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.
Jean-Louis Baldacci is known for his frequently quoted paper on “Sublimation, from the outset” given at the Congress for French-speaking analysts. This explored in detail a note by Freud concerning a sublimation that begins with the drive, from the beginning of life. But he is equally well known for his work on the consultative process, or consultative endeavour, of psychoanalytic treatment, starting with the inter-analytic research and work carried out at the Centre Jean Favreau that he directed from 2000 to 2015.
“Analysing to an end” traces the common theme of these two dimensions: “sublimation,” as what has to be grasped from the outset of any treatment, and the “consultative process,” in its connection with the inter-analytic work that is a precondition for psychoanalysis.
Accordingly, the book is entitled “Analysing to an end.” The original French title harbours a welcome ambiguity because of the double meaning of the word “fin.” The translator into English may struggle to find a translation that can render this ambiguity. First of all, there is the reference to Freud’s essay “Analysis terminable and interminable.” But also, more significantly, “fin” in French also refers to “end” (in its main sense) and “purpose” (a less common sense of “end”) in English. Just as it is appropriate with “sublimation” to identify from the outset something that is usually referred to as an accomplishment, will the “end” also be an issue for the author from the outset of every “consultative process”? Ambiguity is also a necessity in the art of interpretation, and from the outset. It must be able to hold the equilibrium and sustain the movement required by the “two-sided” nature of the transference: the attachment to the object (its hypnotic pole); the displacement (its anti-hypnotic part by which the play of digression can transform mnemic traces into memories). From the outset, the author humorously illustrates this necessary ambiguity—by quoting the great French psychiatrist of t