The Analogy

A young woman had difficulties in separating. It was the last session before the summer holidays. She began: “When you opened the door to come and get me from the waiting room, you were wearing a blue T-shirt, which made me think about the one that I put on my son this morning… my son, my baby… the thought came to me again that he could disappear, die, like the dog that I adored when I was small.” The analyst said to her: “I have the same blue T-shirt as your son and I am going to disappear for a while during the holidays, but I will come back and I will be here after the holidays, on the date agreed. I will be waiting for you.” She sighed. A moment of silence followed. And then she said, “I just fell asleep momentarily… I could see the face of my much loved mother.”

The analogy, a word of Greek origin, appeared in French around the 13th century. According to Alain Rey (2005), “[i]n its first sense it is the identity of relationship between four or more elements, taken two by two. This notion of mathematical origin, employed in arithmetic as in geometry, seeks to designate any resemblance established between two pairs of terms, then between two terms. It refers, finally, and particularly, to the reasoning with which the human mind deduces from a similarity observed between several objects an unobserved and unverifiable similarity. In this sense, the analogy is one of our most essential and most uncertain modes of reasoning” (p. 300).

This common word is taken up by Jean-Claude Rolland to clarify his conception of psychoanalytic interpretation. He develops his ideas on this subject and offers a meticulous analysis of it in several of his books and articles. Initially, his remarks are based on the Freudian conception of language, bringing the various aspects of it into play and enriching it gradually. “Language,” he writes,” opens itself to the memory of the infantile because it has an aptitude for regression analogous to that which authorises the dream-work” (Rolland,