Transference is the enactment of the (sexual) reality of the unconscious

DINERSTEIN Aida


If the praxis we name psychoanalysis differs from whichever psychotherapy approach it is because it upholds the existence of the unconscious as well as that of the transference.

The notions of the unconscious and of transference do not denote any concrete substantiality; their effects can only be accounted for insofar as they are articulated as discourse- the sort of discourse that implicates the subject . Hence we will say that both the unconscious and the transference are structured like a language, which makes them homologous, whereas the function ‘subject’ is related to the function of the word.

It is is this latter function –the one of the word as a word operating on the body- which, starting from a homologous structure, enables us to establish a difference between the transference and the unconscious. We can then conclude the following: if the transference, understood as the function ‘supposed subject of knowing’, is the enactment of unconscious reality, its pivoting around the function for which there is no representation –namely, object a- will noticeably modify the aforesaid formula by means of one term. On its inclusion, this term –sexual- relocates all the others. Thus, if the transference is now the enactment of the (sexual) reality of the unconscious, such transference can be led to its legitimate end.

In other words, whereas the transference as the function ‘supposed subject of knowing’ will allow discourse to unfold , it will also be stretched to a point where it will become an obstacle to the very existence of the unconscious when it appears to the subject as the experience of his own split. In the transference as resistence, the analytic act will reduce the supposed subject of knowing to the function of object a.

Positing that the unconscious is relative to its existence correlates with the assumption that it lacks ontic reality. However, I will not sustain its lack of entity in its ethical aspect, but rather on the fact that it exists as sexual reality. I believe that approaching the issue from this angle is coherent with the significance of the scope of the real to both the corpus of our discipline and its effects on our practice. The scope of the real specifically affects the subject: nothing is more real than the subject. Hence, while we will continue to maintain that the subject is no more than what a signifier represents for another signifier, the inscription of the signifier as such remains the function of the letter. That a signifier should be inscribed simply means its being implanted in the body; on the other hand, this implies that the signifier’s implantation in the body results from the discourse-like arrangement taken on by the articulation among signifiers. This operation is also carried out by the letter. (Let us remember the proximal structure of letter and object). If , while in analysis, that is, in the transference, the unconscious arranges itself as discourse, we should regard the unconscious as the spoken knowing that affects the body and is in turn affected by it. It is within the range of discourse that there arises an articulation between the field of language and the function of the word, viewed in its performative value as drive-ridden presence of the subject. The real, sexual, scope of experience.

It is my belief that the notion of discourse allows an articulation between two structures: a structure of relations, pertaining to language, and a topological structure, a conception of space pertaining to the body which is the concern of psychoanalysis.

I also believe that it is within the formulation of the unconscious arranged as discourse, that is to say, within the unconscious as knowing that unfolds in the transference – where the function ‘object’ will put order into experience, that it will be possible to consider a logic that is necessarily articulated with grammar, in the way in which Lacan articulates Freud’s two topics- the unconscious and the Id; the logic of the signifier run through by the grammar of the drive, and both articulated by the logic of the phantome.

The place the analyst must occupy is different from the one to which he is summoned. Summoned as the subject supposed to knowing, the analyst will operate provided that he positions himself as semblant of the object. The fact that the object will rule the entire analytic operation from the very beginning does not mean that it should not be produced as the analysis reaches its end; produced as an object that does not belong to the analyst ‘but (as) the one that the analysand requires from the analyst as an other so that both may be expulsed out of him’.

If the analyst is to be found somewhere, it is in the place where he exists, where he exists as a split subject and where he supports his analytic operation on his experience as the analysand that he has been. (Therefore, the issue of experience is relative to the experience of the split of the subject, which is structurally connected to the function ‘object a’, particularly in its aspect of object-cause-of-desire. The privileged path to account for this experience is the path of the letter.)

To regard the issue of experience as relative to the sexual reality of the unconscious implies an emphasis on the logical impasse pointed out by object a (along with its necessary articulation with the split subject) as that which cannot be endowed with any predication whatsoever. So that such an impasse can be worked out and the experience formalized, it will be necessary to resort to mode logic, whose intensional quality merges extensional aspects; a logic of predicates that cannot be passed over.

It is because of this difficulty that Lacan tackles the issue of existence (and. -we insist- he does so within a logic that lies extremely close to grammar) in relation to quantifiers, whose untranslatability into language he states from the very beginning. The existential quantifier will be of use to the analyst at the point where logic, as an operation of writing, will be effective as long as it cannot be translated. When the analyst operates as object a, he must regard himself as a predicate (in terms of the said logic, the formulation of quantification viewed as the expression of mode makes up the main predicate in the sentence and proves external to the rest of it; the rest which, being a subordinate clause, makes up the subject of the modal sentence) and only thus, from either his necessary position or his contingent act, will the subject be located.

 

Aída Dinerstein

letra, Institución Psicoanalítica