To resume again...

Countertransference
and
Intersubjectivity
J
ACQUES-ALAIN
MILLER

Of an Obscure
Disaster
A
LAIN BADIOU

His Master's Voice
M
LADEN DOLAR

Hitchcock's Organs
Without Bodies
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

Psychoanalysis
and its Golem M
ARIO GOLDENBERG

JOSEFINA AYERZA
interviews
JACQUELINE HUMPHRIES

Slow Time
and the Limits
of Modernity
D
AVID EBONY

 


























        

Countertransference and Intersubjectivity


Jacques-Alain Miller

translated by Barbara P. Fulks

I. COUNTERTRANSFERENCE AND EMPATHY

1. STRUCTURATION OF COUNTERTRANSFERENCE

AN OBSTACLE
We are going to follow the set up of countertransference, its structuration.1

We have not finished with countertransference for three reasons. First, this term gives us the key to the logic of the history of psychoanalysis. Countertransference itself is not this key, but it allows us to take the key in hand, to construct the logic of the history of psychoanalysis. Secondly, the term countertransference also gives us a perspective on Lacan's teaching, a perspective which is so powerful that his teaching, incessantly modulated in diverse forms, can seem to us like a rejection of countertransference. Thirdly, from this fact, the reference to countertransference offers us the means to respond today, with a fresh look, to the question, "What does it mean to be a Lacanian?"
2

[...]

Charlie White imageCharlie White image
II. OUTLINE OF A CHRONOLOGY

1. TAKING ANOTHER LOOK

LAUGHING
We laugh here quite often, rather often, perhaps too often, as we read other psychoanalysts, in particular their accounts of cases, the tales they bring us of their interventions, the narration of their states of mind, of their emotional or thought-provoking, I might say, experiences, and their theoretical elaborations on this topic.

This laughter is a fact, and it probably explains the prejudice we nourish of the superiority of our technique and our clinical practice. This laughter points out and reflects the fact that we think we have the blueprint of the house in which we see our colleagues making themselves the bosses.

I'm not saying this laughter is illegitimate. Nevertheless, here and now, this laughter is an epistemological obstacle inasmuch as we have undertaken to teach ourselves what constitutes psychoanalysis at the present time; that is to say we are attempting, if I might use the expression, a conceptual reunification.

[...]


 
* L'orientation lacanienne III, 4: 6, 13, 20 and 27 March 2002, Dept. of Psychoanalysis Paris VIII. See "Un médium malléable," 3 April 2002.

1. Jacques-Alain Miller approached countertransference in January and February 2002 in "Réflexions sur le moment présent."

2. Miller, J-A. "Qu'est-ce qu'être lacanien?". Quarto 74, Bruxelles, ECF. 2001, p. 6-14.

 

Art: Charlie White, Midnight Snack (details), Light jet Chromogenic print mounted on Plexiglas, 42 x 60", 2003
courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, NYC

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