Lacan states that, “the subject comes here to demand analysis.” Crucially, Lacan articulates that “the whole psychoanalytic literature, when it is brought to bear on this experience, on, as some people say, this living experience of analytic states, is employed in unveiling, in manifesting……” It is well known that Lacan had been impressed by Picasso’s statement ‘I do not seek, I find’ and that he applied it to psychoanalysis, where there is no ultimate truth to be found.
So, who is this that comes and demands? I, Subject X, want to be analysed! What is this subject to find if truth is of no use to him? Well, when the subject comes to analysis seduced by an offering or intrigued by a solution, convinced by an illusion, persecuted by a dissatisfaction, desiring wholeness and wellness. This subject comes, as the object to be explored. However, Lacan states the “In analysis it is in effect the subject that is involved. Here no displacement is possible to permit him to make an object of it” (Lacan, S.XII, 2.12.1964; p. 07).
The analytic experience, the crucial problems which Lacan explores in seminar XII, and states very early on his lecture is that “the subject who carries these concepts is implicated in his very discourse”. Here we can explore the crucial problems of analytic discourse and the implications of Lacan’s statement “There is no transmission of psychoanalysis. What exists is one by one: each one must reinvent psychoanalysis on his own.” Such a statement confronts us with the contemporary affairs. There are more and more categories available beyond the signifying coupling of the toilet sign. From gender assignments to diagnosis, from ideologies, in-groups, out-groups to artificial intelligence we are all, including psychoanalysis, knotted by language. How can we give an account of this loss?
Freud developed psychoanalysis from his observations of hysteria. Maybe the hysteric’s demand invented psychoanalysis, namely this other who cannot fulfil their desire. And one might argue that psychoanalysis has being reinvented ever since as a question for the subject and the function of desire.
One could extrapolate this into even more radical thought: it is not only that one must reinvent psychoanalysis on one’s own, it is also that psychoanalysis keeps reinventing itself through the transference created by one with each particular subject that one works with. This closely connects to the very essence of the analyst’s desire that invites the unveiling, the new form of manifestation, the symbolisation of the symptom. Like the art of a contemporary master, it brings something unseen before, and yet it is always a palimpsest – from Freud to the clinic of today.
The experience of subjectivity in today’s changing world includes challenges and experiences that go beyond previously encountered positions on knowledge, science and subjectivity. There is a need to examine the history of psychoanalysis, rather than shy away from its many controversies in order to situate oneself in the here-and-now of being in the psychoanalyst’s chair ‘listening’ to what is being enunciated from the couch. Lacan outlines in his discussion on, ‘Science and Truth’ (1965-1966), that the unconscious is structured like a language and presents the position of the Analyst as one that “leaves no escape.”
Following on from the publication of “The Aetiology of Hysteria”(Freud, 1896) which Freud had hoped would bring him unprecedented accolades but which was met with silence and indeed hostility, Freud confides in Fleiss, “I am as isolated as you could wish me to be: the word has been given out to abandon me, and a void is forming around me.” Freud and Lacan spoke of subjective destitution, as a reformulation of subjectivity, a political discourse, and indeed that of the Analysts position regarding knowledge. Affirmation of the first critical issue facing psychoanalysis.
This Call for Papers on the Theme of the Congress “To the Couch and Beyond” invites submissions from psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychologists, psychoanalytic historians, social science researchers, philosophers, critical thinkers from all those interested. “The unconscious is a knowledge, whose subject remains undetermined, in the unconscious. What does it know?” (Lacan, S.XII, 19.05.1965; p. 248). A question never so apt as in challenging, complex and perturbing times like today.
