From Psychoanalytical Notebooks 10, 2003 : Formation of the AnalystTHE LENGTH OF THE SESSION
Rose-Paule
Vinciguerra
The
variable length session, the short session, was a point of rupture in
the analytic field, but Lacan didn’t set it up as a standard. He did
formalise it however, and did so at different steps in his teaching. I)
The dissipation of narcissistic mirages and the search for the effect
de sense. In
order to denounce the fixed length session, Lacan began with the idea
that it was necessary to disturb the subject’s imaginary certainties
and look for the effect of sense. Indeed, in the fixed length session,
the temporal limit induces the subject to manœuvre with the time: ‘We
know’ says Lacan, ‘how he calculates its coming-to-term…, how he
anticipates its end by weighing it like a weapon, by watching out for it
as he would for a place of shelter.’ (1). This is how the scansion of
the session has the function of countering the resistances proper to the
imaginary of the ego: indeed the ego ought not to be supported in its
capacity of sustaining frustration for it is frustration of essence. The
scansion in the session is thus explicitly linked to the dissipation of
narcissistic mirages, to the suspension of the subject’s certainty,
and to the scansion of their resolution in discourse. In this respect,
the analyst ‘symbolises the super-ego’ (2). This
scansion that punctuates, is that of a kaïros, of an occasion, of an
opportune moment. It is Protagoras, according to Diogenes Laertius who
is said to have initiated the use of this term: dunamis
tou kairou, the power of the opportune moment: it is a resource of
time defined by the presentation of a meaning and made concrete by an
act or event of resolution or comprehension (3). Thus, in the session,
the signifying scansion on ‘a word, a phoneme, a locution’ is kaïros;
in being repeated, it brings about a signifying chain from which
it will be possible to decipher the symptom as message. Its function is
to reintegrate the subject in the register of meaning by way of the
analyst’s ‘gift of speech’. The dynamic conception of the
scansion, by privileging the articulation of desire over the statements
of the signified of the demand, will follow the subject closely in its
very movement of realisation; it enables a punctuation of the subject
itself in the movement of its progress. Objections:
Let’s consider a few objections that have been made to the session as
scanned, for we’re told that this is the ‘bone of contention’
between analysts. These objections consist in considering that the good
of the patient would be threatened by the analyst’s impudence. a)
We’re told that only the long session allows for the ‘buttressing of
regression’, as if temporal, topographical or formal regression was a
real regression and would necessitate the real time for the subject to
effectuate it. Thus one forgets that regression draws on signifiers, the
signifiers of demand and that if it concerns the corresponding drive,
it’s only by way of these signifiers. b)
We’re also told that analysands demand time to speak. But what are
they really asking for? To pursue their ‘I don’t want to know
anything about it’? To relieve themselves of all responsibility in the
‘duty of well-saying’? To find jouissance in their tongue-wagging? We have to ask ourselves
whether, in the presence of empty speech, the standardised session does
not delay the emergence of the unconscious. In this respect, the ending
of the session such as Lacan practiced it, sometimes with a resounding
sigh, is worth more than any statement about resistance and its
interpretation. And when resistance within speech is turned towards the
presence of the listener, only a correct punctuation can manage to bring
the subject an awareness of the imaginary place in which he is situated.
There
is no need to interpret the implicit reference made by the analysand to
the analyst: this only «cements» the resistance by fixing it onto the
person of the analyst, his ‘persona’, his mask. Using a commentary
to bring into the open the sexualised point of the transference for
example, or the patient’s aggressiveness, in no way allows for the
understanding of what the patient places as the libidinal stake of the
transference. Certainly this is contrary to what Freud said, but equally
the Lacanian conception of the transference no longer situates it as the
reviviscence of forgotten situations or infantile turmoil in direction
of the person of the analyst, but as a love that is addressed to the
unconscious knowledge that encloses the object. In this respect, it’s
the agalma or the kakon residing in the analyst which are really at
stake in the cure. The object is the locus of the analyst, and it is
precisely what must fall at the end of the cure; ‘I love you, but,
because inexplicably I love in you something more than you, I mutilate
you.’ (4) Furthermore,
the analyst’s strategy and tactics have to take into account what
Freud states regarding analysis: that it is ‘a directed paranoia’
and by wanting to to force the patient’s resistance by interpreting
it, we can lead him into a register which risks turning out to be
persecutory, if not ineffective. Certainly, in Freud’s time, his
constructions could have the value of truth, and haunted by the question
of sex, Freud was impatient for truth to pass over into knowledge;
‘Freud himself’ says Lacan, ‘annulls the time for comprehending in
favour of moments of concluding which precipitate the mediation of the
subject towards deciding the meaning to attach to the original event’
(5). But
what about today? Today analytic theory itself is a barrier, a wall
against any surprise from truth, and the address to the subject supposed
to know represented by the analyst excludes the possibility that he try
to fill in the gaps in knowledge, thus presenting himself as the master
of truth. c)
Masters, a word that our colleagues in the IPA come out with as a charge
against Lacanian analysts. Lacan was certainly demanding. He demanded
that the analysand apply himself to the duty of well-saying prescribed
by the analytic rule, but who among those who knew him as analyst will
say that, in their sessions, he was not within the analytic discourse?
This is nevertheless what is claimed by a certain French author by the
name of J.-L. Donnet, whose work on what he calls ‘the analytic
setting’ is much appreciated within the SPP, the principal group of
the IPA in France. In a study published in 1995, Le
divan bien tempéré (‘The Well-tempered Couch’), he assures us
that the short session is supposed to satisfy ‘the patient’s
masochistic desires, which find their pasture in the analyst’s deeds
or in his ‘identification with the aggressor-seducer.’ An operation
of ‘magical contempt’ on the part of the analyst, ‘seduction ‘,
‘suggestion‘, ‘power’, ‘violence‘, ‘maniac heroic
autonomisation of analysts’, this is what the short session would
authorise. Heroic, yes… Lacan’s effort to rethink psychoanalysis was
indeed heroic, but he never prescribed to anyone to put on the cloak.
Rather his advice to analysts starting out was ‘Don’t think you’re
God’s gift to the world’. We might rather ask what the subjective
function of the fixed setting is for these IPA analysts that it should
stir up this imaginary ubris? Donnet compares the setting to the ropes
that tether Ulysses to the mast to prevent him from giving in to the
song of the sirens! For Donnet, the scansion of the short session would
be merely the effect of the analyst’s powerlessness to support the
transference, the pure effect of the analyst’s jouissance.
Should we not rather think that it is to guard against his own
powerlessness and the fear of some jouissance
he is himself ignorant of that he comes to prescribe the tethering of
the analyst to the mast? Indeed
this polemic takes on meaning in the consideration of the
counter-transference as a given of the analytic situation. We know that
Lacan stigmatised the counter-transference as the sum of prejudices, as
the analyst’s resistance and, in this respect, one ought to recall
that supervision always has an operative function. But the accusation is
also mistaken as regards the nature of the analytic act, which, in its
instant
doesn’t
entail the presence of the subject; it supposes on the contrary that the
personal equation of the analyst has been reduced and that he doesn’t
believe he exceeds his act. Far from being a subjective intervention of
the analyst, the act is for him a displeasure, an enigma as to the
effects of this act, this act which provokes ‘horror’ as Lacan said.
In the act, the psychoanalyst is only authorised by himself, that is to
say, not by any fantasy. The analytic act has as its responsibility to
put the transference to work. Thus,
isn’t the true mastery on the contrary the one that refers to a fixed
duration where time doesn’t demand an account, where time imposes like
that of salaried work where, as we know, ‘time is money’, where
there is an arithmetical equality (so many hours of analysis plus so
many hours of supervision to be accepted as analyst)? In direct
opposition to this, with the scanned session, it’s rather a case of:
to each session its fortune. And the fortune of the unconscious is not
predictable. The analyst doesn’t know in advance; he waits for
something from the analysand’s words, a speech event that will produce
kairos, an occasion. He makes
himself the locus of reception of what Lacan calls, ‘the lasting
word’. ‘Witness…, depositary…, reference…, guarantor…,
custodian…, scrivener…, the analyst’, says Lacan, ‘has something
of the scribe about him’(6). In this respect, the analyst is indeed a
locus, that of the Other, and this is why Lacan can say that ‘a quite bureaucratic
regularity is all that is required of the patient, but it is precisely
the time of the session that manifests the fact that this Other is
de-completed, lacking, and it is here that the question of desire can be
posed. Thus
it is the analyst who is the scribe, not the setting. d)
Let’s take a closer look at this notion of the setting. In this same
text, J-L Donnet says that the fixed time of the session, like any
element of the analytic setting, is the condition of possibility for
symbolisation, and it must, when it is respected, take on the value of
the love of the mother after having been the formulation of a founding
paternal proscription… between ‘symbiotic and symbolic’! In this
way, it would embody the constraint of the Other as ‘fit to be
symbolised’ and, as setting, would allow for ‘the symbolisation of
symbolisation’ and ‘of non-symbolisation’ when symbolisation
doesn’t occur, as in psychosis for example. A third element between
analyst and patient, the fixed time would have a function ‘that
vacillates between real and symbolic’. The setting would thus be the
projection ‘of the shadow borne by the patient’s superego, which
would have to be interpreted starting from there.’ In the end,
maintaining the temporal setting would be convergent with the
possibility of interpreting the transference. He says ‘it would
assure, at the end of the session, the disjunction of the analyst as
support «of the imaginary transference» and as support of the «symbolic
transference».’ The setting would thus be the best ally of the
symbolic, according to this author. One
can see how the Lacanian concept of the symbolic has here the value of a
signifier for all uses.
If,
as Lacan said, the real is what subsists outside symbolisation, it can
only be encountered as lacking; therefore there is no ‘connivance of
the Real to be symbolised’ and neither the analyst nor a fortiori the
resources of a formal setting have any legitimacy whatsoever to embody
the Other. There is no best ally of the real. Finally,
isn’t it to guard against the imposture of the transference, against
the mistake of the subject supposed to know that the requirement of a
legalism is maintained and confused with the symbolic? We ought rather
to say that the fixation on the rigid setting is but a superego. The
analyst’s superego. It’s the analytic discourse that defines the
setting, and not vice-versa. II)
Logical Time Thus,
it is not by means of the setting, whose discretion would assure the
non-jouissance of the analyst,
that Lacan theorises the cure, but rather by means of ‘discretion’,
in the sense of logicians, of the signifier’s discontinuity. The
Lacanian analysis of the unconscious emphasises discontinuity, the
fissure, the trait, the rupture, the obstacle, the crack (7). The
unconscious is structured as a language and must be situated in the
dimension of a non-temporal synchrony, but at the level of the subject
of the enunciation, the unconscious is lost and found; and the subject,
in so far as it is undetermined, is always grasped ‘at some unexpected
point’ (8). Therefore, it is the unconscious, in so far as it presents
itself as an unpredictable contingency, disappearing no sooner than it
has appeared, which creates the time of the session. And the analyst
follows this time; it is solely in this interval that the reality of the
unconscious as sexual opens up. So
it is neither the time of the clock, nor time as experienced, that gives
the analytic session its rhythm. Rather it is a logical time where the
function of haste, as in the apologue of the logical time of the three
prisoners, takes on its full value. Since the scansion is always
possible, the analysand’s discourse hastens to try and say what is
most acute in subjective experience. So, time, in the form of haste, is
in itself ‘agalmatic’, the surplus jouissance
that causes subjective division. And,
for the analyst, to refuse this time is to always intervene either too
soon or too late… To confuse the time and the space of the setting of
the session is to reduce the value of the unconscious. It is this
unconscious that dictates the setting of the sessions, for there is only
one unconscious in the session, and that is the patient’s; this is
where the principle of the psychoanalyst’s tact stems from, and there
is no rule that can compensate for it. ‘The presence of the
psychoanalyst… must be included in the concept of the unconscious.’ How
then can we accept the practice of analysts who at the end of each
session sum up what was said at the beginning and the end in order to
bring them into relation, as if the session bore a unity of
signification that it would be the analyst’s function to re-establish?
This isn’t the retroaction of meaning, it’s the systematic and
retroactive pedagogy of the entire session. It isn’t the unconscious
to be realised, it is comprehensive synthesis. It isn’t unconscious
desire overcoming the limit of the pleasure principle, it is a symbolic
subordinate to the reality principle. How, one might ask, with such a
practice, could the effects of sense ever question atypical jouissance? III)
The time of the cut: the asemantic session In
Lacan’s late teaching, from 1974 on, he reformulates the symptom as
the effect of the symbolic within the field of the real and thus it is
important not to nourish the symptom with meaning but on the contrary to
‘starve’ it of meaning by employing the equivoque outside-meaning,
but also by pinpointing what Lacan calls ‘trou-matisme’,
the kernel of non-sense bordered by signifying material. Thereafter, the
symptom is no longer simply a message to be deciphered, but it is also
connected to the fantasy in the cure as that which resists elaboration;
it is ‘sinthome’, the mixture of symptom and fantasy as a defence
against the real. This implies a reconsideration of the effects of the
interpretation that is, as Lacan announced in the Seminar Ou
pire (1971-1972), in decline (here I am referring to the advances
made by J.-A. Miller and his communication ‘Interpretation in
Reverse’, published in the Psychoanalytic
Notebooks of the London Circle, Issue 2). The cut aimed at the
semantic aspect of the session is to be distinguished from its asemantic
dimension which relates back to the real and the jouissance
of the fantasy. If
the punctuation adds to the signifier another signifier extracted by the
analyst, and produces a certain signification, the cut on the other hand
separates. It interrupts a movement of elaboration concerning the
meaning of the symptom and leads the subject, as J.-A. Miller puts it in
this article, back to the opacity of his jouissance,
to perplexity; this is how, for my part, I interpret the ‘c’est
ça’, ‘that’s it’, articulated by Lacan at the end of a
session. A traumatic cut contrary to the unconscious whole. ‘The soul
of the symptom’, says Lacan in 1975, ‘is something hard like a
bone’ (9) and the cut, even if it be silent, reminds the subject not
to confuse the impossible with the saying-true. Our
colleagues in the IPA ask us what the immediate effect of the cut is at
the moment of its occurrence? If one may evoke by way of a paradigm the
example given by Lacan of a fantasy of anal pregnancy ending in a
caesarean section produced by a patient preoccupied until that moment by
the art of Dostoevsky, at least one can say that the effects that prove
to be based on a change of discourse are equally effects of being
awakened to the Real. The encounter with this real is analogous, says
Lacan in 1975, with the real of the drive (10). Therefore it’s a
matter here of ‘disturbing the defence.’ This is why the question of
the duration of the session isn’t a technical question, it’s an
ethical question, that is, it is oriented by the Real. It
seems to me that, each time the standard of the fixed length session is
evoked, one confuses standard and analytic rule. The would-be rule of 45
minutes does not belong to orthodoxy but, as J.-A. Miller recently
declared, to orthopraxy. Translated
by Adrian Price 1)
Fonction et champ de la parole et
du langage, 1953; Ecrits, p.313 (p. 98 in Sheridan’s translation) 2)
Conférence sur Le symbolique,
l’imaginaire, le réel; 1953. 3)
Monique Canto: Histoire du kairos.
Sur le temps opportun de la parole. 4)
Seminar XI, p. 268 5)
Fonction et champ de la parole et
du langage, (p. 48 in Sheridan’s translation) 6)
Ibid, P 313 (p. 98 in
Sheridan’s translation) 7)
Seminar XI, p. 26 8)
Ibid, p29 9)
‘Conférences et entretiens’, Scilicet
6/7, p 60 10)
Lettres de l’Ecole freudienne de
Paris, Avril 1975 Copyright © Rose-Paule Vinciguerra 2003. This text from the website of the London Society of the NLS, at http://www.londonsociety-nls.org.uk. Permission to use material from this site must be sought from the LS-NLS. All rights reserved. Please include this portion of the text in any printed version of this paper. |
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