Everlasting Couch

Marie Hélène-Brousse

[...]We can understand why Lacan said that he had the position of an analysand when he was giving his seminar, because he was putting to work his division that was the only way, let’s say, to keep alive invention in psychoanalysis. It’s true that Freud considered the question a little differently, first, when he decided around 1925 that no one could be an analyst without having done an analysis. And secondly,when he advised the analysts to become an analysand again and again from time to time, as a necessity. Everlasting couch—the duration of analysis today—seems to confirm this. In Lacan’s orientation, nevertheless, we can formulate things rather differently: analysis is with an end, but training is endless. It’s endless by two means—by the means of transmission—what I’m trying to do now—and by the means of control. I’m going to speak especially about this second modality of endless training in the lacanian orientation.

Of course, you have to remember that Lacan decided that there was no difference between therapeutical analysis and didactical analysis, and of course that’s changed the map. What I am doing, now, in front of you, or with you I prefer, is an example of putting to work my knowledge of psychoanalysis and its very limits exactly on the point where my not knowing begins. I think that’s the importance of the transmission—to be very near to the place where you don’t know.[...]

 

 

 

Subscribe to Lacanian Ink click here.

Purchase Lacanian Ink click here.