Introduction
This chapter introduces basic notions of Lacanian clinical practice, paying equal attention to Lacan's reformulations of Freudian prin-ciples 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 ask-ing to be ordered or,-at least, wantask-ing the analyst to wield a curative
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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 pay-ments: 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 thera-peutic 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.
Analysis is the place where the ego can fail miserably, and ego ideals are suspect and subject to deconstruction. Even the most ungram-matical 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 dis-like for homosexuality, or heterophobia or disdis-like 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 assump-tions 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
less but also has to speak in a different manner. Within the psycho-analytic situation dreams and unconventional linguistic formations, such as slips, puns, jokes, etc., are matched by the use of interpreta-tive 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 expect-ing and utilisexpect-ing forms of linear directive speech; 2. as aforemen-tioned, an interpretation should not be a move whose goal is to obtain something. In other words, interpretative speech needs to be dis-tinguished 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 contra-dictions that are impossible in principle. Only paradox comes near to expressing the non-dual basis of life and the unconscious. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one sided and therefore unsuited to express non-duality.
According to Lacan, lalangue, as the text or language of the uncon-scious, 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
is identical to the structure of social language. Rather, the uncon-scious 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
linked via the act of interpretation, it is no longer a question of an