Inspiration of the cure or technique? The ethical loneliness of the analyst

by | Vol 22 (3/4) 2004

This paper deals with the question of the meaning of technique in analytical treatment. With Freud, it is acknowledged that the term “technique” is all too often interpreted in terms of rules or instructions for the analyst in relation to good direction for the cure. In contrast, Freud underscored another dimension of technique: that of creativity, a dimension that contributes to the emergence of the subject as well as to the creation of additional degrees of freedom for its speaking; the one in which the analyst, having analysed his own freedom (or lack of it), creates the conditions wherein the subject comes to his own, truthful, speech. The tension between technique in the narrow sense, and technique in the sense of the creative manipulation of transference, is illustrated on the basis of a few clinical fragments.

Related articles

  • On Psychoanalytic Technique as foundation for the investigation of Creativity

    Can psychoanalytic technique be used to investigate creativity? With reference to MacMillan’s work (MacMillan et al., 2003) on Freud’s essay on the Moses of Michelangelo (Freud, 1914b), the author begins this article by arguing that this is not always productive. In Freud’s analysis of Michelangelo’s sculpture and of the artist’s intentions, Freud made use of introspection in a way that is analogous to the free floating attention of psychoanalysts. However, Freud’s construction can be discredited when one takes into account:…

  • Che vuoi: About the "Desire of the Analyst"

    This article investigates the Lacanian notion of the "desire of the analyst". Several topics are discussed concerning this enigmatic desire. First of all, the author argues against the conception that the analyst has no desire to cure. Also discussed is the notion that the views of the analyst about "health" have ethical and technical consequences. The author conceives health here as a matter of wanting to know about one's own unconscious. One of the crucial paths towards this knowledge is…

  • Freud's Use of Construction: Contribution to the History of Psychoanalytic Technique

    In this paper the author investigates the precise manner in which Freud applied the technique of construction in his clinical practice. Not withstanding the fact that construction comprised an obvious part of Freud's technique, he seldom mentioned it in his works. Light is shed on Freud's technique of construction by revisiting the analogies he used to describe psychoanalytic practice, i.e., the psychoanalyst as archeologist (1937d) and psychoanalysis as travel (1920a), and the sixth and seventh sessions of his analysis of…