Psychoanalytic Technique – Contours
The
analysand is contained through the medium – Setting, metapsychology and
technique. The analyst does not lose himself in the ‘novel’ of the narrative
and is aware of the fiction (the dream of the session) and therefore adheres to
the manifest text of the discourse trying not to obscure its unconscious frame.
In the analyst discourse there is a deconstructive transcendence where the
‘coherence’ of the narrative does not seduce him but rather through negative
capability he surfs evenly on free association through suspended attention. Through
the working through of the analytic couple, the new links organize the analytic
field into new continuously evolving gestalts (There is a continuous
oscillation between the paranoid schizoid position and the depressive
position). A phobia to get married and fear of frogs might actually in the
manifest discourse of a dream stem from the unconscious fear that the frog may
wake up to become a prince which is ‘dreadful.’ The analyst throws a weak light
on the frame as he allows primary and secondary characters to develop through
immersion and through interpretation (interactivity) and therefore cyclic reemergence
from the immersion, the provisional gestalt further evolves towards ‘newer’ truths.
The analyst discourse therefore calls for the analyst also to erase ‘himself’
where the analysand gets knowledge, however much unlike the university
discourse (language superstructures therefore cannot prevail).
Psychoanalysis
is not a magical cure or a drug as transference may prove. Transference Love however
should not be repelled or repulsed by the analyst as it helps the ‘subject’ in
opening up his ‘self’ to another subject. It may if repelled lead to intrusive
identification in phantasy like affect changes through an icy voice or the act
of bringing gifts to the session which should also be adequately contained. The
analyst understands that primitive love, idealization and mature love are in
constant interplay and not just a defensive idealization and if not contained
might result in the analysand’s psychic death.
The
existence of Language may establish truth. The ‘word’ is the hidden center of
gravity of ‘desire’ which emerges at the intersection of analyzed verbal forms.
The signifier therefore represents the subject for another signifier and not
for another subject. The Desire in that sense is that of the ‘Other’ which when
extracted leads to a lost object since the signifying function or symbolism is
starkly missing. There is a split between the desire of the other and truth. Language
existed before man just as thoughts existed before there was a thinker to think
them. In language therefore man dwells - parapraxes and jokes, et al. Dreams
here are therefore associated networks of knots and reminds one of Bion’s
‘selected fact.’ It is not because of what they signify but because of
homonymy. The unconscious then may be structured like language which ironically
has a hold on us. The subject’s function in language is a double function. The
‘I’ seems easy to grasp but the subject is mysteriously elusive. The subject is
not produced by discourse but rather produces the discourse. (The difference between
the sign and signifier gets established).
Nachtraglich
and fire at the theater - eureka establishing an earlier truth retroactively
where the implied decisive position of the analyst may also risk setting up a
power equation raising questions dividing logic and empirical data which
implies a ‘transcendence of the subject.’
Sexuality
is not simply a motor discharge or promiscuity or a negotiation with the
superego – it is not a mechanical automation but is unspecific and intersubjectively
human.
Psychoanalysis
therefore aims that through the containment of the continuous evacuations by
the analyst and by also working through the core fantasies of the analysand,
the analysand over a period of time, introjects the synthesizing alpha function
of the analyst and is able to play and dream again, hitherto being frozen.
Amit
Saraf
