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The analyst's desire is a term borrowed from Lacan but used by Wilson as he attempts to integrate the concept with related ones used in other schools of thought. It applies in his use of it here to the role of the psychoanalyst's desire in creating the space for an analysis to occur. This space has an ethical component, because it grants access to the discourse of the Other (the unconscious, as referred to by Lacan). When a space that allows access to the Other is maintained, an additional opening occurs where the desire that is unique to the patient can emerge and be seen by the analyst. Thus, ethical considerations here deal with maintaining an analytic space and what may happen when an analyst's own desire has not been adequately processed, and how subjective reactions to a patient can often be related to the role of the analyst's desire within treatment. There is a slight difficulty in the discussion, here, in that “the analyst's desire” is conceived of differently from time to time. Sometimes it's Lacan's particular conceptualization, and sometimes it can refer more generally to the analyst's subjective reactions, which may be more closely related to what is traditionally understood as subjective countertransference.
At some points Wilson expresses something akin to a fear of contaminating his patients, a fear that tends to include a sense of the analyst's feelings as bad or toxic. I do not think the
analyst's subjectivity can be completely removed from analysis, nor do I think it should be, in any absolute sense. Too much worry about contaminating the patient can engender an atmosphere wherein the analyst sees themselves as “bad” and where a distance occurs that interferes with what is essentially a collaborative process; but no such error contaminates Wilson's position.
Wilson does worry about what happens when the analyst's desire is unanalyzed. Here a brief conceptual confusion occurs. The analyst's desire is a term used by Lacan to refer to two things. Th