You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Lacan writes: “As soon as the subject who is supposed to know exists somewhere … there is transference” (Lacan, 1978, p. 232). In this linguistic figure the problem of undecidability and radical skepticism is introduced by the phrase “supposed to know.” And by implication, the problem of transference becomes something more than mere psychological transference; it becomes a problem of epistemology, a problem concerning the limits of knowing. “Subject suppose savoir” suggests both an obligatory ideal of knowing, and a gap or breech between this ideal knowing and the real status of the analyst as a knowing subject.
A paradox at the heart of the analytic endeavor: Reality is indeterminate, while the theoretic ideal is precisely defined but unreal. Each term becomes a site of violence and nullity for the other. Yet neither term can be annulled without destroying the axis of meaning that situates them and gives them life.
Still, in this Lacanian figure, even something more is at stake than the breech between reality and the ideal. “Supposed to know what?” we might ask. Supposed to know everything? Supposed to know nothing? The missing term of response is both eloquent and diabolical—an absence that speaks to us, or perhaps allows our wish to speak. Our wish, and always hidden within our wish, our despair.
An original or absolute knowledge, a knowledge of the soul, an intimacy with all things, the knowledge of aletheia (magical knowing) and anamnesis (magical remembering)—let us suppose for the moment that this sort of knowledge exists, that it exists in the form of a wish, as something wished for (Detienne, 1996). We discover this wish embodied in certain magical figures found in archaic magicoreligious thought (the prophet, the shaman or sage) and in the archaic wish of the individual psyche for union