Barthes, the Neutral, and Our Neutrality

I don't mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your father's house? To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.

Imagine yourself in the place of a writer prior to the arrival of the first English dictionary in 1604. This is the position Shakespeare was in until the last dozen years of his life, and in spite of the difficulties it would have posed, this absence undoubtedly contributed to the richness, beauty, and inventiveness of his language (Winchester, 2005). Without the rules and limits a dictionary provides, whatever freedoms already exist in language increase dramatically. Of course language continues to evolve in the presence of dictionaries, but under more limited conditions. Like those writing before 1604, analysts also have prior texts and everyday usage to guide them in their understanding of the terms of their trade. But as was the case for Shakespeare, our language is in a state of considerable flux. Many analysts long for a more “scientific” psychoanalysis, with greater clarity and concision to save our objects of study from endless redefinition. In this essay I would like to consider the other side of this issue, that is, the advantages to be gained by the absence of such stability with respect to the concept of neutrality. Psychoanalysis needs a dictionary, but at times it also needs to live without one. Neutrality is a concept that has been subjected to a wide range of interpretations, and in this paper I will argue that, in some senses, it is able to contain all of them and more. Neutrality calls for a kind of creative space in which analysts can develop and experiment with their concepts while also establishing a similar creative space between themselves and their patients.

In order to do this I will describe in some detail an extra-analytic work that can shed light on this situation. While this paper could be viewed as a work of applied analysis I will not