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But what we have here is only the effect of the analyst's passions: his fear, which is not error, but ignorance, his taste, which is not to satisfy, but not to disappoint either, his need, which is not to govern, but to keep the upper hand. It has nothing to do with any counter-transference on the part of this or that individual; it is a question of the consequences of the dual relation, if the therapist does not overcome it, and how can he overcome it if he sees it as the ideal of his action? (J Lacan)
This passage from Lacan's paper on the direction of the cure and the principles of its power accompanied my reading of this book as it captures so aptly my sole substantial reservation, namely that it is not the ideas proposed but the basic philosophy behind them that is called into question.
This is a clear, yet passionately written book emanating, by the author's own admission, from his search for answers to some fundamental questions at the heart of the psychoanalytic enterprise: the nature of perception, the nature of the self, the capacity to separate and the possibility of symbol formation, to name but a few. Dr Wright avoids unnecessary use of jargon and displays an enviable talent at expressing very complex ideas in a clear, ordinary, at times poetic and always personal style.
Far from displaying any personal ignorance, Dr Wright makes use of his wide knowledge of philosophy, poetry, literature and psychology in his attempt to address these issues. But he is ultimately unable to overcome his basic concept of the ‘dual relation’ being all there is at the beginning of life and not making the leap I was hoping for to a truly phenomenological critique.
The promise and the problematic of this book are illustrated in the language of one of its opening phrases when Dr Wright states that, ‘something that phenomenologically is outer may really be something inner that has been projected’ (p. xiv). He goes on to say that he could have been explaining the ‘look’ of the other