Prelude 8, Marcelo Mazzuca

The paradoxes of the desire of the analyst

Our next rendezvous in Paris has put us on the track of desire and its paradox: how to circumscribe desire through interpretation if it is logically incompatible with speech? Answer: not without another desire.

This leads to a wide range of clinical problems that open onto a particular ethical consideration, that of situating the coordinates of the desire of the analyst, this “special class of desire that is manifested in interpretation”,[1] this “postulate” at the base of all analytic formation.[2]

It is well known that Lacan himself first formulated the question of the desire of the analyst at the precise moment that he was situating the paradoxes of desire.[3] The topological formulation of desire in 1958 leads him inexorably to an ethics of the treatment that involves integrating “the Freudian conquests on desire” with a response “in act”.[4]

Ten years of teaching later ends with the account of the structure of the analytic act. And they enable us in this case to have recourse to a vast range of references reflecting the various aspects of the function “desire of the analyst” and some algebraic concepts that support them.[5] This recourse suggests a formulation: how can we say that the truth of every dream is in the realisation of a desire when it brings with it an “irrealisation” of this oneiric realisation. We could affirm that the meaning of the desire of the analyst is that of “realisation in act” because, being both an ethical and clinical operation, it is a notion that does not signify such and such a desire of such and such an analyst.

That is clear, but can we go so far as to maintain that this desire is exempt from paradoxes? What does the analyst do when faced with the paradoxical structure of desire? These questions refer to the clinic of the end of analysis and the pass and that opens the question of the links between desire and act, and also between jouissance and satisfaction that are sometimes correlative. For it is not enough to reach the end with the collapse of the truth of desire in the “I lie”, we also have to be able to situate the connection with the source of the drive and with the saying that names it. Even if this name were to be “Pinocchio”, that is not enough to situate the subject of the enunciation; it is equally necessary to verify if his heart is made of fantasy, and if his nose can really grow.

Translation from Spanish into French: Isabelle Cholloux

Translation from French into English: Susan Schwartz

 


[1] J. Lacan, (1962-1963) Le séminaire, Livre X, L’Angoisse [Anxiety], Paris, Seuil, 2004, p. 68.

[2] J. Lacan, (1963-1964) The Seminar, Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, New York and London, W.W. Norton and Co. 1981, Lesson of January 15, 1964.

[3] J. Lacan, (1958) “The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power, Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. B. Fink, New York and London, W.W. Norton & Company, 2006, p. 617 (French numeration).

[4] Ibid. p. 615 (French numeration).

[5] J. Lacan, (1963-1964) The Seminar, Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, New York and London, W.W. Norton and Co. 1981, Lesson of January 15, 1964.