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