic puissance should be located and deconstructed unto the vicissitudes of the objet a, the phallus, and the function of castration. I say should, because many treatments do not proceed to this phase and instead stay in the asexual pre-Oedipal or the first phase of Oedipus. In such treatments, if the paternal function is involved it is usually in the form of suggestion and a reformation

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of the super ego into better action plans or a more realistic orientation to the patient's goals and objectives. Another way in which the treatment is wrecked (on the rock of castration) and does not proceed to the second phase is when the relationship becomes sexualised and the boundaries and the prohibition of incest are violated. Like the ancient story of Oedipus, this is the most tragic outcome because everything is destroyed, particularly when the parties discover the painful truth that once the forbidden desire is realised the excitement and desire is also extinguished. It was all for nothing. In love relations, the phallic phase of the relationship, which includes sexual phallic puissance (even if it is with a dildo in the case of sex between two females), eventually fails and is wrecked on the rock of castration, and the impossibility of a symmetrical relation between the sexes. In analysis, it is the desire of the analyst, and the traversing of the phantasm and the protophantasies or mathemes, that helps the subject cross over from the shore of the deceptions of love to the other shore of love in the Real, the emptiness of desire, and the jouissance of the drive as pure activity with another, not the analyst. The working through of the second phallic phase of the treatment, and of Oedipus, is also something that differentiates what I am calling brief analysis from analysis proper, In a brief analysis like the one I have used as an example, the phallic phase is typically not worked through fully in the transference, or in the transference neurosis. The questions of phallic jouissance are mostly addressed in relationship to the father and partners, not the analyst. The permutations and transformations in the transference during the phases of treatment are still operative and valid, but the subject supposed to knowing is worked out directly in relationship to the patient's unconscious, rather than through the more laborious and time-consuming back and forth work between the unconscious and the figure of the analyst. I join Freud, Lacan, and the larger analytical community in the belief that it is the latter that produces the more profound and enduring structural transformations within the analysand's subjectivity. With a brief analysis one is never entirely sure whether the analysand left the treatment by leaving the lack behind with the Other and in avoidance of the same, or whether their leaving represented a satisfactory and mature conclusion to the

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treatment. Only the resolution of the transference and the transference neurosis can provide this guarantee and differentiate between a flight and a true parting from the analyst. What, then, is the difference between what I am calling brief analysis and analysis proper, or between analysis and psychotherapy, or the difference between brief analysis and an analyst doing psychotherapy, or between analyses conducted under different theoretical orientations? In what follows I will use the phases of analysis and of Oedipal structure to differentiate different forms of analytical treatments. Although this formulation could be interpreted as an attempt to distinguish between far-reaching and limited, partial versus structural forms of analyses, I want to emphasise that all the, forms being considered have merits and clinical value depending on the characteristics of the clients and the cultural populations served. At the same time, it is also equally important to be able to distinguish them in their similarities and differences. •> Since for the most part only an analyst can do brief analysis, a brief analysis can be used as a term for when an analyst does psychotherapy. It is only with an analyst that a treatment is ruled by the desire of the analyst and the unconscious of the analysand. An analyst can see the treatment through different phases of the transference in relationship to the subject supposed to know(ing) and in relationship to the metaphor of love, and through the different phases of Oedipus and types of puissance, From this perspective, psychotherapies done by non-analysts would fall into a different category of treatment. Supportive therapies done by non-analysts, who have not had a personal analysis, are focused on the therapist being a better good-enough mother/father for the client and the working alliance stays purely within the Imaginary. An imaginary transference means that there is a fusion between the subject supposed to know and the therapist as beloved and the client as lover of the therapist. Since there is no awareness or analysis of the transference, the transference as such is not present or considered in these treatments. In insight psychotherapy done by non-analysts, the treatment also remains within the first phase of treatment and of Oedipus. In these therapies, the therapist remains in the position of the subject supposed to know but there is a beginning of an analysis of the imaginary transference. Since the therapist has not been analysed,

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the therapist remains prone to the desire to be loved and desired by the patient. It is the desire of the analyst that facilitates the analysis of the symbolic dimension of the transference. In these treatments, the therapist works with the countertransference as projective identification. The unconscious of the analyst is analysed as if it were the unconscious of the analysand. In contrast to this, from a Lacanian perspective, in such cases the unconscious of the analyst, as the discourse of the Other, returns to the analyst via the unconscious of the analysand, rather than vice versa. In analysis proper, the unconscious of the analysand, or the jewel of their own being, returns to the analysand via the speech of the analyst as the discourse of the Other. Here the Other means the analysand's own unconscious rather than the analyst functioning as a representative of "objective knowledge". Alternatively, the countertransference could take therapists who are not analysts to their own personal analysis. As I have already mentioned, there are also analyses that remain within the first phase of the transference and of Oedipal structure as well. This is usually presented as a necessary analysis of preOedipal formations, and although these treatments have clinical value and analytic significance they also may represent overt or thinly disguised disavowals and rejections of both Freudian Oedipal theory and the function of the father and the phallus. Here the analyst works within the transference but only in regard to the maternal transference representing the first phase of Oedipus. Since the function of the third, as the function of the father and of the phallus, is not symbolised, the pre-Oedipal mother differs from Lacan's view of the mother during the first phase of Oedipus. In the pre-Oedipal view of the mother-child relationship, the inevitable investment of the child with the phallic narcissism of the mother is mistaken for bad-enough mothering. The part played by the father and symbolic castration in generating good-enough mothering or a mother-childsubject relationship is not recognised. In analyses focused on preOedipal relationships, the questions of the phallus, sexual difference, and castration are not addressed. Within a Freudian-Lacanian perspective, there are three remaining varieties of analytical treatments. The first two advance through the second phase of Oedipus and the transference, whereas only the third reaches the resolution of the transference neurosis and of Oedipal structure. These three forms could be conducted on the couch or on

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a chair, but the couch still remains the optimal—but not obligatory— setting for the resolution of analysis. Analysts conduct all these three treatments but differ with regard to the resolution of the transference neurosis and the passing or traversing beyond the rock of castration. As already stated and defined earlier in this chapter, what I have been calling brief analysis does not represent analysis proper in the sense of a resolution of the transference neurosis. Furthermore, the difference between insight psychotherapy arid a brief analysis conducted by a Freudian-Lacanian analyst may only be a question of time. Insight psychotherapy may take more or less than two to three years. A brief analysis is carried out in thirty-plus sessions within an eight- to twelve-month period. I realise that a more clear differentiation between these two modalities would require a further and more detailed arid careful examination. This is the best I can do for the purposes of this chapter. Others may pick up where I left off and pursue the complexities of these questions in further detail. Finally, psychotherapy with an analyst could also eventually turn out to be an analysis that results in a resolution of the transference neurosis, even if it was only once a week. Such an example would also be differentiated from the previous two categories in that the work lasts several more years than a psychotherapy that does not go beyond phase II and than an analysis that took place three times per week. Although these two categories lead to the same results, the psychotherapy that actually was an analysis may take six or more years, whereas analysis proper lasts a minimum of three. On the other hand, added up the psychotherapy that was an analysis might take fewer sessions given that the analyst can also expect and utilise the cooperation of the natural passing, of time and the maturity and growth thereof. However, in the meantime, while analysands wait and spread their costs over many years, they may have also missed many life opportunities. In this regard, the three times a week analysis also seems to have the advantage over the long-term psychotherapy format. The Third Phase: the Aim and End of the Treatment

Writing this chapter followed the same logic that regulates the treatment. In the end there is not much left to say because everything

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has already been said. We have to know how to start a chapter or a session, and then get to the main points. In a session this means knowing how to evoke the unconscious and precipitate change. We then we have to find a way to conclude, which is not the same as writing a conclusion. What people mean by conclusion usually represents a summary and recapitulation of the main ideas and results and with a view towards future work or homework. However, the conclusion also means the end of the line and the final period of a sentence. The only thing left to say is to actually end. On the other hand, at the same time, things are not over until they are over. The end had to be present from the very beginning, and then eventually in the end the analysand will grow tired of the analyst and end the treatment. Lacan always emphasised that although it is the analyst who often ends the session it is the analysand who ends the treatment. The desire of the analyst differs from ordinary desire in that to succeed the analyst has to be left by the analysand. With human desire a subject does not want to be left by loved ones unless, of course, they are neurotic and need to fail in relationships because of winning in Oedipus. So the successful ending of analysis is like an Oedipal failure except that it is the son or daughter that rejects the parent rather than the other way around. When ending the treatment with the analyst the analysand may then have a relationship with their parents and with a lover or beloved. Lacan said that analysis is like literature, where both the writer and the reader go from the letter to the litter or from the litter to the letter. A litter represents a creative literary offspring or offshoot and at the same time a disposable yet organic and recyclable waste product. The litter becomes a clinker, or an incombustible residue, or a non-recyclable waste product when the analyst wishes/hopes that the analytical position will result in some gain or benefit for the analyst's own imaginary ego. In reality, the analytical position, in fact, does nothing for the analyst's own imaginary ego. At the end of analysis, the analyst becomes like fertilising manure that needs to be flushed, evacuated, and let go. The analyst becomes disposable and dispensable to the analysand. The analyst needs to write himself out of a job, but because he can do so he can actually do an adequate job and make an honourable living.

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If the analyst remains in the position of the subject supposed to know, or as the objet a or phallus of the analysand, the analysand will never want to leave the analyst. Once the transference has been dissolved and the analyst becomes an empty other that does not represent the ideal ego or ego ideal for the client, the analysand will still have his/her own unconscious and conscious ideals to live by. If the analyst does not abandon the position of the ideal and succeeds by, for example, marrying his/her patient, then, like in a recent public and local incident, the patient may eventually feel compelled to shoot him/her. You may think I am joking. The objection could be raised that the very fact the analyst does not need to be loved or idealised to feel secure or recognised does not mean he/she is not a master but is precisely what makes him/her / a master by not being afraid of being alone or of death (this is Hegel's definition of a master). This could be all the more a reason to idealise the analyst. However, the emptiness of the symbolic father or analyst is not without lack or limitation. The master is also a servant. It is not always entirely clear whether the master is a master or a servant. The analyst pays with his person and with the core of his being when he/she lets the analysand see him more as a servant with limitations than as a master, even if the analysand is mistaken in this regard. This is in the service of facilitating the process of termination and separation so that the analysand can give birth to himself/herself. In addition, the analyst does not fail to not hide his/her failures and forgetting, when these actually manifest, and to offer interpretations that may put him/her at a disadvantage with respect to his/her own defences. This is what, in reference to the analyst, Lacan called paying with one's person. It may be that by operating strategically in this way the analyst remains the master in the end but, if so, then only he/she knows it. The analyst is alone in the face of the Real, and is content with being either a servant or a master to himself and to the other. This is the Other jouissance of the fool and the idiot who is truly wise and with Oedipus knows that losing can be winning and that winning can also be losing. At the same time, in treatment succeeding is succeeding, and failing is failing. Sometimes analysands will say that you did not help them and you did. At other times, they will tell you that you did help them and you did not. To be wise is to quietly and calmly know the difference.

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Bibliography Etchegoyen, Horacio R. (1991). The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique. London: Karnac Books. Flegenheimer, W. (1982). Techniques of Brief Psychotherapy. New York: Jason Aronson. Corbett, D., Stafford, K., & Wright, P. (2007). http://library.thinkquest. org/27930/time.htm

CHAPTER

SEVEN

The Supervisor Supposed to Know: Lacanian Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Supervision

History of supervision

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linical supervision, as a training requirement for psychoanalysts, was formalised with the development of the International Psychoanalytic Association and the creation of the Berlin Institute. At first the practice of supervision, just like the practice of analysis, was non-standard. Supervision was intertwined with the teacher/student relationship and the collegial or peer professional relationships. To Freud, Breuer was a teacher and supervisor, whereas Fliess was his supervisor, confidant, and colleague. In turn, Freud was a teacher/supervisor to both Steckel and Jung (Safouan, 1995). Max Eitington, who opened the first psychoanalytic clinic in Vienna, did a singular form or a non-standard didactic analysis with Freud walking through the streets of Vienna. Eitington conceived of a psychoanalytic clinic as having three functions: therapeutic, formative, and research. The initial function of supervision was not only to deliver adequate professional services to the public, but also to preserve the integrity and internal coherence of psychoanalysis. The International Psychoanalytic Conference of 1925 sought to prevent the premature amalgamation and synthesis of psychoanalysis with other fields, research methods, and clinical practices. Given Freud's several initial problems with students who dissented/ deviated from his teaching, the early international psychoanalytic movement was concerned with preserving and preventing the destruction of Freud's theory and practice. From this perspective, 223

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supervision was considered as a way of guaranteeing the authenticity of psychoanalytic practice. In addition to a personal or didactic analysis, a control analysis or supervision became a key factor for the training of analysts. Institutional Convention and Standardisation versus Transformative Regenerational and Transgenerational Experience The process of increased institutionalisation and standardisation of authority within psychoanalysis generated criticisms and questioning from the very beginning. Harms Sachs (Safouan, 1995) pointed out that wherever there is organisation and hierarchy, the discovery of the new and the possibility of change and transformation becomes suppressed and repressed. Every institution is conservative in nature, and aims at its own survival and self-preservation and, therefore, has low tolerance for creative and inventive minds and subjects. The question raised by these considerations can be boiled down to the importance of differentiating between guaranteeing the transmission of certain knowledge, wisdom, and therapeutic practice, so that certain standards are met, and developing rigid and static definitions of the same. On the one hand, in order to preserve the evolutionary impetus and edge of psychoanalysis, the task is one of preventing the inertia towards the lowest common denominator and the degeneration of evolved ideas and practices into common assumptions and prejudices. On the other hand, a psychoanalytic institution needs to maintain standards while also preserving the psychoanalytic organisation as a vibrant and dynamic site for the continuing development and regeneration of psychoanalysis as a living symbolic cultural structure. New meaning for psychoanalysis evolves not from the outside, by wholesale change of one theoretical edifice for another, entirely different, one, but from inside the coherence and organisation of psychoanalytic ideas and practices. The psychoanalytic organisation has to support new ways of articulating, combining, and permutating traditional elements: both new conceptual bottles to contain the old wine of psychoanalytic experience as well as new wine and new experience to enrich the old wine and to give the old bottle/structure a renewed splendour and meaning.

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Psychoanalysis needs to reinvent itself and self-regenerate with every generation. But transmission is not merely a repetition of the same, but a repetition of the same with a new difference. Thus, what is true for the life of the institution is consistent with what is true for the practice that gave birth to the structure of the theory. In the practice of analysis, new meaning has a similar effect on the repetition compulsion at work in the symptom. An interpretation repeats something, cites the speech of the analysand, but with a difference that makes all the difference. An interpretation drains something of the Real of the unconscious unto the Symbolic and language. In similar fashion, the symptoms and problems of the institution function as that which propels the regeneration of psychoanalytic theories and practices, through new interpretations of the teaching. Supervision, Personal Analysis, Didactic Analysis, and Control Analysis Typically, supervision is considered to be a key ingredient of the training or professional formation of the analyst. From what the supervising analyst hears in the supervisee's speech about the symptoms, history, and discourse of the analysand, the supervisor attempts to discern how the analyst is working with the analysand, and to support and transmit the elements that characterise the psychoanalytic method, as distinguished from other approaches derived from common sense or other orientations within or outside psychoanalysis. But given that psychoanalysis is not a static, abstract structure existing independently from a human subject or from subjectivity, psychoanalysis will inevitably be found within the unique style of every analyst. Here unique style does not refer to a question of ego preferences and idiosyncrasies, but to a singular and new, subjective articulation of the pre-existing elements of a traditional structure. Within the realm of ego-identifications, a future analyst will find their style either by imitation/identification or by identification with the opposite of what the ego thinks the other expects from him/her. The supervisor has to help the supervisee find their own style, beyond imitation/identification/compliance and beyond disavowal/defiance and identification with the opposite. Of course, that it is in the personal analysis that the supervisee ultimately negotiates the narrow passage beyond these identifications.

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Another traditional aspect of psychoanalytic supervision is the analysis of the countertransference. The latter refers to the analyst's own unconscious determinants that are being activated in transference to the analysand. Classically, two well-known positions were crystallised with respect to the handling of the countertransference in analysis (Safouan, 1995). The first was the Viennese position, which argued that the analysis of the countertransference should be carried out with the ex-analyst who then becomes the supervisee's supervisor. The Berlin school instead emphasised the shortcomings of this position. According to the Berlin school, the Viennese position blurs the difference between supervisor and analyst and focuses supervision too much on the personal analysis of the analyst and not enough on matters of practice and technique. In addition, it limits the exposure of the supervisee to different styles of work and maximised the dependence on one figure and master. Finally, blind spots of the analyst in the work with the supervisee might be reinforced in supervision. The Berlin school emphasised the control function of supervision. The supervisor is responsible for the patients of the supervisee and exercises a function of vigilance and of protecting the public from poor-quality treatments. For the most part supervision nowadays involves varying combinations of both the Berlin and Viennese schools: it focuses on the countertransference as well as on matters of theory and technique. In addition, the object relations school, with its view of the countertransference of the analyst as representing the analysand's own unconscious contents through the effect of projective identification, puts the countertransference squarely within the scope of a control analysis. However, an important dimension of the analysis of the countertransference, or the analyst's transference, as Lacan preferred to call it, refers back to the analyst's personal analysis as the backbone and foundation of analytical work. Otherwise, supervision of psychotherapy, or supervision as construed outside psychoanalysis, would be almost identical to the supervision of psychoanalysis. Non-analytic treatments also focus on the countertransference of the therapist, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy does not require from the therapist a personal analysis of long duration. From this perspective, the notion of the countertransference, as projective identification of the patient, also avoids the question of the personal analysis of the

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analyst. Psychoanalytic psychotherapists who have not had an analysis will handle their countertransference through supervision rather than a personal analysis. On the other hand, if supervision were to be focused on the subjective experience of the analyst, it would be much closer to a didactic analysis than to a personal analysis. Sometimes people use these two terms interchangeably, although the word didactic has a different connotation. Didactic refers to training and to the personal analysis of an analyst in training. However, it could also be used to refer to: 1. evaluation of the personal analysis in supervision, including helping the supervisee understand what happened in their personal analysis from a didactic perspective; and 2. sharing with the supervisee the theory and practice involved in an interpretation of the transference to the supervisor and its relationship to the supervisee's understanding of the transference to their own analyst. The use of the word didactic for the personal analysis may lead to the mistaken belief that the future analyst is engaging in a personal analysis solely for the purpose of training and not because of some subjective and personal experience and difficulty with human suffering. In addition, if the personal analyst is didactic or supervisorial with the analyst in training, this could lead to an end of analysis that coincides with identification with the analyst rather than a working through the object involved in identification. What will ultimately authorise the analyst is the analyst's relationship to his/her own symptom as revealed in the personal analysis. I will return to this further on. Lacanian Supervision: The Transference to the "Supervisor Supposed to Know" In France and Italy they have recently debated whether the state should control the practice of psychotherapy as a treatment for mental disorders (Miller, 2005). They did not institute the requirement of licenses, as was the case in the United States, but they are now requiring the possession of professional degrees and membership in psychoanalytic associations/organisations. A license is no guarantee of best practices in psychotherapy, because all it does is measure knowledge of psychiatric diagnoses, assessment of risk factors, and choice of one treatment modality or another. Licensing exams do not

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measure skill level within the practice of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. What is most important for the training of analysts is the personal analysis, and licensing boards do not require this in any shape or form. Subjectivity is simply not included into the professional or empirical research equation. A license represents authorisation within what Lacan called the discourse of the master (the state) and of the university. These are requirements that do not guarantee what is most essential to quality treatment in psychoanalysis. Therefore the question of what or who authorises an analyst is a fundamental question for psychoanalysis. Is it the analyst, the supervisor, or groups of analysts within a psychoanalytic community, and should these functions be contained within a single organisation? Within psychoanalysis, the bedrock of authorisation for an analyst is the work with his/her own subjectivity within a personal analysis. The other functions of supervision and of a psychoanalytic community contain a structure of interdependence that needs to be consistent with regards to principles of theory and practice but do not need to be contained within a single group or organisation. Consistency with regards to principles of theory and practice does not mean a single model within psychoanalysis, but consistency within and across different models. In the United States, where licenses are required, the full weight and authority of the state is vested upon the authorising authority of the clinical supervisor. There is shared consensus in the field where often, or perhaps always, there exists transference to the supervisor that differs from the transference to the analyst in the personal analysis. In a control analysis, the supervisor occupies the place not only of the Other of the unconscious, but more importantly, in this case, the Other of the law of culture and of the public. The big Other in Lacan's work represents both the Unconscious and the Symbolic order of society in general (the dynamic and descriptive unconscious in Freud's work). This fact is further reinforced when supervision becomes a legal requirement to practice under a state license. The supervisor is supposed to provide some sort of guarantee of the knowledge of the supervisee. In this respect, the supervisor can be viewed as the "subject/supervisor supposed to know". Therefore, unless the supervisee has had a personal analysis, the supervisor is a prime target for becoming the site of super-ego projections for the supervisee. Here the supervisor becomes similar to the figure of

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an educator and a representative figure for the discourse of the university and the discourse of government (of the master). Julien (1995) has written that, during supervisions, Lacan avoided transmitting a total and closed knowledge, Lacan would refuse to tell his supervisees what to do and how to proceed, "It is not uncommon to find an analyst undergoing a control analysis that, for example, at a specific point in their professional development, prefers to lie down on the couch of another analyst rather than continue with the control analysis. In such cases, one often finds that if the analyst prefers to lie on the couch, it is as if lying down, and under the rule of free association, they were freed of the responsibility of being accountable for their speech, The analyst, as analysand, can now speak without the burden of responsibility. An analysand can believe this for a while until the day they discover that on the couch they still have to respond to those signifiers for which they did not think they had a sense of responsibility and accountability. Perhaps on that day the pass begins to appear in the horizon of the^analysand because one could say that, in that moment, they are no longer the disciple of Lacan or Freud, but the disciple of their symptom. The analysand finally allows himself/herself to be taught by their symptom/' [Lacan, Seminar24, \97£>-\977, session 6, the English translation is mine]

Lacan (1967) articulates his position with regards to supervision around the question of authorisation. In October of 1967, he proposed that "the analyst is authorised by himself/herself7 at the end of his/her analysis. For Lacan what is crucial for authorisation is the personal analysis. He believed that if a supervisee approaches an analyst for supervision, the analyst should invite the supervisee to continue his personal analysis. From this perspective, the demand for supervision is interpreted as a resistance to the personal analysis. During the 1974 Rome Congress of the E.F.P. (the Freudian School of Psychoanalysis), a consensus was building in the Lacanian field that supervision, as a bureaucratic requirement, institutionalises a resistance to analysis. Supervision, as an institutional requirement of so many certified years and hours, functions as an obsessional defence against dealing with difficulties inherent to the practice of

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analysis and the field of transference. Lacan believed that obligations with regards to the position of the analyst exempt or excuse a subject from the personal responsibility of having decided to do or not to do something. From this perspective, problems that arise in the course of an analysis should send the analyst back to a personal analysis, rather than to supervision. The countertransference, as the transference of the analyst to the patient or analysand, needs to be addressed through analysis rather than controlled through a control analysis. In addition, in cases where the supervisee is already in analysis, then a request for supervision may represent a "lateral transference" to the supervisor of questions and problems that are resisted or not addressed in the personal analysis. On the other hand, in cases where supervision and analysis are taking place concurrently, a problem that arises in supervision may also facilitate movements or breakthroughs in the personal analysis of the analyst. If the analyst and the supervisor are not the same person, then supervision can support the personal analysis or function as a kind of supervision of the personal analysis of the analyst but without encouraging a regression or a transference neurosis towards the supervisor. The problems are referred back to the personal analysis rather than interpreted in supervision. Otherwise, if the supervisor appears to function as a better analyst than the analyst (as the subject who really knows), and is perceived as criticising the analyst of the supervisee, then a transference neurosis towards the supervisor will be established and the transference towards the analyst will be undermined. The second view of supervision as a support rather than resistance to the personal analysis prevents the exclusive dependence on one analyst that runs the risk of converting the analyst into a monolithic figure who also functions as an evaluator or clinical supervisor. The Problem of the Pass If the personal analysis is fundamental for the training of the analyst, then how is the personal analysis to be evaluated? To address this question, Lacan experimented with what he called "the pass". The future analyst spoke of their experience in analysis with two peers, who then presented what they heard about the analyst's analysis to a group of judges or a pass committee composed of analysts of the

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school. The pass committee then decided whether an analysis took place or not. Lacan finally decided that this process did not work because peers introduced distortions of various kinds into the process, and a group of judges did not turn out to be an improvement over the practices of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Lacan never gave up the idea of the privileged role of the personal analysis for the practice of analysis, but he did give up trying to evaluate it in any kind of institutional or objective fashion. Instead he turned his attention to the theoretical question of the sinthome as what ultimately authorises an analyst. Currently, the Lacanian organisation led by Jacques Alain Miller, Lacan's son-in-law, continues to use the procedure of the pass but only as a tool of research about analysis. Analysts don't have to "pass" in order to practice as analysts. However, this modified version of "the pass" has created fresh problems of its own. For example, the fact that some practicing analysts have passed while others have not creates an informal predicament with regard to clinical reputations and relationships to the institution. Those individuals or groups who have not passed end up with diminished or "minor status" within the institution and within the information available to the consumer public at large. Most groups working outside the Millerian school and identifying with what has been called the Lacanian diversity movement do not have formal or standard procedures to evaluate the personal analysis beyond the requirement to have one. However, Lacan's concept of the transference as "subject supposed to know(ing)" and as a metaphor of love, examined in previous chapters, provide two important criteria for determining the authorisation of the analyst within a personal analysis. The sections that follow will examine these criteria in some detail. The Subject Supposed to Know(ing) I have mentioned that Lacan redefined the classical psychoanalytic concept of transference around the question of knowing (savoir in French or saber in Spanish). A control analysis or supervision evaluates or examines the blind spots or what the analyst does not see about their own position vis-a-vis the transference of the analysand to the subject supposed to know.

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Thus, on the one hand, the supervisor has to help the analyst in training to establish his or her credibility on the basis of knowledge regarding psychopathology, psychical/developmental/ characterological structures and psychotherapeutic processes. This vertical form of credibility is the basis for a positive transference and for a working alliance with .the subject/analyst supposed to know something. The supervisor helps the trainee learn and articulate what they know and put it to use in the treatment relationship with their analysands. This dimension of psychoanalytic supervision is not that different from the supervision that is required to obtain a government issued license for the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The supervisor represents the public law and the "supervisor supposed to know". In addition, the latter also has to monitor the dangerousness of clients who may trigger involuntary commitment and hospitalisation, their level of functioning and disability, and supervise the enforcement of the law with regard to. the discovery and reporting of various forms of sexual and physical abuse. What I am calling the vertical credibility of the analyst also has a transference dimension that represents the first phase of the transference for the treatment relationship. Within the supervisory relationship, the therapeutic alliance is an alliance between the knowledge of the supervisor, the supervisee, and the ego of the analysand. I say the ego of the analysand, because the demand for services begins with the presentation of the symptom by the ego defences of the patient. Patients want their symptoms removed but without experiencing the pain or the unconscious desires and thought or language formations that cause them. In addition, they don't want to change the beliefs and character traits that keep the former under repression. The supervisor has to help the supervisee establish a therapeutic alliance with the symptoms as presented by the analysand, so that the knowledge of the analyst will not be in direct and immediate confrontation with the beliefs of the analysand. Sometimes the analyst may in fact perform early confrontations with patient's defences in order to evaluate their ability to benefit from analytic treatment, but these cannot be of such magnitude or quality that will damage the early love or positive predisposition towards the analyst. So in the first phase of treatment the analyst has to be liked by the analysand, but this liking is the result of strategic

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interventions within the transference rather than from a countertransferential desire to be liked on the part of the analyst. On the other hand, analysis proper is regulated by the desire of the analyst as a desire not to be idealised or desired/loved as a subject supposed to know. Otherwise, analysis would not differ from other forms of treatment outside psychoanalysis. The desire of the analyst represents a subjective fruit of the personal analysis, a transformation of puissance, and not an objective form of neutrality, abstinence, and anonymity that could be established by virtue of moral or professional rules of conduct. By virtue of the desire of the analyst the therapist-analyst renounces the power and privilege given to him/her by educational, class, and professional differences as well as the transference of the patient/analysand. Here the curative factor comes not from the knowledge of the analyst (the master's and university discourse) but from an unconscious knowing not based on formal education that the suffering subject (the client or analysand) does not know that he/she knows. Now the credibility of the analyst is achieved by a symbolic horizontal levelling of the ego-based authority of the analyst-psychotherapist in favour of the transformative power of the unconscious. This horizontal form of credibility is particularly important for analytical work with analysands from different cultures. This question will be explored further in the next chapter. In the second phase of the transference, the analyst is a subject to whom the analysand has attributed his/her own unconscious knowing. The analysand comes to perceive the analyst not as a knowledgeable professional but as representing and signifying his/her unconscious objects. As stated in previous chapters, redefining the transference on the basis of knowing clarifies the problem of how the transference can be resolved and dissolved for there to be both a direction to the treatment and an end to analysis. Analyses that last too long, are stagnated, or never end, represent examples of where the analysand remains dependent on the knowledge or the love of the analyst rather than ending the analysis by virtue of the textual power of his/her "own" unknown/knowing. Unknown-knowing is also important for supervision because often supervisees do not know that they already know about matters concerning their analysand. The supervisor has to hear what appears in the discourse of the supervisee regarding their analysand that the

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supervisee has not recognised or does not know that they know. The answers to the supervisee's questions lie in their own unconscious or unknown discourse regarding their analysand. The supervisor merely points to what the supervisee already unconsciously knows (unknown-knowing). The general manifestation of human transference is to identify and love the other as subject supposed to know or its reverse, the other as the subject of the lack, which is how Lacan defined the negative transference: "I hate whom I desuppose or depose from being the subject supposed to know/7 Here the other is seen as incompetent and lacking. But finding the holes in the other, or revealing his/her incompetence does not constitute a true act of knowledge/cognition or recognition. The illusory effect of embarrassing the other, or revealing their lack, is actually produced because the other was occupying the place of the subject supposed to know in the first place. Therefore, any analyst, supervisor, or supervisee who is humiliated needs to take the negative transference in their favour rather than against them. If a subject is slandered or humiliated it is precisely because they are perceived as the one who knows rather than vice versa. In the positive transference, the subject supposed to know conceals or covers over the lack in the other or the subject, whereas in the negative transference, transference reveals the lack but only in the other rather than in the subject. The subjective position of psychoanalysis consists of accepting and appreciating the lack in the other and in the subject. This is an ethical act of true symbolic empathy. Transformations in the Metaphor of Love and the Phases of Analysis In Chapter III I described how Lacan used the Greek categories of Erastes and Eromenos in order to account for what he calls the metaphor of love as it occurs in psychoanalytic treatment. Lacan says that, at the outset of an analysis, the analyst is in the place of Erastes (lover) and of what he called the subject supposed to know(ing). This is how Lacan combines and articulates the classical theme of transference love with his theory of the subject supposed to know. However, I have also noted that the metaphor of love and the transference towards the subject supposed to know are somewhat discordant. In

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the first or beginning phase of an analysis, the analysand is in the place of the beloved because he/she is worthy of the analyst's unconditional interest and attention and the analysand is the object and purpose of the analytical operation. On the other hand, the analyst is in the position of the subject supposed to know something about psychical suffering. Here the analyst appears to be the one in the position of the beloved and not simply in that of the lover. This appears to be a contradiction because both the analyst and the analysand appear to be in the place of the beloved. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the analysis, the subject supposed to know is not yet a full blown object of the transference, because both the analyst and the analysand do not yet know what the analysand.lacks or what their unconscious Other knows/desires. The analysand first loves the analyst for what they know, but this first takes the form of a conscious therapeutic alliance with the rational, conscious, and professional knowledge of the analyst. In the first phase of analysis the lover-beloved relationship , represents a relationship between four terms rather than two. In the first phase of ^analysis, the analyst is a foreground lover and a background beloved (as the subject supposed to know), whereas the reverse is true for the analysand. In the foreground, the analysand is beloved by the conscious interest of the analyst whereas, in the background, the analysand as lover and subject of the lack lies latently waiting to emerge and unfold. Once the knowing of the analyst comes to more or less coincide with the unconscious object of desire of the analysand, then the transference (to the subject supposed to knowing), properly speaking, and the second or intermediate phase of analysis, has been established. The analyst is in the place of the presence of the object. The analyst is now in the position of the beloved, and the analysand is the lover. But obviously this cannot be the end of the story, because otherwise there would be no end or termination phase to the analysis. In addition, and paradoxically, being in the place of the presence of the object could trigger an inordinate amount of anxiety and cause the analysand to flee the treatment, leaving the questions posed by the treatment unanswered. In the first phase of an analysis a supervisor needs to supervise several things. First that the analyst has been established as the subject supposed to know loved for his/her knowledge; second, that the analyst is in this position as a strategy of transference and

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not because he/she wants/needs to be like/loved; third, that the analyst is functioning as the empathic/understanding/listening lover of the suffering analysand; and finally, the supervisor monitors the process by which the analyst, as beloved lover of the analysand, transforms into the objet a and phallic object of the analysand. It is this transformation that ushers in the second phase of the analysis. It is during this transition and the second phase of analysis that acting out in the analysis can result in catastrophic boundary violations of the prohibition of incest unconsciously regulating the relationship. The parties of a therapeutic relationship can get sexually involved whether outside or inside the sessions, or both. Given that the desire of the analyst regulated the treatment from the very beginning, and that the metaphor of love consisted of treatment strategies within the transference, in the third and final phase of analysis the analyst is no longer in the place of the beloved and the analysand is no longer in the place of the lover of the analyst. Rather than give of what he has, the analyst must give what he does not have and occupy the place of the lack or the absent objet a of the subject. It is the desire of the analyst, or the desire not to be desired as a beloved, that function as the fundamental pivot of the end and aim of psychoanalysis in its entire rigor. During phase II, the analys. and wants the analyst to either be the objet a of his/her phantasy or to give him/her the imaginary phallus. Instead the analyst gives the analysand from his/her own lack of the symbolic phallus rather than the deception of giving an object that does not exist. By showing the analysand that he/she accepts the lack within desire the analyst points to the emptiness within desire rather than to a desire to be desired as a phallic object. This leads to a permutation in the position of the analysand as lover and subject of desire. Although during phase I the beloved analyst helps heal some of the wounds of the subject, it is the final removal of the analyst from the position of the beloved, and the demystification and deconstruction of this object into the vicissitudes of a narcissistic phallic object, that leads the analysand to the end of analysis. Love and the Phases of Analytic Supervision The analytic supervisory relationship is also characterised by a transferential relationship and a transposition of the roles of Erastes

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and Eromenos. A supervisor occupies the place of the subject supposed to know and as such will be the object of love of the supervisee. Although Lacan uses the Symposium to elucidate the function of the transference within analysis, in the Symposium the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades refers precisely to the teacher/student relationship. The supervisor/supervisee relationship is somewhere between the teacher/student relationship and the analyst/analysand relationship. Within limits, the supervisory relationship also entails an exploration of the subjectivity of the supervisee. This, combined with the fact that the supervisory relationship is a collegial rather than a therapeutic relationship, could lead to a kind of intimacy more typical of love and friendship relationships. On the other hand, a law or prohibition also regulates the supervisory relationship and such law may cause a sexual/ aggressive desire/phantasy that will not be explored in detail, as it is usually done in the transference relationship to the analyst. In addition, in contrast to analysis, the ban against sex and intimate relationships between supervisor and supervisee expires once the professional relationship has ended. There are many, examples of supervisors who have married their supervisees and become professional peers as well as husband and wife. In this way, the ending of a supervisory relationship differs from the ending of an analytical relationship. At the same time, intimate relationships between ex-supervisor and ex-supervisee, even when permissible/ admissible, may raise many of the concerns raised by extra-analytic relations between analyst and analysand. Although there is more symmetry between supervisor and supervisee than between analyst and analysand, there is still a temporary differential in power that could be construed as putting the supervisee in a vulnerable position vis-k-vis the supervisor. Within psychoanalysis, this power relation is conceived as a function of the transference to the subject supposed to know, which I have already said is something that needs to be renounced by the analyst. But what about the supervisor? The supervisor also needs to empower the supervisee to rely on their own conscious and unconscious knowledge to treat their analysand. The supervisee does not know that they already know, and like in analysis the supervisor is first in the position of the supervisor supposed to know. This is a position of seduction that ushers the supervision into a parallel

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romantic phase of the supervisory relationship. However, the questions of trust and security that arise when the supervisee does not feel adequate as an analyst supposed to know are ones that can be more comfortably discussed within the supervisory relationship. The second phase of supervision differs from the second phase of analysis because the question of sexuality and sexual difference between supervisor and supervisee will not be explicitly discussed. However, the speech with the supervisee about the analysand's sexuality can lead to an erotisation of the position of the supervisor supposed to know. This, together with the fact that there is no absolute prohibition against intimacy between the parties once the relationship has ended, can lead to significant differences between the last two phases of supervision and those of analysis. This may be particularly true when the parties are single and seem to enjoy a good relationship. Since the erotic transference to the supervisor supposed to know about the phallus and sexual difference is not being analysed, this can have very deceiving consequences for any love relationship between supervisor and supervisee. Thus, any love or desire between the parties needs to be taken as transference love and not simply as love's transference, as is usually the case in love relationships. Anything that can be said about the so-called "real relationship" could be misinterpreted by either party precisely because of the existence of an erotic transference and because the latter is not being explicitly discussed. The second and third (termination) phase of supervision need to be similar to the phases of treatment, since no real relationship can take place during this time. In this the supervision of psychoanalysis has the advantage of lasting for a longer period of time and therefore allowing personal feelings to be resolved over time. Since any love or sexual feelings need to be considered as transference, whether openly discussed or not, then both the supervisor and the supervisee also need to be removed from the position of the beloved. The supervisor will no longer be beloved once the supervisee has discovered a relationship to their own unconscious knowledge/knowing, and the supervisor needs to be regulated by the desire of the analyst not to remain in the place of the beloved and not to be deceived by the erotic transference to the subject supposed to know. Then once the asymmetry of the professional relationship ends and after a grace period, if they wanted

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to, the parties could resume exploring what possible relationship could take place between them beyond the professional relationship they previously had. At that point both subjects would have to cope with the asymmetry between the sexes that is always a two-way street and not simply one where one party has more power than the other. They both have more power and are subject to castration in different ways. This is a whole other topic that has already been discussed in the second chapter of this book. Conclusion: the Analyst is Authorised by the Sinthome of the Subject and a Few Others Lacan (1967) argued that the analyst is self-authorised or is not authorised by anybody other than himself /herself. The analyst is not authorised by supervision or the supervisor, but by the personal analytical experience ,with the unconscious and the symptom. Here the "by himself or herself" has to be distinguished from egoautonomy and from a defiant and narcissistic attitude towards authority. In addition, it cannot be explained away by simplistically reducing it to Lacan's problems with the International Psychoanalytic AssociationTEhat led to his exclusion from this organisation. Through the practice of analysis, the symptoms of the subject, or the institution, have to be considered as the sinthome (defined below) that allow the subject and the institution to regenerate with every generation. To distance himself from a position of obsessional or narcissistic defiance, and from the notion of ego-autonomy that he rejected, Lacan was forced to qualify his statement regarding authorisation. By himself/herself could only be true if the analyst was an analyst and had undergone a personal analysis. In addition, the analyst also needed the participation of others within the psychoanalytic community. The analyst is not authorising himself/herself in the manner of an individualistic and idiosyncratic lone ranger or selfmade man in exclusion of or isolation from others. Lacan (1967) proposed that the "psychoanalyst only authorises himself/herself by himself/herself7, but this may mean not so much the by himself of isolation but the in himself/herself of within his or her own experience of the sinthome. There is an inner/outer transformation that needs to take place at the seat of mind-

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consciousness and within the subjective and intersubjective experience of the unconscious. In addition, the analyst is authorised not only within himself/herself but also within an institution. An analyst never authorises himself/herself without reference to a third, because the third, in the case of the absence of an institution, would be the voice and text of Lacan himself. Lacan's dictum or aphorism cannot mean a self-made analyst or a Lacanian version of the "selfmade-man", because this would contradict key, well-known features of the Lacanian corpus. If anything, the analyst is a function of the subject or it is the subject that makes the analyst. A self-made analyst without the function of the third would amount to a narcissistic idealego construction. The Sinthome Over time, Lacan's understanding of the concept of symptom within clinical psychoanalysis changed. At first, much like Freud, he recognised the symptom as a metaphor. Following linguistics, he came to call the symptom a signifier representing a form of signification. However, later on he became interested in the aspect of a symptom that is immune to symbolic interpretation and that explains a poor response to treatment or exceedingly long treatments. He came to think of the symptom as a form of jouissance that cannot be interpreted. The symptom as jouissance is what he came to call a sinthome. Jouissance is a term that has been left untranslated in the English editions of Lacan's work. It represents something pleasurable and painful, sexual and asexual, at the same time. As the symptom is a signifying element within a signifying chain, and therefore rooted in the Symbolic, jouissance and the sinthome are rooted in the Real. The Real is the dimension of human experience that is both before and beyond language and logic. Social reality is organised by the Imaginary and the Symbolic and therefore is not the Real. Lacan's work contains three different types of jouissance. There is the jouissance of the Other, which is the most primitive form, of jouissance, proceeding from the desire and love of the mother and the dyadic experience of being the phallic object of the mother's desire. The jouissance of the Other represents the first phase of Oedipus with the mother and involves the experiences of pleasure and pain in relationship to the breast. The first phase is still triadic

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because the unconscious object of the mother's desire represents a third term within the mother-child dyad. Then there is phallic jouissance that is tied to the intervention of the father, to the function of castration, and the difference between the sexes. Enjoying phallic jouissance requires going through the losses linked to the differences between the sexes and the incest prohibition. Symbolic castration retroactively resignifies the prior losses associated with weaning and sphincter control. If the conditions of phallic jouissance are not accepted (as seen in cases of incest, addictions, perversion, etc.), then the subject regresses to the pursuit of a jouissance with the mother and of the Other that does not involve the symbolic father or Oedipal structure proper. Finally, there is the Other jouissance, rooted in the relationship to the symbolic mother and father that both includes and surpasses phallic jouissance and the jouissance of the Other. Lacan also associated the Other jouissance to the jouissance of meaning, to the jouissance of the mystic and to feminine jouissance. The word sinthome is a neologism invented by Lacan to designate something similar to the working of knowing within the unconscious. It does not simply represent an irrelevant and pathological idiosyncrasy on his part. The unconscious uses homophony (similarity of sound) to establish possible meanings between words. Sinthome sounds like symptom and sainthomme (a holy man or saint). Rather than reducing saintliness to psychopathology, Lacan is pointing to a positive or //healthy,, dimension within a symptom or within human suffering. This also differs from sadomasochistic practices because the subject does not consciously and deliberately seek the pain in the symptom. There is something in the sinthome that helps and teaches/authorises the subject. Within Lacanian theory, the sinthome refers to two things: first, an incurable aspect of a symptom, a remainder of the symptom that remains rooted in the Real and immune to the effects of interpretation, and the effects of any treatment for that matter; second, the meaning of the symptom that teaches something to the subject about the unconscious. The sinthome is that aspect of the symptom that can be either poison or antidote, what kills or cures the subject. In the second sense, the sinthome represents growth through strife, an illness as an opportunity for enlightenment and well-being, and the lotus flower that grows in the mud. There is no enlightenment, growth, or well-being without the problems, pain, and obstacles

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associated with the sinthome. Thus, the two views of the sinihome, as both illness and remedy, converge on the understanding that the symptom has to remain in the Real, for the subject to have realisation. Since within Lacanian theory the Real is the register that lies both before and beyond rational symbolisation, and signifies the unconscious in the sense of the unknown and the unknowable, this explains why a symptom lodged in the Real could not be easily removed by symbolic or rational intervention. Within Lacanian theory the sinthome also refers to the end of analysis, and what Lacan calls the traversing of the phantasm (unconscious phantasy). As aforementioned, the analyst has to avoid falling into the trap or the seduction/ allure of the Subject Supposed to Know. Otherwise the analyst functions as an object of the drive of the analysand, and repeats the analysand's unconscious phantasies/ traumas, satisfying the puissance or the pleasure/pain linked to the symptom, without the insight into the nature of the phantasy object, and without stopping the puissance at stake in the illness or symptom. In such cases, the analyst enjoys with his/her being the phantasmatic transference to the subject supposed to know. The analyst does not interpret but rather provides some relief by contracting the illness of the analysand. For the analyst, the patient now represents the "puissance of the Other", defined as an inconvenient attachment or fusion with a primitive phantasy object of the other. If the analyst identifies with the pleasure/pain objects of the analysand, then the analysand becomes an object of the analyst. In contrast to this, the desire of the analyst has for its object, a non-object, the presence of the objet a (cause of desire) as an absence, rather than as a particular partial object (breast, faeces, phallus, etc.). The presence of the analyst embodies the letters of emptiness and the luminous face of the. void (of the objet a). If the analyst can remain grounded in the "Other puissance" of the desire of the analyst and of the analyst's sinthome, then the Other puissance of the analyst, as a supplement to the practice of interpretation, can also help put a stop to the "puissance of the Other" at work in the phantasy objects of the analysand. In this way, the sinthome also refers to the question of sublimation. The subject is in fact the history of the crossing from the shore of suffering (jouissance of the Other), across the river of the phantasm (phallic jouissance), and to the Other shore of sublimation and the Nirvana principle correctly understood (Other jouissance). A new

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Lacanian interpretation of Freud's formula for sublimation, "Where id was, ego shall be/ 7 would not only be Lacan's own "Where it was, I shall become/7 but also "Where the puissance of the Other and the symptom was, the Other puissance of the sinthome shall be." Psychoanalytic healing does not only transform the id as an intersubjective and projective puissance of the Other, a kernel of suffering unaffected by symbolic organisation, into the imaginary "being somebody" of the subject supposed to know. This "being somebody" still represents the shadow of a phantasmatic ego as a narcissistic object. The puissance of the Other, and the problems linked to phallic puissance, need to be further transformed into a kernel of enjoyment and well-being of the subject (of the Real), and of the sinthome. Such Other puissance, as a kernel of enjoyment and well-being of the subject lies within but also beyond the causality of the Symbolic and the linguistic signifier. Lacan said that at the end of analysis, the analysand or the future analyst does not identify with the analyst but rather with his/her sinthome. Otherwise, analysis could simply be reduced to replacing an identificatory and symptomatic character trait derived from a parent with a better character trait derived from the character of the analyst. In addition, identification with the sinthome does not represent identification with the symptom such as when a patient declares: "I am ail alcoholic, or an adult child of alcoholics, or an incest survivor," etc. In these cases, the symptom is complementing the absence or disavowal of the no arid name of the father. The symptom fills the lack of being and identity in lieu of the name of the father. For example, the name of the symptom stops the puissance of the Other embedded within an addiction. The difficulty controlling impulses, or limiting the puissance of the Other (addictions, incest, etc.) can be attributed to problems in the paternal function. Where the father failed to represent his no and his name (nom), whether by his own doing or the doings of the mother and the children, then the puissance of the Other and the desire of the mother becomes the basis for identity. An addiction or the violation of the incest prohibition represent the search for an impossible puissance instead of the acceptance of lack and the lack within a desire bound by the law and name of the father. During and after separation from the mother, her desire, and the puissance of the Other, the absence of the object leaves a hole within

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the subject. The hole becomes the basis for a desire regulated by the law, and by phallic puissance. On the side of the subject/self, of the subject-object/self-other relationship, the hole is filled not by the phallic object but by the imaginary dimension of the name of the father. Although this imaginary formation is a necessary step in individual and cultural development, eventually it becomes symptomatic and needs to be abandoned. The lack of being and of desire needs to be accepted as the emptiness of the symbolic father and mother, rather than covered over by the imaginary father or a master signifier. By naming/labelling an addiction and symbolising an inconvenient jouissance, the identification with the symptom attempts to repair the failure of the paternal function by providing a substitute master signifier for the imaginary dimension of the name of the father: "Hi, my name is Mary, and I am an alcoholic/7 Identification with the sinthome means something else. The sinthome corresponds to that place and moment of transition from the jouissance of the Other that exists prior to the intervention of the symbolic father, to the jouissance that signifies the presence of the father (phallic jouissance), and finally to the jouissance that embodies neither the absence nor the presence but the ultimate emptiness of the Other/father (Other jouissance). The Other jouissance uses the name of the father to go beyond the defences associated with rigid identifications and imaginary uses of the paternal metaphor. Character traits become traces of jouissance contained and released within the nature of character as a letter or a name. Instead of the symptom functioning as a name for the subject, the name of the subject and of the father become a sinthome, an old signifier with new meaning. The name no longer functions as a stop-gap for the lack in the other or the subject, nor as a signifier of the lack as an imaginary form of castration. The name as the sinthome becomes a signifier of the symbolic emptiness and interdependence of the Other {jouissance).

Finally, Lacan declares that the analyst is authorised in himself and with a few others. He does not say in himself and with a master or a master institution, These few others are other adverted analysts and not necessarily officers of an institution. The analyst, more than being identified with a profession or with the name and gain associated with professional expertise, is a metaphor for the subject who knows about not knowing. The analyst knows about the unconscious

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as the non-conceptual, or beyond conceptual, and therefore about what is never fully totalised as a theory, A gap or a lack always remains as a space between the subject, or the analyst and the doctrine and institution of psychoanalysis. The Other of the symbolic theory and of the institution has to remain a barred Other (0) for psychoanalysis to continue to evolve as a theory and a practice. The Real, as emptiness, is never fully totalised as a theory or a symbolic structure. This forces the Symbolic to remain an open system under perpetual construction and permutation. In the same way, at the end of analysis, the subject still remains a barred ego ($) but for different reasons. At this point, perhaps the eight of infinity (8), in the form of a Mobius strip, would be a better representation of the subject. Instead of dividing the subject, the bar on the subject ($) becomes a tie, link, or a flexible string/line between the subject and the Other (8). The structure determines the subject and the subject permutates the structure. Now the subject is barred, not because of neurotic division, but because the subject itself does not have an inherent identity other than that provided by the symbolic structure. On the other hand, autonomy is preserved in so far as the subject becomes the agent of the autonomy of the Symbolic. A singular subject represents an instance of the permutation of the overall symbolic structure.

Bibliography Donzis, L. et al. (2001). El Sinthome: Consecuencias Clinicas. Buenos Aires: Letraviva. Ferenczi, S. (1928). The elasticity of psycho-analytic technique. In: Final Contributions to the Problems and Methods of Psychoanalysis. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1980. Lacan, J. (1966). The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire. In: Ecrits. New York: Norton, 2002. Lacan, J. ([1961] 1991). Le transfert dans sa disparity subjective, sa pr£tendue situation, ses excursions techniques. Le Siminaire VIII. Paris: Seuil. Lacan, J. (1961). The direction of the treatment and the principles of its power. In: Ecrits. New York: Norton, 2002. Lacan, J. (1967). Proposition du 9 Octobre sur la psychanalyse aVEcole. Scilicet, 1:14-30.

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Lacan, J. (1975-1976). Seminario 23: El Sinthoma. Traducci6n de Ricardo Rodriguez Ponte. Unpublished. Lacan, J. (1976-1977). Seminario 24: Lo No-Sabido que Sabe. Traduccion de Ricardo Rodriguez Ponte. Unpublished. Miller, J.A. (2005). The Pathology of Democracy. London: Karnac. Moncayo, R. (1998). Cultural diversity and the cultural and epistemological structure of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic. Psychology, 15 (2): 262-286. Moncayo, R. (2005). Love, transference, and the emptiness of the agalma. Journal for Lacanian Studies, 3 (1): 35-47. Sachs, Harms. Freud: Master and Friend. London: Imago, 1945; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1944. Sachs, Harms. (1947). Observations of a training analyst. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1. Safouan, M., Julien, P., Hoffman, C. (1995). Malestar en el Psicodnalisis: El tercero en la institucidn.y el dnalisis de control. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visi6n, 1997. Safouan, M. (2000). Jacques Lacan and the Question of Psychoanalytic Training. New York: McMillan Press.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Cultural Difference and Lacanian Psychoanalysis: From the Master's Discourse to Post-Colonial Analytical Practice

Introduction

I

t is important to periodically examine the assumptions that, consciously or unconsciously, determine the course and results of psychoanalytic work; unexamined and unrecognised assumptions establish the parameters of what may be possible or impossible within the scope of our professional practice arid activity as analysts. Ethnic minorities have figured highly in the use of mental health services, as well as having high drop-out rates from the same. Thus the question regarding the role of culture in psychoanalysis and in the field of mental health has arisen around the practical problem of providing effective mental health services to ethnic minority populations. Within the majority, dominant culture, the stated or unstated assumption is often made that many ethnic minority groups, as a result of economic, cultural, and educational deficits, are simply not "good candidates" for the mental health services available within Western culture (i.e. "insight" forms of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis). Within psychoanalysis, such an assumption has followed from the criteria of "analysability", whereas outside psychoanalysis it has found confirmation in psychotherapy outcome research data that support the view that intelligent, verbal, attractive, and successful upper-class individuals tend to benefit the most from psychotherapy. It goes without saying that White majority subjects 247

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are over-represented within those defined as ideal candidates for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. In addition, until recently the psychoanalytic literature in the United States has not been known for addressing the concerns of the minority mental health literature or those of minorities in general. In contradistinction to this perspective, literature on minority mental health produced by minorities for minorities comes to the different conclusion that mental health services have to be provided by bilingual and bicultural professionals to more effectively deliver services to underserved groups. Here, the assumption is made that most therapists are not familiar with the cultural backgrounds and lifestyles of diverse ethnic groups because they have received training primarily developed for treating Anglo-Americans (Sue & Zane, 1987; Bernal & Padilla, 1982). Western insight-oriented forms of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, as a whole, are often summarily dismissed by minority researchers and clinicians as being appropriate and effective only with majority or mainstream individuals. For example, it is said that Latinos cannot benefit from psychoanalytic treatment because they like to focus on the present, want the direct guidance of authority figures, can conceive only of medical/physical symptoms or cannot self-disclose regarding their experience (Sue & Zane, 1987; Szapocznik 1982; Ruiz & Padilla, 1987; Meadow, 1982; Cortese, 1979). From the ideological underpinnings of both dominant and minority groups, many inaccurate clinical observations and generalisations have been derived regarding the kinds of interventions that may benefit the various cultural groups. I argue that both sides need to be held responsible for a portion of the responsibility for what has led to the historical misunderstanding between minorities and psychoanalysis, particularly in the United States. The risk one always takes in attempting to link and place two sets of independent discourses into a relationship with one another is that neither side will accept modifications of their basic assumptions. However, the dominant European culture can no longer afford hot to listen to the concerns of cultural minorities, and it may have to reconsider and develop some of its own assumptions. Minority groups, on the other hand, may be neglecting and under-utilising many points of convergence between psychoanalytic theory and practice and their own emancipatory interests.

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Carefully designed research studies would not necessarily be helpful in debunking faulty assumptions of this kind, as the empirical research literature recommends, because from my perspective what is also needed is a congruent and coherent theoretical and epistemological critique and not merely more empirical research. Empirical evidence and clinical practices are at least co-determined by the conceptual assumptions made in the research and therapeutic process. After many years of working with Latinos in the English-speaking world and within a Latin-American psychoanalytic frame of reference, I want to argue that inaccurate assumptions about Latinos or psychoanalysis stem not from Latino culture or Latino populations but from the dualisms and conceptual/political contradictions of the "master's discourse77 that rules clinicians as well as institutions of higher education. In this chapter, I address critical issues regarding the definition of social science; the relationship between social science and traditional culture; inter-relationships among culture, class, and psychotherapy; and the practice of psychoanalytic interpretation and its cultural significance. Although the literature on minority mental health has explained the difficulties encountered in providing effective mental health services to minorities in terms of differences between Western culture and various other cultural traditions, I want to argue that the problem is rooted not solely in relative cultural differences but also in the larger conflict between modern and traditional paradigms, as well as in the epistemological underpinnings of empiricist social science culture. In this chapter, I elucidate why I place social science in the category of a relative cultural phenomenon. I begin with a discussion of traditional and modern approaches to knowledge. I then describe an alternative postmodern epistemological framework that could prove more effective in the understanding and treatment of ethnic minorities. The final section focuses on the application of this framework to the clinical process, using Lacanian principles, and includes a redefinition of the psychoanalytic concept of insight more in keeping with the concept of the unconscious and with the conception of knowledge found in traditional cultures. The fact that Lacanian theory is very influential in Latin America (because of its historical focus on social and political theory) makes it especially relevant for the task at hand. This is not to say that other schools of psychoanalysis do not exist in Latin America or that the same task could

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not be undertaken from other vantage points within psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, as would also be the case with other possible formulations, every process of knowledge throws some light but also some darkness on other modes of understanding. The terms traditional, modern, and postmodern are used here not merely as words but to designate specific conceptual structures. The common use of these terms merely designates a temporal reference: modern is synonymous with contemporary, new, or current, whereas traditional refers to the old and the past (i.e. the often mentioned reference to "traditional" psychotherapy). Within the present postmodern paradigm, modern refers to modernity as the secular scientific paradigm with all of its accompanying aesthetic and ethical values, whereas tradition or traditional refers to cultural traditions existing before and outside the Western scientific paradigm. Postmodern points in the direction of a new cross-cultural paradigm that permutates and combines traditional and modern conceptual structures. Modern and Traditional Epistemologies The so-called Western scientific paradigm developed in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and culminating in the 18th and 19th centuries with the social, cultural, and political movement known as the Enlightenment. Out of this period came most of the values and ideas we associate with the modern world. However, the European scientific tradition, which rules most learning institutions in developed as well as developing countries, is not a single and unitary phenomenon. Basically, within the social or human sciences there are two European traditions or discourses: empiricism and various forms of rationalism, some of which include the transrational (what is beyond the a priori categories of reason) in their perspectives. Empiricism is the tradition associated with Anglo-Saxon or English culture, whereas what, for the moment, I am calling rationalism is associated with continental Europe, including romance language cultures and certain aspects of German culture. Marxism and critical social thinking developed out of this latter tradition and has led to the critique of oppression of minority or disempowered groups, whether through political or cultural forms of colonialism. Empiricism separates social science from the humanities and from

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philosophy, whereas rationalism or critical theory includes empirical research within the human sciences and is committed to the task of not splitting theory from practice and empirical research, and social science from abstract philosophical thought. This way the different inferences or smaU theories that can be developed out of various empirical studies have to be placed within the mainstream and coherence of rational and logical thinking within the context of the history of ideas and scientific thinking. To be fair, although the United States inherited its division of knowledge into social science and humanities departments from the English, the English in general remain much more open to theoretical continental European thought, particularly within the social sciences. The Frankfurt school (Habermas, 1968; Adorno, 1978; Horkheimer, 1978) proposed that the epistemological structure of empiricism can be used for political and economic domination. According to empiricism, science, as the presupposed superior form of knowledge, is the sole arbiter of truth, and anything that cannot be empirically and atheoretically demonstrated is false or an error. From this kind of misleading assumption developed the modern and current dualistic distinction between modern scientific facts and traditional mythological beliefs. In addition, empiricism also helps isolate knowledge from practice in such a way that it may benefit the economic interests of capitalism. The case of psychotropic medications is a good example. The six weeks long clinical trials studies are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of medications and as such are presented to professional audiences with the added behavioural reinforcement (another fruit of empiricism) of a free lunch paid for by the pharmaceutical company. But typically three essential elements are left out of the presentation: 1. that th£ population studied may be completely different from the clinical population treated by the audience; 2. that if a placebo is used as a control group, although the medication may be better than the placebo, it may only be 20 per cent better. In other words, the placebo effect may account for 80 per cent of the medication's effectiveness; and 3. that the effectiveness of the medication with actual clinical populations may be quite different from that shown with the sample used in the study. In addition, a significant amount of research done in medical and psychiatric training institutions is directly financed by pharmaceutical companies. The point I am trying to make is not that

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pharmaceutical companies are evil but that by separating theory from practice, empiricism can be used to provide a facade of objectivity that in fact serves very specific economic interests. Out of the dualistic conceptual structure that regards the mythological thinking of traditional cultures as a prescientific form of knowledge develops the condescending attitude of regarding other, different cultures as primitive, inferior, or incapable of benefiting from the light of scientific culture. Because empiricist culture restricts knowledge and cognition to narrow, formal, logical structures, members of other cultures that are based on broader, more intuitive or right-brain forms of cognition will continue to fail "normative" expectations. Concurrently, the empiricist paradigm also discredits and invalidates the ways of knowledge of traditional cultures. This has become a political reality in contemporary society. Nevertheless, despite the strength and momentum of the empiricist world.view, trends can be found in modern culture that contradict the view that the statistical method within the social sciences is superior to mythical or intuitive thought. This is seen not only within spiritual quarters and the works of Jung (1964) and Campbell (1967/1968) but also within the discourse of the social sciences. The writings of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss . (1949/1969) would be an example. Although a social scientist in the humanities tradition and the founder of structuralism in anthropology, he rejected the notion that mythical thought is somehow less rigourous and demanding than scientific thought. The difference between the two is not based on the quality of intellectual operations but found in the nature of the object or the dimension of reality being studied. Mythical thought is not without a conceptual language but is used to describe a reality that cannot be fully captured by language. Myth simultaneously organises a historical and timeful perspective on the one hand, and a timeless/eternalist and a historical perspective on the other. The perception of the mythical mentality as a primitive, false, pathological, or infantile consciousness is a dogmatic and ethnocentric bias of empiricist science. In taking this stance, social science becomes the very shadow of the dogmatic theological paradigm it rose to supplant. Despite any actual claim to ethical and political neutrality, epistemology has definite political consequences in terms of the

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socioeconomic power and authority that comes from establishing criteria regarding credible or legitimate knowledge. In addition to the political issue involved in the relationship between power and knowledge across cultures, however, the question still remains as to whether empiricism is the only adequate and valid paradigm for the social sciences. Can the structural complexities of culture and of the human subject be adequately approached, interpreted, and explained with purely behavioural, descriptive, and "objectivistic" references? Are there entire levels of social, psychical, and subjective reality that remain unaccounted for within the structure of logical empiricism? Conversely, could it be that, despite their inferior political and economic status, traditional epistemological forms are more adequate than empiricist social science in this regard? Toward a Postmodern Epistemology In contrast to traditional, intuitive forms of knowledge that are based on becoming intimate with what one knows, empiricist scientific knowledge remains separate from the object. In the guise of being objective and nonsubjective, the social scientist misses something essential to him/her and the object. Knowledge in science is intrinsically associated with the split between subject and object. This split may result in dualistic views regarding the nature of reality because the social scientist and the technocrat think they are manipulating an object that is separate from them. It is true that the fallibility of a scientific hypothesis (to use Popper's concept) serves as an antidote against human beings projecting their own wishes and expectations onto the world of nature. Such is the usual empiricist critique of mythical thought as distinguished from the world of facts. However, traditional cultures also contain vehicles for the reality testing of perceptions or for bridging the symbolic and the real, theory and reality. It could be argued that the process of differentiating between true and false knowledge seems to be similar for both traditional culture and social science. It is misleading to think that intuitive knowledge is subjective and scientific knowledge is objective. The scientific approach seeks an objective knowledge that describes phenomena independently from personal and subjective beliefs (i.e. values, attitudes, opinions, sensations,

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impressions, and feelings). It strives to describe things in themselves "just as they are", free from subjective distortion. However, although empiricists believe that true knowledge comes from the senses, they fail to realise that the senses, as something different from subjective "sensual" desire, derive their "sense" from a rational-symbolic function. Following Lacan (1975), any symbolic-cultural system can be understood as providing an objective mediation between socialcultural reality and subjective desire. It is a mistake to think that reality is translucently reflected in human analytical consciousness, as a naive empirical realism would have it. Empiricism fails to notice how a theory and the logic of the experiment or the technical procedures involved determine or at least interact with the nature of the data produced. Facts and theory belong together because facts do not exist on their own without theoretical elucidation or interpretation. If no theory can be declared true, neither can any fact. Moreover, knowledge (as rational theory or empirical fact) and truth can never completely coincide because, as Lacan (1975) has argued, truth can be only half-stated or halfsaid. In other words, whatever is said beyond the medium point fails to hit the mark, because the other half is beyond theory and measurement. From a postmodern perspective, "what things are" does not signify an external object for a separate subject. The practice of observation, experimentation, and concentration produces mutations in people's subjectivity that allow a phenomenon to be simultaneously revealed as it is outside and inside the mind. In addition, "what things are" does not mean either a singular, univocal signification such as "they are only this and not that", as would follow from the identity principle of formal logic prevalent in logical empiricism. Within the arena of the social sciences, what things are unfolds within a dialectical, polyvocal, and symbolic system in which things being what they are can also be something else or more. Finally, this also extends, beyond the Symbolic order, into the Real not of theory but of theology and of ultimate reality within non-theism as an alternative to both theism and atheism. In fact, within an all-inclusive study perspective, knowledge could be placed in a continuum or spectrum across formal logic (for the empirical sciences), dialectical logic (for the humanities), and negative dialectics (for theology and non-theism). Each successive form of logic

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includes the preceding one but not vice versa. Psychoanalysis as a social science holds the potential of benefiting from all forms and dimensions of human logic. Lacan (1959) pointed out that all things of the human world are structured by language. In the subjectivisation of the external world symbols—as representations, memories, and images—colour and screen the perceptions and impressions coming from the external world. In this view, the world is not perceived naturally, spontaneously, but is interpreted according to one's desires, languages, and culturally guided theories. The symbolic structure is interposed between perception and consciousness. The something out there as a phenomenon in the external world, which has objective existence in reality, is found there by human endeavour and purposive action only to be used for some utility that exists within a world of subjective expectations and goals. Finally, that so-called objective discoveries are corrective subjective experiences or a rectification of one's subjectivity (Bachelard, 1975) does not mean that, ultimately, one is left with pure objectivity and no subjectivity. This is still a dualistic view representing a partial perspective. If an objective discovery changes one subjectively, this means that both the object and the subject are changed. Thus, one arrives not at a position of no subjectivity but at a position of true, rectified-corrected subjectivity. Thus, the difference between false beliefs and authentic knowledge, whether in science or traditional culture, is not that between objective and subjective knowledge but that between true and false subjectivity. Culture, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and Clinical Practice In addition to cultivating a cultural critique of social oppression based on both Judeo-Christian and Marxist sources, the continental European tradition also developed a psychoanalytic and a hermeneutic tradition. These latter two have in common an incorporation of myth, interpretation, and the "beyond reason" into.the structure of a social or human science. It is only here that it becomes possible to conceive of continuity and compatibility between what Lyotard (1989) called the narrative knowledge of traditional ethnic cultures and the culture of Western science. The hermeneutic tradition is associated with the philosophy of science of Dilthey and, more

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currently, with that of Ricoeur (1970) and Habermas (1968). Both Habermas and Ricoeur define psychoanalysis as hermeneutic science operating through the medium of language and interpretation of meaning. Freud's twin concepts of the unconscious and of a symbolic order were meant to account for what is beyond rational measurement and what was traditionally associated with intuition and non-linear, paralogical metaphoric thinking. However, there are also positivistic elements running through Freud's thought in that he accepted the modernistic assumptions of his time regarding the advancement of culture from animism to religion to science. Thus, the work of Lacan provides a postmodern interpretation of Freud that allows for a more sympathetic understanding of traditional culture. Although many of Freud's views on ethnology as outlined in Totem and Taboo (1913/1953) and Moses and Monotheism (1939/1964), have been criticised as inaccurate, they are thus only in so far as they are presented to be positivistic, objective, and scientific historical facts. I follow Lacan in his conception of these Freudian works as modern mythological structures. The two works aforementioned contain truths not as facts but as myths and metaphors. In this area of his work, Freud's texts ironically become akin to narrative biblical or traditional stories describing events that need to be interpreted symbolically and hermeneutically, as opposed to literally or objectively. Nevertheless, it should also be recognised that Freud's myths reflect certain key concerns and characteristics of modern Western culture (e.g. the importance and meaning attributed to sexuality and to parent-child relationships). Following Freud, who, in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901/1965), called psychoanalysis his psychomythology, Lacan taught that psychoanalysis is half-science and half-metaphor or myth. This field is neither completely one or the other nor a symmetrical complement of the two. Moreover, this state of affairs is consistent with the aforementioned Lacanian aphorism that truth can be only half-stated or half-said (whatever is said beyond the medium point fails to hit the mark, because the other half is beyond knowledge and measurement). In this sense, metaphor or myth may be the preferable symbolic medium needed for accessing a dimension of reality and of human experience that cannot be grasped by reason or scientific method. In addition, metaphor leaves one with the echo

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and evocation of something that is beyond words and logic. Lacan's work differs from the school of hermeneutics in that his theory also includes a register of experience that is beyond words and the symbolic order. This has important consequences for the practice of interpretation in psychoanalysis. I return to this later. It is important to note that the United States, for example, also developed a particular psychoanalytic tradition and a psychoanalytically-influenced psychiatric culture that, in my opinion, increases the gap between modern psychiatry and traditional minority groups. During the 1950s and '60s the North American Psychoanalytic Association had dominance over the International Psychoanalytic Association. This is a pivotal point, because it again underscores the fact that one cannot speak of a single and monolithic Western culture. Moreover, certain aspects of Western culture blend better with traditional non-Western cultures than others. The North American Psychoanalytic School produced a culturally guided reformulation of psychoanalysis. In the land of empiricism and pragmatism, psychoanalysis partially moved away from the unconscious and from those symbolic intangibles that cannot be measured. More importantly for the purposes of this article, however, psychoanalysis was adapted to the popular North American ideology of individualism and the self-made entrepreneur. North American psychoanalysis developed the school of ego psychology out of this cultural juncture. In lieu of the unconscious, the emphasis shifted to the problem of adaptation to society. The latter can lead to a dichotomy between adaptive and normal-normative behaviour and maladaptive and abnormal behaviour. The problem with the concept of adaptation is that one has to ask, adaptation to what society? One possible answer is the society of dominant Anglo-Saxon ego-based individualism. Thus, it is no accident that those from .different cultural groups could fail to function within certain cultural imperatives. Entire groups may fall out of the "norm" and the "normal" and into pathology and deviance. In contrast to this, the concept of the unconscious is non-dual because it is found in both normality and pathology. For example, the Oedipus myth is involved in the production of both functional states. Moreover, primitive symbolic logic constitutes the logic of the unconscious and, as such, establishes continuity between abnormal and normal, and between primitive and developed mental phenomena.

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Li some respects, this critique could also apply to more current schools of psychoanalysis. Although the object relations and selfpsychology schools cannot be identified with ego psychology, they share an interest in ego development and use a developmental model to differentiate normal from abnormal behaviour. It can be argued that linear developmental models that establish temporal norms to differentiate normal from abnormal behaviour, and which therefore reify culture-bound norms into so-called objective criteria, run the risk of either pathologising individuals from other cultures or imposing on them behavioural standards of the dominant culture. Finally, wittingly or unwittingly, the three schools mentioned earlier. (with the exception of the Kleinian school of object relations) lose sight of the unconscious and its symbolic and cultural interpretation. In doing so, they inevitably disregard atemporal dimensions of experience. Mythical, metaphoric, and linguistic mediums have the advantage of simultaneously organising both time-bound and timeless dimensions. In contrast to this, developmental models are always bound to culturally relative conceptions of time. Under the influence of Lacanian thought, socially informed psychoanalysis in Latin America has continued to centre psychoanalysis on the therapeutic task not of ego adaptation but of interpreting unconscious desire and undoing repression. This latter treatment task establishes a different therapeutic relationship with oppressed minority groups. The undoing of psychological repression resonates in unison with the emancipatory social interests of minority groups, whereas adaptation to culture-bound norms is analogous to a process of assimilation in which a core of desired values is lost or repressed. This point can be elaborated further by using the contrast that LeviStrauss (1955) made between two basic mechanisms of cultural organisation: anthropophagy and anthropemy. The former refers to the tendency of a culture or society to expel or exclude differences from the social or public body and the latter refers to the tendency to include and welcome differences and foreign influences into the social body. Thus, the social movement toward including differences can be compared with the psychical task of undoing repression and incorporating the "Other" into the core of one's being. In contrast, the movement toward expelling differences can be seen as analogous to the task of adaptation to a normative environment by conforming and excluding differences to the norm. Finally, the focus on ego

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adaptation is consistent with an assimilationist or melting pot model of acculturation. Most ethnic groups nowadays regard biculturalism as the optimal form of acculturation. Biculturalism allows for the Other of native culture to be incorporated into ethnic and cultural/ linguistic identity. Lacan often pointed out the danger that ego psychology constructs can reinforce an implicit master's mentality or attitude in which the ego is the master or rider and the id is the servant or the tamed animal. This equestrian metaphor shares formal similarities with the political relationship whereby a dominant majority group governs over a dominated minority. This relationship, in turn, can be replicated within the psychotherapeutic relationship with ethnic minority individuals. Lacan's critique of an ego-mastery ideal does, in fact, coincide with how Western values and cultural standards are scrutinised within the minority mental health literature. However, except for those familiar with post-colonial theory, most minorities are not aware of this possible and plausible way of combining psychoanalysis and social theory. Making these points explicit, I think, can help bridge the gap and misunderstanding between these two sets of human discourses. Lacan argued that Freud invented a new relationship and situation that subverts the normative discourses of both government and education. By using language nonconventionally and occupying a different psychical position than that emanating from the master's discourse of the ruling or governing classes, the discourse of psychopathology may be understood and healed in the psychotherapeutic process. Thus this framework purports to address concerns raised within the minority mental health literature regarding how the psychotherapy process can be impeded when individuals and their psychotherapists are members of different socioeconomic classes or possess different sets of cultural values. This has been considered an important issue in work with working-class Latinos because the majority of Latinos have lower incomes, fewer years of education, and over-representation in menial occupations that nevertheless sustain and support the upper structures of the North American economy. Many Latinos are literally working, as servants, maids, janitors, gardeners, and in-home child-care workers.

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However, although the literature on psychotherapy with Latinos has emphasised the importance of extrapsychic factors of class and culture, it has not articulated extrapsychic and intrapsychic factors into a coherent theoretical model. The proposed theory combines these dimensions into a non-dual framework: what is intrapsychic can become extrapsychic, and vice versa. Thus, in the metaphor used earlier, the extrapsychic social relationship between master and servant—the ruling majority and the ruled minority—finds its correlate and equivalent process at the intrapsychic level in the relationship between the ego and the unconscious. From the perspective of this parallel process, it then becomes possible to understand how extrapsychic and intrapsychic, social and psychical elements may impede or facilitate the psychotherapy situation. When an analyst is a member of a racial or cultural minority group, he or she will, at minimum, belong to a higher socioeconomic stratum than the lower-class minority patient, and class differences will arise secondary to educational differences. Altaian (1995) pointed out that the social location of psychologists and psychoanalysts is in the professional-managerial class and that "they have nothing more tangible by way of capital to hold on to than their knowledge and expertise" (p. 81). On the other hand, when psychoanalyst and analysand belong to different racial, cultural, and linguistic groups, class differences will be subsumed or expressed through these categories. In the latter caLse, cultural and language barriers will prevent an analyst from understanding and communicating with a minority analysand. In the former case, although a therapist may be knowledgeable about language and culture, a class barrier may lead the therapist to impose his or her own classbound values, therapeutic or otherwise, on the lower-class individual. Thus, from my perspective, beyond a mere recognition of the existence of a class difference, what is required is the neutralisation of the class-bound "master" position of the psychoanalyst; this needs to be distinguished from the psychoanalyst's professional credibility. Sue and Zane (1987) identified credibility and giving as two basic processes that are important to consider in doing psychotherapy with members of ethnic minority groups. Credibility refers to a patient's perception of the psychotherapist as an effective and trustworthy helper, whereas giving is the perception that something was received

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from the therapeutic encounter. According to Sue and Zane, because of scepticism toward Western forms of treatment, the minority individual needs to perceive, almost immediately, a direct benefit from the treatment. From my vantage point, the credibility of the psychotherapist is based on two elements: 1. the fact that the psychical symptom is something unknown and uncontrolled by the subject; and 2. the fact that the patient attributes certain knowledge to the doctor regarding the symptom. In the Lacanian school, these elements are understood as the basis for a positive transference relationship. The latter is what functions as a structural basis for the perceived credibility of the psychotherapist. As such, it provides the initial immediate gratification (benefit) needed to engage an individual in a treatment relationship. In fact, a reduction in symptomatology is often reported in the very early phase of psychotherapy. Within the psychoanalytic field, this phenomenon is known as a "transference cure". Thus I have argued that, on the one hand, the analyst-therapist needs to establish his or her credibility on the basis of knowledge regarding psychopathology, psychical structures and psychotherapeutic processes; on the other hand, to satisfy the aforementioned considerations of class as well as the ingredients of effective psychotherapeutic use of the transference relationship, the therapistanalyst needs to renounce the power and privilege given to him or her by educational class differences as well as the transference of the subject. Here the curative factor comes not from the class-bound knowledge of the analyst (the master's discourse) but from an unconscious knowing not based on formal education that the suffering subject (the client or analysand) does not know that he/ she knows. When the analyst renounces the ego knowledge or expertise of the master's discourse and functions out of an attitude of not knowing, he or she becomes a vehicle for the non-repressed "unknown-knowing" and understanding contained within the Symbolic. "Unknown knowing" here includes both the repressed signifying chain of the analysand and the participation of the analyst in the larger unknown (unconscious in a descriptive sense) structure of language and the Symbolic. On this side of the dialectic, credibility is achieved by a symbolic horizontal levelling of the ego-based authority of the analyst in favour of the transformative power of the

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Unconscious. The Symbolic functions as the great leveller of social class; in the Symbolic having class is the same and not having it. In the Symbolic, and according to the dialectical logic of the master/ servant relationship, the servant is a servant but also a master, and the master is a master but also a servant. Finally, to have knowledge you have to do without it: knowledge requires both knowing and not knowing. Thus, two different forms of credibility can be postulated: vertical and horizontal. Vertical credibility refers to the credibility of the professional knowledge of the clinician, whereas horizontal credibility refers to credibility flowing from a subjective position of notknowing or "unknown knowing" on the part of the analyst. This is the meaning that should be assigned to the aforementioned symbolic renunciation on the part of the analyst-psychotherapist. This latter form of credibility is associated with unconscious and subjective dimensions of experience (the subject) and would be a direct function of the degree of conflict resolution within the clinician's own psychical structure. Consistent with Hegel's philosophy, within this model the true subject is found in the position of service and servitude. True mastery is attained not by the ego but in relationship to the unconscious and through a process of benevolent ego deconstruction. Mastery, thus defined, allows the analyst to renounce his or her own desire to obtain ego gratification through the patient's idealisation of him or her in transference. This kind of subjective maturity on the part of the analyst constitutes a central characteristic of horizontal credibility. It can be argued that this secular/symbolic subjective position is very much consistent and congruent with key properties of traditional and symbolic cultural systems (e.g. Chinese Confucianism and Taoism, Chinese or Japanese Buddhism, Native American Shamanistic traditions or Western Judaic and Christian traditions). In line with this, Lacan reformulated and redeployed Freudian principles regarding the process of the cure. In The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power, Lacan (1966/1979) outlined how the two elements of direction and power are correlated and how, for there to be a direction to the cure, the analyst has to renounce the power granted to him/her by the analysand's transference. Lacan, in France, and his followers in Latin America have emphasised

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the need to call the analysand "analizante" instead of "analizado" (analysed). The English word "analysand" implies a position of empowerment, analytical activity, and responsibility. The unconscious of the analysand knows the textual truth (the signifying chain of symbolic language resembles a latent text) manifesting through the symptom, but due to repression and concomitant disguises, the subject appears to ignore it. From this place of ignorance the analysand searches for a master in the analyst. It is the unconscious of the analysand and not the ego of either analyst or analysand which directs the process of the cure. Thus, the autonomy granted to the subject of analysis is not so that he/she may become a repressive master of another colonised part of the self or of yet another more vulnerable subject or social group. Emancipation is achieved by bracketing and renouncing the traps and allures of the master's discourse. Especially when working with individuals of a different culture or a lower socio-economic class, the analyst has to renounce being a representative of the ego-ideals of the ruling classes and instead operate out of a position of notknowing or "unknowing-knowing" and let the culturally and linguistically ciphered unconscious of the analysand speak in its own true voice. Conversely, the analysand also has to surrender not to the class and status-bound ego of the analyst nor to his/her own imaginary ego-demands but to the voice of his/her own symbolic language and culture. From a social-cultural perspective, the idealising transference to the analyst as an ego-ideal can be regarded as a movement towards searching for assimilation, to want-to-be and speak with the words of the white upper-class master, of the rulers, rather than with one's own. The therapeutic task of undoing repression, together with the concept of cure direction as defined above, constitute key elements of psychotherapy in general but also have a special importance and meaning essential to analytical work with minority groups. Both point in the direction of empowerment of the subject and reconciliation with and inclusion of otherness. Lacan used the term the Other to designate the Freudian unconscious. This term has the advantage of simultaneously conveying both the symbolic and social meanings of the unconscious. Given that otherness encompasses the subject of the unconscious and the presence of a different social other (i.e. an

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ethnic minority subject or group), acceptance and reconciliation with the Other of the unconscious will lead to a qualitative change in the nature of the social link and nexus with other subjects. The relational or intersubjective school of psychoanalysis (Altman, 1995) argues that psychoanalysis has neglected social or class issues because the "one-person" conceptual framework, with its emphasis on intrapsychic drive processes, does not lend itself to an analysis of intersubjective social phenomena. However, from a Lacanian perspective the problem is not drive theory per se but how the drive is defined. In the United States, the mainstream ego-psychological psychoanalytic view of the drive was according to the model of a biological instinct. Lacan, following Freud, postulates that the drive, as opposed to a biological instinct, can only be known through psychical representations which are organised within a cultural symbolic order. The Symbolic order immediately places the drive not only within a dyadic dual or "two person psychology" but within a triadic "three person psychology". The Symbolic is analogous to the category of the social, linguistic, and cultural dimensions of experience. The unconscious as the Other encompasses the place of a repressed symbolic drive and the psycho-social space of the socially different. The social other of a same race or class represents the general social other/will of society, the nurture side of the nurture/nature relationship. For the master class, the class in power, the place of minorities, of the socially different by virtue of race and class, symbolically represents the place of forbidden satisfaction (jouissance), the illusion of a natural jouissance, the place of the lack of discipline which the law demands. Thus minorities, the masses, people of colour and the lower classes, have been classically perceived and defined as representing the Other of the primitive mentality found in nature, passion and drive. Finally, the exceptions to the law, the failures of the law, reinforce a heightened awareness of the law. What the servant is seen as wanting or doing is what the master cannot have or do. This also explains, in my view, how the other of social difference is metaphorically held responsible not only for representing the drive but also for reminding the master class of what they cannot do or have. The ego-psychology school also differentiates between defensive and non-defensive forms of ego-functioning. For Lacan the category

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of non-defensive ego-functioning is associated with the subject of the unconscious, from whence stems the capacity to experientially and not necessarily rationally know the unconscious. The objection could be raised that the distinction between the ego and the unconscious, master and servant, the repressive and the repressed is not absolute given that for Freud the ego also had an unconscious dimension. Nevertheless, I do not think that Freud's ideas regarding an unconscious part of the ego refers to a distinction between defensive and non-defensive ego-functioning. For Freud, the non-defensive ego was the rational conscious ego. Freud's unconscious part of the ego refers to the source of unconscious repression and therefore is bound up with a defensive function of the ego. Freud (1923) believed that the unconscious part of the ego, as the unconscious source of repression, had to be of a different nature than the repressed unconscious. Freud never clarified very well or added much content to his assertion that the repressive ego is unconscious but not repressed. Freud does not give a systematic definition of the unconscious part of the ego or of how this concept is similar or different to the repressed unconscious. In The Ego and the Id (1923), instead of defining the unconscious part of the ego, he moves on to introduce the id. Freud conceives of a connection between repression, the unconscious part of the ego, and the faculty of self-criticism and conscience. In addition, Freud associates the faculty of criticism with the super-ego. However, he never established a systematic relationship between the super-ego and the unconscious part of the ego, although all of his thinking points in this direction. To explain the unconscious part of the ego, Freud points out that the ego extends into the id and that the id is a larger category than that of the repressed. Moreover, since Freud establishes a close connection between the super-ego and the energetic cathexis of the id, it is my contention that Freud advances the concept of the super-ego precisely to explain the relationship between an unconscious self-critical faculty, the unconscious part of the ego and the id. Moreover, later on he also contradicts himself by arguing that the ego can also repress the super-ego (the unconscious part of the ego on whose behest the ego carries out the repressions). Thus, this would seem to indicate that the unconscious repressive force may also be repressed.

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The unconscious ego can precisely refer to suppressed or repressed values and class prejudices of a particular culture as they are embodied in a particular individual. The super-ego, as an aspect or differentiation within the ego, is the unconscious task-master, the master class overlord capable of thinking and making derogatory comments of deprived people of colour who rarely have access to mental health treatments available to the white upper classes. As opposed to the rational ego, and the unconscious super-ego, the subject of the unconscious is in the position of not-knowing, of symbolic castration, and therefore in a similar symbolic position to that of the Other, the socially different and humble. I believe this subjective position, which is in fact non-defensive, should be differentiated from the concept of the ego and the super-ego as a differentiation within the ego. The emphasis given to undoing repression over adaptation to normative society should not be misunderstood as giving priority to cognitive insight over affect or social-behavioural change. The emphasis on social engineering and behavioural change and management through positive reinforcement of socially adaptive behaviour needs to be understood not as value-neutral but as a direct way of reinforcing the norms and values of a particular society. On the other hand, insight should not be understood either as a purely intellectual or as a verbal exercise without any actual emotional or practical consequence. Until now the psychoanalytic concept of insight has been primarily regarded as cognitive in nature (Strieker, 1992). The question regarding the function of insight in psychotherapy has two important characteristics for our purposes. First, it is often critiqued as ineffective both as a therapeutic tool leading to intierminable and exceedingly long treatments; and as a treatment for minority groups because of the assumption that insight is based on formal education, intelligence, and cognitive processes primarily characteristic of Western culture. I have stated that Lacan redefines the classical psychoanalytic concept of transference around the question of "knowing" (savoir in French or saber in Spanish). Knowing is not based on formal rational ego-knowledge (conocimiento in Spanish and connaissance in French) because Lacan makes a distinction between the referential knowledge of science and a textual knowing in the psychoanalytic situation regarding the text of the unconscious. This form of knowing would

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not be characterised by cognitive or secondary ego-processes. The unconscious has to do with an associative chain of representations which convey an emotional knowing regarding experiences apparently ignored by the ego. In other words, the analysand does not know that he/she knows. Analysis represents a search for a knowing that is not based on book knowledge. By now it is well known (within Lacanian circles) that Lacan's aphorism—the unconscious is structured like a language;—should not be interpreted as meaning that the structure of the unconscious is identical to the structure of social langtiage. Rather the unconscious has the structure of a different kind of language—the language of the unconscious. Lacan even gave a different name to the symbolic language of the unconscious: lalangue. Lalangue thrives on the symbolic rather than grammatical or syntactic elements of language. From this perspective, it becomes imperative to differentiate between a preconscious (unconscious in a descriptive sense), rational language and the language of the unconscious. Thus, the importance given in minority mental health to the necessity that the analyst be familiar with the language of the analysand, refers to the preconscious, cognitive knowledge of a language. However, the function of language in psychoanalysis specifically refers to the intimate knowing (saber) of the language of the unconscious, to the ability of the subject to listen for those places where the signifier intersects the Real of unconscious experience. It goes without saying that the knowledge of the former is obviously a requirement for the experiential knowing of the latter. I have also contrasted Lacan's concept of cure direction with the classical notion of an analytical contract. This is especially important when working with different cultural groups because instead of attempting to "adapt" the minority client to the frame, the frame should be adapted to match the cultural and linguistic styles within which the unconscious of the subject is ciphered. I would like to conclude this chapter by returning to the question of the practice of interpretation and its cultural significance. I stated above that metaphor leaves us with the echo or the evocation of something that is beyond words or logic. In a by now famous paper on symbolic efficacy, Levi-Strauss (1949) investigated the parallels between psychoanalytic treatment and the shamanic practices of healers or curanderos. He concluded that both work with symbols and

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with the relationship between a signifier or symbol and that which is signified or symbolised. The shaman provides an ill subject with a particular symbolic language in order to symbolise unconscious psychical and physiological states that may otherwise remain beyond formulation or symbolisation. The symptoms/symbols are resolved or transformed not because of a professional knowledge or insight that the patient acquires but because the symbolic process produces a specific experience on the side of the patient and onj the half-side of truth which remains both outside and yet also intrinsically connected with culture-bound symbolisation. Lacanian analysis and psychotherapy engages the subject in a parallel healing process. A Case Example I will now present an example case in order to provide a concrete illustration of how the unconscious is ciphered in the language and culture of the subject. Velia, a Mexican female in her mid-forties, presented to treatment complaining of a major depression with insomnia, crying spells and panic attacks. She came from a peasant family from Mexico's rural countryside, only finished third grade at age 13 and was working part-time cleaning houses. During her fist session she described heir suffering in terms of feeling inside as though she were "pesada, pisada and como nada" (heavy and disliked by others, stepped on and a nothing). This example makes painfully clear the need to know the linguistic and cultural context in order to understand how the unconscious producing the symptom is ciphered. The Spanish language is making possible the formation of a series or a signifying chain of unconscious meaning. "Pesada, pisada and como nada" share an homophonic rhyme which is not the case in the English translation. From a Lacanian perspective, homophony between words is one of the ways in which the unconscious organises meaning within language. Knowing this, I repeated these signifiers back to her, including the repetition of the phoneme ada in the three words, and asked her to say more about them. No cognitive explanation was given at this point. In turn she produced the following additional material. Ada she associated to "Ada Madrina" (fairy godmother). In addition, Ada connoted the "beautiful fantasy" of being someone instead

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of nothing. Velia spoke of the fairy tale of Cinderella, who was made to suffer in the position of servitude by a cruel stepmother but who nevertheless later became a princess. In her own experience both her stepmother and godmother had been cruel to her. Velia's sister once told her that their stepmother had asked her to tell Velia that she is a nothing, or "like a fly landing everywhere". Her stepmother once refused to shake her hand due to the fear of "contracting prostitution" from her. Both of these metaphors were allusions to Velia having led a sexually active life outside marriage and having been a prostitute in a bordello for a short period of time. Velia's mother had also been too strict and severe with her and, before she died, Velia refused to kneel to receive her mother's final blessing. This was a source of great feelings of guilt. Velia loved her father very much. She saw him as a very gentle man who was not respected by others due to being a peasant with a humble character. People often referred to father as a "paloviejo" (old stick). She regarded her sexual experiences as having brought further disrespect and humiliation to her father. When discussing this subject in one of our sessions she referred to herself as "palo caido de camino real" (fallen stick on a royal road). This is a saying (dicho) or aphorism in Spanish which in her case became a signifier expressing unconscious meaning. Thus, beyond solely incorporating cultural sayings into the work, as is often recommended in the minority mental health literature, these aphorisms need to be understood as cultural and linguistic vehicles of the unconscious. I ertded the session after she produced the aphorism and its signifying context was preliminarily explored. At least on the surface it was clear that she identified herself with the image of a fallen stick as a metaphor for failure, impotence, and lack of social advancement, but this interpretation was not yet given to her. In the following session she brought a dream which further deepened our understanding of the aphorism. She was flying in an airplane made of "palos" (sticks). This time she associated palo with chile and went on to explain that both palo and chile are vulgar metaphors used in Mexico to represent the penis. I interpreted the dream as her wish for the stick to "rise" as opposed to remaining in a "fallen" position. This time, since she introduced the phallic metaphor, I interpreted fallen stick as a metaphor or signifier for masculine impotence and for her father with whom she was identified. She

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agreed, and said that in her family the women were the ""men"" and her father the ""humble"" or the ""woman"" like her. She also added that once, when she was 14 years old, a boyfriend of hers once tried to force her to have sex, but she was so strong in fighting him back that he lost his erection. After this incident, her boyfriend became ill for four months and was skinny like a "palo". The session after she began by correcting something she had said the previous session. She had said that her father had wanted a son when she was born because the first born had been a boy who ""fell"" (cayo) or died on his 40th day. This time she said that it was one of her sister"s only son who fell on the 40th day. At this point I began to notice the repeated appearance of the number four in the context of a signifying chain linking fallen stick with male and female. From my training and reading of psychoanalytic literature Tknew that numbers can also function as symbolic signifiers. I simply stated that the number four had appeared more than once. She said that four is her favourite number. Why? Because it is "pares" (an even number). The grammatically correct way of saying ""even"" in Spanish would have been "par". In addition, why four if there are many even numbers other than four? Thus, pares, also means ""you give birth"". Four represented her unconscious wish to bear children. With regard to giving birth, she brought up with sadness her biological inability to have children. She added that recently she had been craving to hold a new-born in her arms and to smell the fresh smell in their heads and mouths as she had done with her younger siblings. She also felt envy and anger when seeing pregnant women, although she enjoys seeing a baby nursing at the breast. I interpreted that in that maternal scene there is no palo caido (fallen stick); there is both a baby and a breast. She agreed and exclaimed with joy that we had talked about many things today. I agreed and ended the session. Although Velia still would have to continue grieving, the loss represented by the inability to bear children, and of the imaginary phallus, there was marked improvement in Velia"s symptoms in the course of these sessions. Conclusion

The process material presented in the above sessions illustrates the capacity of any working class Latino/a, without formal education,

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to benefit from psychodynamic psychotherapy or psychoanalysis provided that the aforementioned theoretical and practical conditions are met (by the analyst/psychotherapist). The example also shows how the unconscious is ciphered within cultural-linguistic forms and therefore how both knowledge of the culture and language and knowing the language of the unconscious are needed for its correct interpretation. Thus, when psychoanalysis is centred on the analysis of a mythical and linguistic unconscious (with myth and language being key ingredients of traditional culture), it is more likely to be socially and culturally congruent with the subjective experience of ethnic minorities in a postmodern world. In addition, the example given above shows that cognitive insight based on formal education is not necessary for analytically-based treatment and that metaphor (fallen stick on a royal road) or myth (ada/fairy) may be a preferable medium needed for. accessing a dimension of human experience which cannot be grasped by reason or statistical method. Moreover, from a Lacanian perspective, psychotherapy mostly requires an unconventional use of language and not one based on learned, grammatically-correct formal language. I postulate that this is an especially important principle to observe with ethnic and immigrant minorities, who are already struggling with problems associated with bilingualism and difficulties in the use of their original or newly acquired language. Ethnic minorities are perfectly capable of self-disclosure and, given a different understanding of the frame for psychoanalysis, can produce material usually associated with traditional psychoanalysis. A great portion of the individual's difficulty with self-disclosure can be attributed to the psychoanalyst's lack of intimacy with the social dimensions of his/her own unconscious subjectivity. The selfdisclosure of a minority analysand with a majority culture analyst maybe impeded by the latter's own unexamined unconscious issues with class and racial differences. In other words, the self-disclosure of the ethnic individual is obstructed by the analyst's own resistance. For the majority class analyst, ethnic, cultural or class differences come to symbolically represent the otherness and ego-alien nature of unconscious experience. Finally, one could argue that the aforementioned falls under the general classical category of the countertransference that should be handled in the analyst's own personal analysis. However, this would

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be true if the analyst's personal analysis focused on these topics and the analyst's analyst had an interest and a theoretical framework to understand phenomena arising at the intersection of social and uncoriscious experience.

Bibliography Adorno, T. (1978). Subject and object. In: A. Arato & E. Gebhardt (Eds), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Urizen Books. Altaian, N. (1995). The Analyst in the Inner City. New Jersey: The Analytic Press. Bachelard, G. (1975). La Formacidn del Espiritu Cientifico. Buenos Aires: Siglo Ventiuno Editores. Campbell, J. (1967). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Cleveland: Meridian Books. Campbell, J. (1968). The Masks of God, 4 vols. New York: Viking. Cortese, M. (1979). Intervention research with Hispanic Americans: A review. v Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 1: 4-20. Freud, S. (1901). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. New York: Norton, 1965. Freud, S. (1913 [1953]). Totem and Taboo. S. E.f 13. London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1923 [1953]). The Ego and the, Id. S. £., 19: 1. London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1939 [1964]). Moses and Monotheism. S. £., 23. London: Hogarth Press. Habermas, J. (1968). Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press. Harari, R. & Moncayo, R. (1995). Principles of Lacanian clinical practice. journal of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis, 1 (1). Horkheimer, M. (1978). On the problem of truth. In: A. Arato & E. Gebhardt (Eds), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Urizen Books. Jung, C. (1964). Man and His Symbols. New York: Basic Books. Lacan, J. (1959). La Etica del Psicoandlisis. Buenos Aires: Paidos. Lacan, J. (1961). The direction of the treatment and the principles of its power. In: Ecrits. New York: Norton, 2002. Lacan, J. (1975). El Reverso del Psicoandlisis. Buenos Aires: Paidos. Levi-Strauss, C. (1949). The effectiveness of symbols. In: Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963, pp. 186-205. Levi-Strauss, C. (1949). The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. Levi-Strauss, C. (1955). Tristes Tropiaues. New York: Atheneum, 1965.

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Levi-Strauss, C. (1962). The Savage Mind. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1966. Lyotard, J. F. (1989). The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Meadow, A. (1982). Psychopathology, psychotherapy, and the MexicanAmerican patient. In: E.E. Jones & S. J. Korchin (Eds.), Minority Mental Health (pp.331-361). New York: Praeger. Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ruiz, A.R. & Padilla, A.M. (1977). Counseling Latinos. Personnel and Guidance Journal, March 1977. Strieker, George (1992). The relationship of research to clinical practice. American Psychologist, 47 (4): 543-549. Sue, S. & Zane, N. (1987), The role of culture and cultural techniques in psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 42 (1): 37-45. Szapocznik, J., Santisteban, D., Kurtines, W.M., Hervis, O.E., & Spencer, F. (1982). Life enhancement counseling: a psychosocial model of services for Cuban elders. In: E.E. Jones & S.J. Korchin (Eds.), Minority Mental Health (pp. 296-330). New York: Praeger.

Index

Page references in italics indicate illustrations. abandonment 141,142,145,146, 147-8, 212 Abraham, K. 121 Abraham, N. 150,151 Absolute 73 adaptation 257-9, 266 Adorno, T.A. 73, 251 agalma 83,102-3,105,108,109,110, 113,114 aggressivity 41,136,165,167 "airy nothing of heaven" 108,113 Alcibiades 102,104,108,113,237 All .56-7, 79, 95, 96, 98-9, 98 alter ego 24,25, 29 Altman, N. 260 anal objects 31-3 analysand 156,157-8, 263; see also phases of analysis analysis see phases of analysis; psychoanalysis analyst 156-8; calculated vacillation of the neutrality of the 190-1; desire of the 105,107,108, 164-9,170,191-4, 214,233, 236;

payments made by the 158-69; personal analysis of the 193, 225, 226, 227-30, 231, 271-2; resistance of the 183-6; unique style of every 225; see also phases of analysis analytic contracts 144,172, 267 Anglo-Saxon culture x, xv, 250, 257 anthropophagy and anthropemy 258 asymmetry of sexuation 79-81, 80 authorisation 229,239-40, 244 autopoiesis 39 B-cognition 168 beauty 152 being 85, 96, 98 biculturalism 259 Bion, W.R. 19,168 bisexuality 72, 75,85,139 Blatt, S.J. 121 body image, unified 26,130-1, 232,143

275

276

INDEX

borderline character disorders 130-1, 232,132,136-8; clinical vignette 138-44 Borromean knot xvi, 97,110 Braunstein, N. 96 breasts 12,128; ambivalence toward 26-7; clinical vignette 63-4; objets a 8,10,11,15-16,17,19, 23,42; weaning 18,123,124, 126,129,151 brief analysis 208, 216, 217, 219; see also length of treatment Buddha 37-8,166,167 case study method xii, xiii, 196 castration xvi, 49-50,52, 84, 98-9; defined 49; dialectical logic of 51; love and 107,108; see also imaginary castration; symbolic castration character, being versus having 136-8 character disorders 27-8,133; see also borderline character disorders Chodorow, N. 127 Cixous, H. 88 class 247,259-60, 261, 262, 263, 264, 266, 268,270; public mental health clinics 181-3 clinical vignettes: cultural difference 268-70; depression 138-49; language of the unconscious (lalangue) 163^4; sexual differences 59-68, 75-8, 148-9,177 concluding, moment of 173,174, 200, 209 Corbett, D. 199 cost of treatment 196,202, 247

countertransference 185,191-4, 218, 226-7, 230, 271 credibility 170,171, 232, 233,260-1, 262 cultural difference xv, 233, 247-72; anthropophagy and anthropemy 258; clinical vignette 268-70; concepts of "normal" and 258; ethnic minorities and mental health services 247-8, 259-60,266, 267, 268-70; traditional versus scientific ways of knowing 250-3, 255 cure direction 156,172,179,262-3, 267 cutting behaviour 31,133,139 cutting of a session 173,174-9,199, 207-8 death: desire for 165,166,167; second 166,168 defence mechanisms 183-4 depression xvii, 16,119-55; in the borderline character 136-8; clinical vignettes 138-49; definition 119; in hysteria and obsessional neurosis 133-6; necessary losses and the significance of grief 122-4; selfesteem and 125-33, 232 depressive position 125,126,128 desire 86, 98, 99,102,104,115; of the analyst 105,107,108,164-9, 170,191-1, 214, 233, 236; appearing as repression 184; for death 165,166,167; emptiness and 108-10, 222, 167; resistance of 183; see also Eros; love

INDEX

dialectical process 73 didactic analysis 227 diversity see cultural difference Dolto, F. 8-9 Dor, J. 133 dreaming 6, 7 drives 22, 23,26, 264 economics of treatment 196,202, 247 . effectiveness of treatment 196, 202 ego 11-12,15,125, 265-6; in analysis 157,158-9,162 ego.ideal 5, 6,12,153-4; differentiation between ideal ego and 121-2; field of language and 29-31 Eitington, Max 223 empathy 234 empiricism x-xiii, 249, 250-3,254 emptiness 86-7, 89,100; desire and 108-10, 222,167; of presence 151 empty speech, distinction between full speech and 162,176 empty subject of the Real 38-42,44 envy 25,131 epistemology: modern and traditional 250-3; postmodern 253-5; see also knowledge Erastes (lover) and Eromenos (beloved) 106,179, 204-5, 206, 210, 211, 234-7 Eros 166,167; see also desire ethnic minority groups xv, 247-9, 257, 258, 259-61, 263-4, 266, 267,268-71; see also cultural difference Europe: borderline personality 141; ethnic minorities 248;

277

psychoanalysis and hermeneutics 255; public mental health 181; science x, 250-1 exchange values 100,109,133 existence of woman 84-5 experience of satisfaction 8,17,18, 19, 22, 23 faeces 31-3 fathers xv; anal objects and 32, 33; ego ideal, language and 29, 30; homosexuality and 71; love and 104,110; narcissism and 5, 6,9,14,18,42-3; paternal metaphor 30,34-8; primal 51, 52-3,56, 78,81, 85, 90; sexual differences and 56-8, 61, 68, 94, 95; symbolic 38,45, 95; see also name, of the father feminine puissance 11,51,77,87,89, 95, 96,115, 241 femininity: in the Oedipus complex 212; the Symbolic and 78-91, 80; see also sexual differences feminism xv, 52, 86 Fenichel, 0.136 Ferenczi, S. 144,187,197 fetishism 70 Frankfurt school 251 free association 179, 206-7,229 Freud, Anna 184 Freud, Sigmund: analytic practice 172,180,195; bisexuality 72; depression and melancholia 119-20,125,149; ethnology 256; experience of satisfaction 17; forgetting personal names 191-2; free floating attention 168; hallucinatory wish

278

INDEX

fulfillment 18,19; ideal ego and the specular image 21; imbrication of the drives 26; love 103; mourning 150,151-2; narcissism 3-4, 6; phonemes (in "fort" and "da") 29-30; psychical values 167; psychoanalytic supervision 223; psychomythology 256; repression 184,265; seduction hypothesis 187; sexual differences 72; sublimation 243; superego 265; symptoms 183, 203; theory of drives 22; unconscious 169,201, 265; wish • for leaders 156,204; wish fulfillment 31 gifts 15,16, 31,32, 33, 34 giving 260-1 goal of treatment 197 good-enough mothering 25,48, 126, 217, 218 good objects 10,150 Green, A. 6,126,128 grief 149,150,152,153; difference between depression and 154; melancholia and 120; necessary symbolic losses and 122,123; second death and 168; weaning and 126; see also mourning Habermas, J. 256 hallucinatory wish fulfillment 18,19 Harari, R. 31,161 Hassoun, J. 16 hermeneutics 255-6, 257 heterosexuality 55

holes 91-100,97; filled by words and name of the father 31,36, 42,133, 244; in the image of narcissism 23-4; mothers and 14> 20, 22, 94 homophony 97,163,177, 241, 268 homosexuality 55, 68-75, 74; clinical vignettes 75-8, 148-9, 177 horror of the act 178,180,183 hysteria 37,133-4,135,198; clinical vignettes 138-49 ideal ego 153-4; differentiation between ego ideal and 121-2; specular image and 19-29, 129-31,133 imaginary castration: depression and 136,141,143,153; end of analysis and 215; narcissism and 33,35,38; sexual difference and 50,51,58, .62, 68, 69, 76, 91, 94 imbrication of the drives 26 incest 187,188, 216, 236 incorporation 150-1 insight 249, 266, 268, 271 insight psychotherapy 217,219, 247, 248 institutionalisation and change in psychoanalysis 224-5 International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) xvi-xvii, 173,223, 231, 239,257 interpretation 160-1,162,178, 225, 267 intersubjective 4,132 intrauterine life 6-7 introjection 150-1,152

INDEX

279

embodied xiv, 9; empty speech and full speech 162,176; of the unconscious (lalangue) 161-A, Jones, E. 59 267, 271; woman's existence in 84-5; the word and the anal jouissance xiv, 8, 22,110-12, 222; object 31-3; see also free symptom as 240; three types of association; homophony; 240-1; see also feminine master's discourse; metaphor; jouissance; jouissance of the poetry; words Other (jouissance of being); Other jouissance; phallic Laplanche, J. 3^4 jouissance Latin America ix, 249,258,262 jouissance of the Other (jouissance of Latinos 65, 248, 249,259-60, 268-70 being): defined 240; depression laws 30-1, 32, 95, 98,99,104,133, 178, 227, 228 and 129,130,143; love and 109, 111-12, 222, 215; narcissism length of sessions xiv, 172,198, and 8, 22; sexual difference and 207-£; see also cutting of a session 87, 95, 96-7,97, 98; sinthome and 242-3, 244 length of treatment xiv, 180,196, Julien, P. 229 202, 207,208,216; brief analysis 208,216,217,219 Jung, Carl 158,161,197, 223, 252 lesbians 75-7,148-9; see also homosexuality Klein, Melanie 125,126,129,150 knowing 266-7 Levi-Strauss, Claude 188, 252,258, 267-8 know(ing), subject supposed to 169-71, 205, 231-5,237 libido 8,11,115,120,121 knowing, unknown 162,169,170, licensing 227,228 logic of psychoanalysis 72-3 171, 233-4, 261, 262 knowledge 102,105,113,157-8, losses, necessary symbolic 122-4, 149,150 170, 210,232; modern and traditional epistemologies love 102-15, 222; emptiness of 250-3; postmodern desire 108-10; free association and 179; loss of 125; maternal epistemology 253-5 103, 206-7; metaphor of 102-8, Kohut, H. 6,9,41,42,44,113 204-5, 234-6; object 113^-14; in Kristeva, J. 127 supervisory relationships 234-9 lalangue (language of the lover and beloved see Erastes unconscious) 161^4, 267,271 (lover) and Eromenos language: cultural difference and (beloved) 269-70/271; deconstructing Lyotard, J.F. 255 177,178; ego ideal and 29-31; Irigaray, L. 91 it/id 11

280

INDEX

Mannoni, 0.172 masculinity 212; see also sexual differences Maslow, A. 166,168 masquerade and masks 69, 70,85 Masson, J. 187 masters 134,135,136,156,171, 221, 262 master's discourse 36-7, 38,49,93, 228, 249,259 mathemes 204,209 Maturana, H. 39 medications xi, 251-2 melancholia 16,120,121,123,125, 154 metaphor 88, 184; cultural difference and 269,271; love 102-8,204-5,234-6; paternal 30, 34-8; psychoanalysis as 256-7 metavalues 159,166 Miller, Jacques Alain 231 minority groups, ethnic see ethnic minority groups minus phi 22, 64, 66, 82, 94 mirror phase 4, 5, 20, 23,125,150; see also specular image mistakes 159,160 Mobius strip 74, 90, 245 modern and traditional epistemologies 250-3 mothers: anal objects and 32-3; dead 126,128; depression and 123,124,128,129; goodenough mothering 25,48,126, 217, 218; homosexuality and 71; ideal ego and the specular image and 20,21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28; love and 103, 206-7; narcissism and 6,8,10,11,12,

13,14,15,16-17,18,19,42; in the Oedipus complex 218; paternal metaphor and 34-6; phonemes associated with the voice of 30; of psychotics 26; sexual differences and 48-9,53, 56,58, 68, 94; symbolic killing of 127; see also breasts mourning 150,151-2,153; see also grief multiform criterion for the practice of analysis 172,195 mystics 89,166 mythical thought 251, 252,253, 256, 271 name of the father xvi, 244; depression and 132,133; love and 104,113; narcissism and 27-8,31, 35, 36,37,43; sexual difference and 69; super ego, ego ideal and 153 narcissism xiv, 3-6, 23-4; cosmic 6, 9,41, 42,44; fourth-degree or end state 5, 6, 38, 39, 42,44; fundamental 9; secondary 3, 4-5; tertiary 6; see also narcissism, primary narcissism, primary 3,4-5; absolute 6-9,11,45; relative 10-19 Narcissus 39 neurosis 131,139,154,190-1; obsessional 133,134-6 nirvana 111, 112,166,167,168, 242 non-duality 161,165,166 "normal", concept of the 257-8 North American psychoanalysis x, 257 no-self 7, 8, 9, 41,162

INDEX not-all 11,50,51,56, 82, 94, 95-6, 98,100, 111 nothing, the 17-18 numbers 270 object needs 113 object-relations theory xv, 114, 226, 258 objets a xiv, 45, 79-80,103; analyst 211, 236; borderline character and 139; breasts 8,10,11, 15-16,17,19, 23,42; ideal ego and the specular image 21-6> 129,130,131; Lacan's list of 15; the nothing 17-18; phallus 34; self-esteem and 149 objets (petit) a 10 obsessional neurosis 133,134-6 Oedipus, phases of 57,172,173, 206, 209, 212, 216, 218,240 Other 12,13,14, 24, 263-4 Other jouissance 51, 88-9, 96-7, 97, 98,110-12, 111, 115, 241,242, 243,244 paradox 161 part 100 partial objects: depression and 125, 127,130,132,139,149; narcissism and 10,11,14,15, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 30; sexual difference and 80, 83, 87 pass 229, 230-1 paternal metaphor 30,34-8 - Patsalides, Andre 176 payments made by the analyst: with the core of one's being 164-9; with one's own person 158-60; with words 160-4 perception 17,19

281

personal analysis of the analyst 193, 225, 226,227-30, 231, 271-2 perversion 70-1, 75,139,190 phallic function 49,82,83 phallic jouissance 22, 85-6, 96, 97, 98,107,111-12,111,215,216, 241, 244 phallus 30, 33, 38,42,43; in analysis 212,215,236; homosexuality and 69-71; loss of 127,132-3; love and 102,103,107,109,113; paternal metaphor and 34,35; self-esteem and 149; sexual differences and 48-59, 60, 68, 74-5, 74,78, 79-85, 80, 87, 88, 91,92-5; see also castration phantasies 63, 64,152,187, 204, 211 phantasy objects 181-2 pharmaceutical companies xi, 251-2 phases of analysis: metaphor of love and 234-6; preliminary and.first phase 203-9, 235; second phase 209-19, 235, 236; third phase 219-21, 236 phonemes 29-30 poetry 88,177-8 Pontalis, J.B. 3-4 postmodern epistemology 253-5 post-traumatic stress (PTSD) 186 power 156 presence of a void 10 pre-subject 8,9,11 projective identification 20,24 protophantasy of seduction 187 psychical causality 186,187,188 psychical sexuality 55-6 psychoanalysis: post-Freudian 172, 181,195; relevance for contemporary culture of xvii, 181; singular frame and the

282

INDEX

multiform criteria for the practice of 172-80 psychoses 26,124, 232,190 psychotherapy 180,181,196, 226-7, 227, 247-8, 259-60, 271; insight 217,219, 247, 248 public clinics 181-3 rationalism 250, 251 Real 38-42,44,45, 240 regeneration of psychoanalytic theories 224-5 representation 30 repression 184, 258, 263, 265, 266 resistance of the analyst 183-6 rhetoric 184 Ricoeur, P. 256 Sachs, Hanns 224 satisfaction, experience of 8,17,18, 19, 22,23 schema L 23,14,15 seduction 187, 215 seeing, instant of 173,174, 200,209, 213 self 8,19 self-esteem 125-33, 232,149 self-object needs 113 separation 39 sessions: cutting of 173,174-9,199, 207-8; frequency of 179-80, 183, 208,219; length of xiv, 172, 198, 207-8; three moments of 209 sexual abuse 187,203 sexual difference 48-100; clinical vignettes 59-68, 75-8f 177; femininity and the Symbolic 78-91, 80; homosexuality, bisexuality and perversion

68-78, 74; in the Imaginary and Symbolic 53-9 sexual drive 22, 23 sexual sadism 70 sexuation xiv; formulae of 80, 81; graph of 79-80, 80, 82 shamans 267-8 Sheridan, A. 169-70 siblings 14,25,104,132 signifier, linguistic concept of the 30 simulacrum 85-6 singular frame 172,181 sinthome 112, 231, 239, 240, 241-4 social equality 53 social reality 40 social sciences x-xi, xii, 249, 250-1, 252,253,254,255 Socrates 102,104,105,108,113,157, 158, 237 specular image 12,14,15, 39,41, 42; ideal ego and 19-29,129-31, 133; name of the father and 132,133; see also mirror phase speech see empty speech, distinction between full speech and; free association; language; words Stafford, K. 199 Stoller, RJ. 59 subject supposed to know(ing) 169-71, 205, 231-5, 237 sublimation 242-3 Sue, S. 260-1 super ego 32,121,153, 265, 266; values 166 supervision, psychoanalytic 223-45; analysis of the countertransference 226-7; authorisation 229; love and

INDEX

234-9; the pass 229, 230-1; personal analysis 225, 226, 227-8, 229,230; the sinthome 239, 240-4; subject supposed to know(ing) 231-4 Svolos, T. 146 symbolic castration 241, 266; in analysis 157, 212; depression and 134,137,148,149,150, 151; narcissism, and 15, 28, 38,43; in Oedipus 212,218; Other puissance and 111; sexual difference and 49-50, 53, 58f 61, 64, 67, 68, 69, 71, 76,81,86,91,92,93,95, 96, 97 symbolic structure 44,54, 84, 89, 93, 95,100, 245, 255 Symposium (Plato). 102,104,105, 108,113,179, 237 symptoms 183,184-5,186,197, 202,203, 204, 229; sinthome and 240, 241-2,243 temperament 136 theory: consistency between practice and 172,228, 251, 252, 254; relevance of x-xi, xiii thinking and thought 19,42 three registers of experience 49, 53 time: in analysis 195-6,197; imaginary 198-9,199; logical and chronological 173-4,197-8,199, 200; the unconscious and 197-203, 199; for understanding 173, 174,200, 209 Torok, M. 150,151

283

transference 106-7,109,156,185, 232-4; analyst's neutrality and 190-1; cure 170, 261; ethnic minority groups and 260-1; in the first phase of treatment 204-6; negative 192, 234; in the second phase of treatment 210-11, 215,216-18, 235; subject supposed to know(ing) and 169,170,171; in supervisory relationships 228, 236-9; see also countertransference transference neurosis 180,193, 205-6, 211,218-19, 230 transgender operations 78 transsexuality 55-6 trauma 186-90, 203 triple not/knot 88 truth 160, 210,254,256 unary trace 31 unconscious, time and 197-203, 199 understanding, time for 173,174, 200, 209 United States ix, x, 121,173,188, 257, 264; division of knowledge 251; ethnic minorities 248; licensing 227, 228; public mental health 181 unknown knowing 162,169,170, 171, 233-£, 261, 262 vagina 54, 55, 91,94,100 values and metavalues 159-60, 166; transvaluation of values 167-8; see also exchange values

284

INDEX

Varela, F. 39 Vergote, A. 123-4 voice 88-9 vulva .54, 91,100

words 31-3, 45,133,160-4,178,191; see also language Wright, P. 199 Young-Eisendrath, P. 86

Winnicott, D.W. 16,126,194 wish fulfillment 31; hallucinatory 18,19.

Zane, N. 260-1 Zizek, S. 85