Disavowal of Reality as an Act of Filial Piety

The author argues that often the hidden power of disavowal of reality gradually makes itself felt in a treatment. The psychoanalytic process then seems to have been brought to a halt by something that defies meaning and continually eludes any genuine subjectivisation by the patient. In the famous case of the Wolf Man (1918), Freud speaks of a rejection of reality, which he clearly distinguishes from repression, in that the rejected representation has not in any way been erased from consciousness; rather, its meaning remains as if in suspension, no longer open to judgment. Certain key moments in the treatment of a borderline case help to illustrate the necessity for the analyst to grasp the peculiar nature of his own involvement. He may have been induced to assume a parental attitude reproducing a ‘community of disavowal’ that belongs to the patient's unrecognised history. By adopting an interpretive formulation acknowledging his own participation in the disavowal—which the parents must have been unable to do—the analyst can then allow the patient to get out from under it. These considerations allow us to shed light on two possible theoretical difficulties regarding, firstly, the difference between negation and disavowal of reality and, secondly, the way that the disavowal tends to hamper the very process of symbolisation necessary for the deployment of fantasy.