Where Does Nothing Come from? Commentary on Wilson

Mitchell Wilson's paper is motivated by his observation that the clinical literature is filled with examples of the salutary effects of missing the patient (in various ways). Descriptions of enactments, misunderstandings, and failures of empathy that spontaneously arise in treatment have all been characterized as moving the analytic process forward. In other words, despite technical exhortations for how and when to interpret (properly timed, tactfully, first at the defenses, etc.), analysts constantly fail and their patient benefits from those failures.

Wilson acknowledges that analysts have tried to explain the positive effects of missing the patient from many different theoretical positions; but, he feels, a more general explanatory theory can be found in the concept of “the lack” from Lacanian theory. Wilson claims that analysts who do not recognize the ubiquity of the lack (and its relation to desire) respond defensively with premature closures that he identifies as obsessional solutions.

Any theory offering itself as a better explanatory solution faces a paradox: how to achieve its aim without falling into the same class as those it finds are in error. Like the barbers and liars of classic paradoxes, Wilson's theoretical explanation must be in a class apart from the others.1 Other theoretical explanations are about something; his is about nothing. Further, Wilson claims that the theory of the lack can explain not only why analysts' failures are beneficial but also why