Chapter 9 Narcissistic Discourse as a Resistance to Psychoanalytical Listening:* A Classic Submitted to the Test of Idolatry (2001)

When considering idolization I do not speak about idols established and widely recognized as such, but about the use to which we may at some point put a text, an idea, a fragment of truth, a particular conception of our work. Unconsciously aimed at organizing our identity, this process has the consequence of creating an idol and becomes a resistance to analytic listening and to the dialogue between analysts.

An analyst who has in this way organized his affiliation to an aspect of theory may think, when listening to a colleague who expresses ideas different to the ones he upholds,‘This issue has already been solved by X (his chosen author)’. But this does not require that the (preferred) author be an established idol or that he has actually adopted a totalitarian discourse.

In this presentation, I shall exclusively consider the narcissistic resistances to analytic listening. Under the effect of narcissistic discourse and narcissistic listening, the criteria of pleasure-unpleasure prevail in varying degrees over the remaining criteria applied to the discovery of truths.

Let us see once again one of the possible ways in which the human being negotiates unpleasure. In narcissistic discourse,1 the subject speaks of the world as if it were a natural given, he reifies it and limits himself to asserting that the world is, without feeling any obligation to recognize his own possible psychic responsibility for its meaning. Such a discourse deserves to be called narcissistic

because its function is to preserve the narcissistic cohesion (and sometimes even the psychic survival) of the person who utters it. Because of this narcissistic regulation, the subject does not easily localize the causes of his pleasure or unpleasure. The aim of this regulation is to abolish the degree of psychic responsibility he has in his relationship to the world. It is inherent in the narcissistic organization