Knowledge and Desire in the Consulting Room – Are Neutrality and Abstinence Empty Concepts?

I cannot advise my colleagues too urgently to model themselves during psycho-analytic treatment on the surgeon, who puts aside all his feelings, even his human sympathy, and concentrates his mental forces on the single aim of performing the operation as skilfully as possible (Freud 1912(b): 115).

It is certainly possible to forfeit this first success if from the start one takes up any standpoint other than one of sympathetic understanding, such as a moralizing one, or if one behaves like a representative or advocate of some contending party – of the other member of a married couple, for instance (Freud 1913(a): 140).

Transference provides the impulse necessary for understanding and translating the language of the unconscious; where it is lacking, the patient does not make the effort or does not listen when we submit our translation to him. Essentially, one might say, the cure is effected by love (Freud 1906: 12).

I have already let it be understood that analytic technique requires of the physician that he should deny to the patient who is craving for love the satisfaction she demands. The treatment must be carried out in abstinence (Freud 1915: 164).

I am not saying anything else when I say that love is the sign that one is changing discourses (Lacan 1998 [1973]: 16).

What does an analyst know? What does an analyst want? What does an analyst do? The relational school has often been described as a postmodern turn within Anglo-American psychoanalysis and as a corrective to the modernism and objectivism of the American classical school. (Space does

not allow for an interrogation of that claim, but writers such as Frie (2002), Reis (2005) and Richards (2002) are unconvinced, while Schwartz (2002) offers a challenging deconstructionist critique of the Greenberg paper discussed here). It has certainly allowed for a more flexible and creative use of technique compared to the technical conservatism of the classical school. (It should be mentioned that although the relational school's rejection of the classical school is often taken as a rejection of Freudian theory, the American classical school's grounding in ego psychology positions the classical school as post-Freudian rather than Freudian). Following the relational critique of positions based on knowledge and authority, can a clear position be taken up in relation to the nature of the analyst's participation? A preliminary examination of some of these issues is offered through a review of Greenberg's 2001 paper ‘The Analyst's Participation – A New Look’ – unusual as a critical commentary of the relational turn from within that school. Lacanian theory, in particular Lacan's theory of the Four Discourses, is offered as a means to clarify some of the issues raised by Greenberg. (All references to Greenberg are in respect of this paper).

Particular attention will be paid here to Greenberg's assertion that:

Neutrality and abstinence, keystones of classical technique, are mythic and therefore empty concepts (362).

Greenberg sets out what he regards as four tenets of the relational school (362). These tenets offer an alternative narrative about the creation, location and use of knowledge and its influence within the analytic relationship. Knowledge cannot be retained, nor suggestion avoided, to the extent the analyst might hope. The availability of other knowledge is problematised – contemporaneous knowledge and understanding of the analytic relationship, unilateral consistent technical knowledge on the part of the analyst and, of course, the analyst's knowledge as access to objective knowledge, are all questioned. Greenberg also speculates as to the analysand's motivation for pursuing analysis. The option of Freud's

‘unobjectionable positive transference’ (Freud 1912(a)) as a motivation is problematised due to growing scepticism regarding the knowledge and authority of the analyst and the effectiveness of analytic work. Further, the relational critique of the classical school's deference to the analyst's authority and privileged access to reality raises the question of what relational school analysts believe motivates their analysands. Greenberg, with some scepticism, describes the trend for relocating the source of the analysand's motivation in the

…ways in which the analyst can negotiate a way of being that meets an actual need of the patient's. In the new model, the analyst's ability to find and to satisfy crucial needs at crucial times makes analysis possible. Relatively little is said about the patient's hope, or trust, or courage – the transferential and therefore private and internal side of the unobjectionable positive transference (369).

Greenberg expresses concern about an emerging trend in relational school case reports. That there should be a trend at all is an issue in itself, bearing in mind Greenberg's emphasis on the unique, unpredictable, uncertain and co-created analytic work of the relational school. Worse yet, the theme is potentially one of therapeutic ‘excess’ dressed up as a ‘morality play.’ Greenberg offers a number of potential examples, including Irwin Hoffman's description of a striking departure from orthodox analytic practice in acquiescing to his analysand's demand that he obtain some Valium for her. As Greenberg describes:

The analyst takes a risk and puts him or herself on the line in a highly personal way. In more or less classical terms, the analytic frame is broken. But then the analyst, in a move that has no counterpart in classical descriptions, offers him- or herself, as a person (my italics), to contain the tensions and anxieties the patient is experiencing in consequence of being in treatment. This is the moral of so many relational case reports: they focus on periods in the analysis during which tensions around what is happening

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are becoming unbearable for both participants. Then, when the analyst behaves in some startling, unexpected, and highly personal way – when, in Irwin Hoffman's terms (1994), he or she ‘throws away the book’ – the tension is broken. In reaction, the patient is able to relinquish some tie to an archaic internal object and to begin, or to resume, the work of analysis (364).

The Lacanian approach to clinical practice is distinguished from the Anglo-American approach by a different conception of the function of the ego, and the distinction of the ego and the imaginary register from the subject and the symbolic register, and their accompanying transferences. This distinction between the symbolic and imaginary transferences makes sense of Freud's paradoxical description, in ‘Dynamics of Transference’ (Freud: 1912(a)), of the transference as both the motor of and the greatest obstacle to analysis. Freud attempted to address this paradox through his concept of the unobjectionable positive transference. As described by Bernstein:

The imaginary is the register that encompasses the dual relations between the ego and the specular image and accounts for our attractions, fascinations, and seductions – in particular, our need to synthesize and unify essentially fragmentary experiences. According to Lacan, the relationship between the ego and its specular counterpart is essentially narcissistic, rooted in the early encounter of the ego with its ego-ideal. In essence, the imaginary is the realm that structures our need for likeness and our desire for identification with an other. In contrast, the symbolic is the realm of differentiation and separation in which our most intimate desires unmask themselves to be structured and guided by language, the unconscious, and the social order, which place us in kinship relationships, sex roles, and preinscribed social obligations. It is the order of triadic structures – of the language and culture in which the person is unknowingly inscribed in his or her most private longings and is ‘spoken by’ (1999(a): 291).

The subject is not the same as the individual; it is not the same as a self or a person. A subject comes about through the acquisition of language in which it represents its own being to others. In the very process of representing itself, the subject accedes to a loss because, in selecting the pronoun ‘I’ or ‘me’ or ‘John’, it enters into a whole symbolic structure (i.e., language) that can only represent but no longer present the individual. More radically so, language that inhabits a whole set of differentiating structures and histories constitutes the individual in its very being. The way we think about ourselves or each other in 1998 as opposed to 1798 is radically different, and yet the pronoun ‘I’ has seemingly remained unchanged (1999(b), p320).

Analytic positions that do not make the ego/subject distinction are confined to a dyadic conception of the analytic relationship. Granted, within a dyadic conceptualisation, there is certainly space for, and often an emphasis on, interpersonal dialogue, egalitarianism, notions of authenticity and spontaneity, and the dyadic creation, location and focus of knowledge. However, Greenberg, and others, raise concerns about the neglect of the intrapersonal, relationships external to the dyad, the ineffable mystery of the individual other (Frosh, 2006), and the alienating and disruptive power of the unconscious.

Making this distinction between the ego/person/self as opposed to the subject allows analytic work to be conceptualised as a three-subjectivity process in which two divided subjects relate to each other through two objects via a third subject – namely, the language of the unconscious that both parties are subjected to in a manner unknown to both of them. The analyst orients the process towards thirdness by functioning as the carrier, observer, and conveyor of the unconscious processes holding both participants in place. This is the analyst as representative and reminder of thirdness, the symbolic, Otherness and the unconscious. Rather than being seen as personal dialogue, discourse is regarded as the use of a pre-existing symbolic structure through which

these seemingly congruent desires have already been culturally, socially, and unconsciously mediated. Thus, language inhabits a whole set of differentiating structures and histories that constitute the individual in its very being. Lacan comments in an early seminar that no

two-body psychology exists without the intervention of a third element. If, as we must, take speech as the central feature of our perspective, then it is within a three – rather than two-term relation that we have to formulate the analytic experience in its totality (1991 [1975]: 11).

Muller (2007) provides a review of the concept of thirdness, differentiating between developmental thirdness, relational thirdness and structural thirdness. The developmental third represents the installation of triangulation or triangular space in mental life, so as to allow for more complex thinking, meaning making and structure. The analyst's reflexive self-awareness and positioning of knowledge within discourse creates a third point within the dyad. This level of thinking represents a developmental achievement for the patient. The developmental third is a requirement for the analyst and is grounded by the analyst's analytic knowledge (S₂ in the place of Truth, as discussed below).

In regard to relational thirdness, the relational school has engaged with the concept of thirdness (Gerson [2004], Benjamin [2004], Aron [2006] and Ogden [1994, 1999, 2004]) and, as to be expected, emphasises the third as the intersubjective field created by the dyad, in which analytic material can emerge and progress. At the same time, there is some passing reference to the dyad requiring that intersubjective third to provide a preexisting grounding to the dyad. This paradox remains (See Mills [2012: 16])—Muller suggests some of that inconsistency

can be resolved if we view the relational third as the history of the transference/countertransference responses in the intersubjective field, a history that becomes established in an intelligible and usable manner because it follows the semiotic rules of discourse

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– that is, because it is held by the structural Third and can then function as a representative of the Third (231).

As described above, the structural third – the third of the symbolic and the Other precedes and structures dyadic relationships, including the analytic pair. Some of its tangible effects include:

• Authorities and the laws that authorise them

• Elements of the treatment situation beyond the treatment dyad, including the psychoanalytic community and other practitioners

• Aspects of the patient's history and life, third-parties and family system, representing what is beyond the analytic dyad and establishing a context for understanding repetition

• Norms of objectivity, evidence and discourse that govern inferences, judgments and meaning making.

What is suggested here is that the classical v. relational debate and the one versus two body/individual/mind debate regarding knowledge and participation in the analytic relationship miss the central point. What is pivotal is whether the various analytic positions described recognise and engage with structural thirdness so as to facilitate developmental thirdness. It will be argued here that analytic work is not an epistemological project based on a dyadic relationship. Rather, it is a project based on a triadic relationship and an ethical project in the service of emerging thirdness and through that the articulation of desire. Neutrality and abstinence, far from being empty concepts, concern the positioning of knowledge and desire in the analytic discourse so as to facilitate developmental thirdness and that articulation of desire. The ethic referred to here is a specifically psychoanalytic ethic which relates action to desire. This is to be distinguished from the ethics of traditional moral philosophy, ideals, notions of goodness, or professional codes of ethics. For further, see Lacan's Seminar VII.

The relational school, as described by Greenberg, offers

motivation for treatment by way of the gratification of relational needs in the context of the analytic relationship. Lacanians warn that this can represent a move further into imaginary relating and away from the symbolic and thirdness. Greenberg's moments of ‘excess’ are conceptualised here as an effect of the analyst being required to occupy simultaneously two incompatible discursive positions. This conflictual requirement occurs when on the one hand, gratification and suggestion within the imaginary register have been positioned as in the service of the analysis, but on the other, so has elaboration within the symbolic register. This ‘excess’ can be seen as a hysterical symptom – a protest – an effect of the analyst being placed in an impossible position.

Lacanian discourse theory offers an elegant and explicit way to theorise the various respective positions in discourse of the Divided Subject, Unconscious Truth, Values, Knowledge and Desire, and their effects within social processes of governing, educating, desiring/protesting and analysing/revolutionising. Here, the use of discourse theory is concerned with the implications of the analytic relationship being positioned in different discourses – particularly regarding the respective positions of the analyst vis-à-vis Knowledge and Desire. Neutrality and abstinence are often described in terms of behavioural standards or limitations imposed by professional ethics and morality. However, they are actually a call for the analyst to take up, and decline, certain positions during analytic work in relation to Knowledge (neutrality) and Desire (abstinence), rather than seeking to bar either as inherently misguided suggestion or gratification. Neutrality provides for a stance where the analyst avoids becoming an Agent or Producer of Knowledge in respect of the analysand. Abstinence provides for a stance where the analyst avoids the positioning of Objet Petit a (cause of desire) in the position of unconscious Truth or, in effect, avoids seeking to identify (or disidentify) with the analysand's current positioning of Objet Petit a and stepping further into imaginary relating with them. Objet Petit a is a complex term with various and evolving definitions in Lacan's work. The Objet Petit a is an imaginary object, a fantasy object and the cause of the neurotic's desire. It doesn't represent an individual in the analysand's

life or an introjection, but rather represents a lack and the compensatory positioning of that lack and desire. That positioning may be in the place of a specific individual, but it is not comprised by that individual, and the positioning of the Objet Petit a in the place of the analyst is an important element in beginning the treatment. In terms of the Four Discourses, the Objet Petit a is that part of the subject's being that is simultaneously left out of and produced by the identity established for the subject in the S₁-S₂ articulation. Objet Petit a allows us to contemplate the nature of jouissance and the significance of the signifier for the speaking being.

The Discourse of the Hysteric

The Hysteric's Discourse is in play when a speaker's discourse is dominated by their symptom – i.e. their unique form of jouissance – shown in a full range of symptomatic experience. The analysand's Desire has been positioned as their unconscious Truth, making for an ever unstable identity and ever insisting desire. The symptom also comprises the Divided Subject's failure to comply with society's Master Signifiers or dominant values. But in that refusal is a demand for a solution, a demand for a concluding and lasting answer. The primary loss represented by Objet Petit a is expressed by a demand to the Other – the hystericised analysand/Agent as Divided Subject demands that the analyst/Other take up the role of Master (Signifier) and provide the answer. Tell me who I am and what my desire is! In terms of the Four Discourses, The Discourse of the Hysteric refers to a particular social bond and structure of discourse. It is not limited to the discourse of individuals with a hysterical structure. An obsessional or phobic might be the Agent in the Discourse of the Hysteric, and a hysteric is capable of being an Agent or Other in any of the Four Discourses.

Of course, due to the Disjunction of Impossibility, this expression is lacking. Subjected to the demand of the Agent, the analyst/Other is supposed to know and produce Knowledge. Knowledge is placed in the position of jouissance – thus the hysteric gets off on Knowledge. But the answer is always beside the point – it never corresponds to the

Objet Petit a due to the Disjunction of Inability. Further, despite the insistence of the Divided Subject's demand, they will always be seeking a limit to that Knowledge – searching for the lack. For an analyst situated as Other within this Discourse, these respective positions reflect the fact that both abstinence and neutrality have yet to be installed in the analytic relationship. The analyst is producing Knowledge for the analysand, and that Knowledge represents a fruitless attempt to reach the analysand's Objet Petit a, which the analysand has positioned as their unconscious Truth. In this Discourse, the analyst will continue to strive and fail to satisfy these demands of the analysand. As Lacan comments, ‘in other words, she wants a master she can reign over. She reigns, and he does not govern’ (Seminar XVII, 129).

The Discourse of the Analyst

If the analyst's position is not founded on their position as a Producer of Knowledge, or the foundational values that underpin that Knowledge, then what is the role of Knowledge in the establishment of the analytic relationship, or more particularly, the Discourse of the Analyst? The analyst does have knowledge – the analyst's already acquired theoretical knowledge which forms the basis of the analyst's savoir-faire, as well as the analyst's knowledge of the analysand – their psychic structure and life, and the nature of their jouissance. The nature of this knowledge is mythic – knowledge which emphasises relationships rather than static whole discrete identities. In contrast to Greenberg's dismissal of that which is mythic, Bracher (1994) underlines the value of such a term:

It is only the mythic form of knowledge that can avoid excluding the a, because it offers not absolute, clearly established, self-referential identities, but rather a system of oppositions embodied in images and fantasies that offer no unequivocal identities, meanings, or values (125).

It seems odd that Greenberg should equate ‘mythic’ with ‘empty’ when

some of the foundational concepts of psychoanalysis are based on myths – Oedipus, Narcissus and the Freud-penned myth of the primal horde.

With the analyst's Knowledge in the position of Truth, it cannot be brought directly to the analysis and the position of Agent is free to be taken up by the Objet Petit a. Thus desire can become the driving force of the analytic treatment for the analyst – the object of desire is Desire itself – the desire of the analysand. As Bracher describes,

the analyst's activity of interpretation – that is, of representing the ‘a’, cause of the patient's desire – is sustained by the analyst's implicit knowledge, S₂, in place of truth (125).

Also, with S₂ in this position, below the line, it does not locate the listening position of the analyst as an Agent of Knowledge, which would create a situation of suggestion, as will be discussed below.

This positioning of Knowledge also allows for the installation of the ‘Sujet Supposé Savoir’ (SsS) – a function which may be ascribed to the analyst by the analysand by the attribution of a certain sort of subjectivity possessing a certain sort of knowledge. It should be emphasised that the knowledge in question is presumed by the analysand, rather than actually possessed by the analyst – and the analyst maintains an awareness of lacking that very knowledge which establishes the transference. In fact the Sujet Supposé Savoir can be translated more usefully, as the ‘Supposed Subject of Knowledge’, emphasising that it is the subject, not just the knowledge, which is supposed (Schneiderman 1980: vii). At the same time, for the analyst, it is the analysand who is the SsS – hence the value of free association to discover what the analysand knows (without knowing it). The SsS provides a more compelling explanation for the analysand's motivation to pursue an analysis than Freud's partitioned-off and docile ‘unobjectionable positive transference’ and provides an answer to Greenberg's question as to why anyone would pursue an analysis. Based as it is in supposition and transference, the analyst's position in terms of the SsS is not quite as vulnerable as the unobjectionable positive transference to the attacks on knowledge and prestige described by

Greenberg (368). However, as Fink has describes (1999(a): 29), the SsS is by no means immune to the effects of such changes.

The knowledge this supposed subject is assumed to possess is the hidden meaning of the analysand's words – hidden even to the analysand. The place of the SsS in the analysand's discourse can causes otherwise insignificant details (chance gestures, ambiguous remarks) to acquire retroactively a special meaning for the analysand. Further, the analyst may well be cast by the analysand as responsible for, as the cause of, these newly meaningful phenomena. Thus the analyst acquiesces in becoming associated with the analysand's unconscious and the emergence of the knowledge that is the concern of analysis – the hidden truth of the analysand's unconscious. As Fink describes:

Thus it is that, in a roundabout way, the analyst becomes associated with the analysand's unconscious, with its incomprehensible manifestations, with the unknown or x, that appears in the analysand's speech. The subject supposed to know, that is, the unconscious ‘within’ the analysand, is rejected by the analysand and projected onto the analyst. The analyst must agree to occupy the space of or stand in (or sit in) for the unconscious: to make the unconscious present through his or her presence (1999(a): 31).

At the same time, the analyst assumes a stance of not knowing in terms of his/her discursive position vis-à-vis the analysand. The analyst's not knowing makes space in the analytic work for the analysand to approach that which determines his or her subjectivity. The analyst thus holds a position of (supposedly) knowing, and not knowing at the same time.

To summarise, in the Discourse of the Analyst – the analyst as Agent positions themself as identified with their Desire, the Desire of the analyst, whilst their analytic Knowledge is positioned on the side of the analyst's unconscious Truth. The Desire of the analyst, addressed to the analysand/Other, as a Divided Subject, leads to a new signification of the analysand's desire – the Product S₁. The analyst as Agent speaks from a position of desire – desire as curiosity and speculation, desire

for the elaboration of the conflictual subject of the Other – as revealed in symptoms, dreams and errors. The desire of the analyst is for the analysand to engage in the analysis and elaborate the roots of their desire. As Bernstein (1999(a)) describes,

In psychoanalytic terms, the analyst/detective proceeds by gradually tracing the path left behind by the patient's errors, slips of the tongue, puns, dreams, and symptoms in an effort to reconstruct what symbols were purloined from the subject in the service of the neurosis. The analyst is to discover the words, phrases, and ideas that were robbed from the subject and lodged beyond recognition in the unconscious. Once they are found in the maze of distortions, displacements, and condensations, the analyst's task is to help the subject recapture and reconnect with the symbols that were repressed in the unconscious and held captive by the neurosis (p282).

The analyst as cause of desire of the other eliminates himself as a subject – therefore it is impossible to be an analyst. Instead, the analyst assumes that function for a period of time, obliging the analysand to address the divided nature of their being – S. The analyst brings the S to that point by the analyst's non-functioning as a subject and being reduced to the position of object. The Master Signifier is the oedipal determinant particular to that subject. As Bracher (1994: 123) describes, the Discourse of the Analyst,

…puts the receivers of its message in the position of assuming and enacting the S – that is, their own alienation, anxiety, shame, desire, symptom – and of responding to this S by producing new master signifiers (S₁), ultimate values, formulations of their identity or being.

In being ‘hystericised’ the analysand is brought to noticing that they are not the master of their own discourse. The subject produces its own S₁.

The emergent S₁, more permissive, contextual and open is then dialectised with S₂.

As depicted by its bottom line, the Discourse of the Master sets up the status quo where SubjectObject is unconscious and fully under the Disjunction of Inability. The Discourse of the Analyst brings this to consciousness, to the top line, in inverted form. The Discourse of the Analyst is aS i.e. the inverse of the unconscious of the Discourse of the Master Sa. Desire, that is to say, that which has been excluded from symbolisation and subjected to the Discourse of the Master, is placed in the dominant position, inviting the analysand to speak their symptom. The analyst responds in a way that highlights what has been repressed. That which has been negated is highlighted and elicited, fuelled by the transference to the analyst as the SsS. Being confronted with these negated elements arouses the conflict sufficiently for analysand to wish to instate a new Master Signifier – S₁.

The end result is radical difference, the analysis of one subject—the analysand—constructing and deconstructing itself throughout the process of analysis. The generation of Knowledge in the form of a signifying chain is secondary to the main aim of analysis – readmitting confined and excluded signifiers to the dialectical process. Positioned in this Discourse, the analyst is opposed to all will of mastery and keeps knowledge open and on the move – the analyst does not reach closure, and it is left for the analysand to bring closure to the work in their own time.

Suggestion in the University Discourse

Within this theoretical framework, the move from neutrality to suggestion entails a shift from the Discourse of the Analyst to the University Discourse. The analyst retains their position as Agent, as the discursive positions rotate forward one quarter turn – S₂ moves up above the line, ‘a’ moves over to the place of Other and the other terms make their corresponding moves. Rather than the analyst's listening position being founded by the analyst's Desire for the analysand's desire, the analysand

becomes an Agent of consciously asserted Knowledge (S₂) addressed to the analysand as Other. This positions the analysand as the Objet Petit a of the analyst, while S₁ is held in the place of the analyst's unconscious Truth, acting as a covert guarantee of the analyst's Knowledge. As always, between Agent and Other, there is the Disjunction of Impossibility, and further, Knowledge is the least appropriate means of reaching Objet Petit a, as Objet Petit a is that which is beyond language. The more that Knowledge is used to reach Objet Petit a, the more the analysand eludes the reach of the analyst. A knowing Agent requires an unknowing Other, thus the subject of the unconscious is produced and simultaneously excluded – the Product is an analysand as ever-more Divided Subject.

Knowledge positioned in this way is presented as whole within itself, but the hidden truth is that it relies on the underlying values represented by S₁. As S₁ is the surreptitious force of the University Discourse, so the University Discourse is subservient to and the agent of the Discourse of the Master. Systematic knowledge takes up the position of ultimate authority – rationalising and legitimating the Discourse of the Master. The University Discourse provides that very thing that the Discourse of the Master lacks – justification – submitting new sites of discourse to that same requirement – coherent justification – excluding the Divided Subject who might be a site for protest and instantiating a solely knowing conscious subject in its place. Subjectivised knowledge is replaced by desubjectivised anonymised knowledge, as represented, for example, in a move from psychoanalytic treatment to various ‘psychologised’ treatments. Suggestion in terms of ‘education’, and interpretations that invite identification with the ego of the analyst (See further Muller (1996, Chapter 8)), just produce an ever more Divided Subject, alienated from itself, in the service of the underlying fundamental values, delivered covertly in the form of Knowledge.

The way to oppose the University Discourse is to unmask its S₁, its underlying values, and expose the hidden Discourse of the Master. Greenberg describes the entrenchment of specific values by way of institutionalised knowledge in the opening of his paper, describing various theoretical excesses in the name of incest, breast or failure.

The Hystericisation of the Analyst

What happened between Hoffman and his analysand? We can look to writing by Muller and Gentile for a more negative assessment. Muller claims that,

The Third is likely to be misrepresented through ignorance, neglect, malice, and narcissistic illusion. When therapist and patient reach an impasse in treatment, one can usefully look to see how the Third has been eclipsed, often by the therapist's failure to recognize the patient's position and the patient's relation to the Third. Betrayal by a representative of the Third, with its associated eclipse of the Third, is an essential feature of psychological trauma (238).

Gentile elaborates on the phenomenology of such a situation,

…when a closed dyadic process prevails, instead of impelling therapeutic action toward thirdness and intersubjectivity, agency gets mired in a trapped, perverse state of ‘twoness’ – a state of phenomenological confinement that elides the space of intersubjectivity and symbolic communication. In the collapsed state of twoness, fusion-based dynamics, power relations, and brute force yield a relatedness that looks like, but actually precludes, psychological intimacy (623).

Certainly, the demand of Hoffman's analysand could be interpreted as an attack on thirdness, where the established boundaries of the psychoanalyst's and psychologist's roles are undermined and two are collapsed into one.

There are some points of concern. As Casement (2001) discusses, such moments of crisis often entail the analysand communicating that aspect of their experience that has been unbearable and that they may have observed being unbearable for significant others. Casement cautions that responding to such a portrayal with a significant deviation from

the current analytic frame may be taken by the analysand as a signal from the analyst that the analyst has reached the limit of what they can engage with from an analytic position – hence the analyst's move to a different position. A danger is that the analysand will take note, and from that point circumscribe what they bring to the analysis. This may sometimes explain why significant deviations from the frame may lead to a subsequent period of calm in the analysis. This characterisation of the impasse as a communication or portrayal serves as a reminder that ‘acting out’ can be regarded as more than just resistance or ‘misbehaviour’, and may be the only way some patients can remember (Freud, 1913(b)). Perhaps Hoffman's analysand was communicating the message, ‘It was unbearable, it feels unbearable, I'm being unbearable, (love me)’. Hoffman's response could be read as saying, ‘I can't bear it either’. Greenberg comments that:

It is always, of course, tempting to find a way to take on the role of a new, good object rather than feeling drawn, inexorably, into enacting something old and ugly (375).

Certainly – the question is whether seeking to identify with that which is demanded or pursued by the analysand represents a step towards something new². Hoffman characterises his decision to do as his patient asks, and obtain some Valium for her as ‘consciously disidentifying with her father’ (Hoffman, 1994: 202). Yet by disidentifying, or rather counter-identifying, in this manner, does he merely step into the imaginary relating being presented by his client? His identification remains within his patient's portrayal as he becomes powerfully identified with his patient in her childhood situation, while his patient takes up the role of the pressurising, blackmailing and coercive father. As Greenberg describes, Hoffman had already taken up a position where extra-analytic demands were brought into the analytic relationship, so it would be tricky to meet his patient's demand with enquiry, interpretation or confrontation. Such situations raise the question of what position has the analyst already taken up or fallen into that the analysand would make such a demand, or

expect it to be complied with?

Hoffman seems to limit himself by constructing a false dichotomy between the impersonal, technical and ritualistic on one hand, as opposed to the personal, ‘authentic’ and spontaneous on the other, as represented by his metaphor of ‘throwing out the book’. This seems an odd dichotomy bearing in mind how honest, attentive and personal analytic interpretations can be; while there is no lack of dishonesty, inauthenticity and impersonal behaviour in social and personal relationships. As elaborated below, concomitant with the distinction between dyadic or triadic relating, is the distinction not between ritual and spontaneity but rather, between analytic as opposed to non-analytic discourse.

Rather than stepping further into the portrayal, it would have been useful for Hoffman to step both towards it and alongside it and speak in a way that might allow the analysand to see this portrayal from a third position – to elaborate what this analysand was showing them both. As Felman comments,

The analyst's effectiveness, however, does not spring from his intellectual strength – but – insists Lacan – from his position in the repetitive structure. By virtue of occupying the third position – that is, the locus of the unconscious of the subject as a place of substitution of letter for letter (of signifier for signifier) – the analyst, through transference, allows at once for a repetition of the trauma, and for a symbolic substitution, and thus effects the drama's denouement (Felman, 1987: 43).

Interestingly, one of the most notable moments of Hoffman's case is omitted from Greenberg's paper. At the height of the drama, Hoffman's analysand changes her mind and tries to stop the 'phone call – to no avail. As Hoffman describes,

When the patient starts whispering while I am waiting for her doctor to come to the phone, ‘This is crazy, I could do this myself,’ I go through with the call. Why? Maybe it is a bit of playful tit

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for tat, as if to say, ‘You tortured me for a half hour, now it's your turn.’ The aggression on my part borders on a frame violation, a piece of acting out, perhaps, retaliating for the patient's challenges to the frame, challenges that may have carried particularly aggressive implications in light of Diane's knowledge of my status as a candidate (1994: 211).

Despite Greenberg's concerns, following Hoffman's moment of ‘excess’ in picking up the 'phone, a different perspective, a moment of thirdness, begins to emerge in the analysand, ripe for exploration. Sadly, the moment is missed, and one is left to conjecture whether this represents Hoffman's identification with the analysand's aggrieved and retaliatory father.

What sort of move, involving a failure of neutrality and abstinence, could lead to the sort of ‘excess’ that Greenberg appears to be concerned about? Are moments of ‘excess’ occasions where, although the analyst has retained his position as Agent, there is a shift of the analytic relationship from the Discourse of the Analyst to that of the Hysteric? The relational school's positioning of the analysand's motivation on the side of the analyst's gratification of the analysand's apparent needs and desires requires the analyst to occupy two different simultaneous positions. As Agent in the Analyst's Discourse, and Other in the Hysteric's Discourse – subjected in Hoffman's case to the demand ‘Valium!‘. In the face of this conflictual pressure within the analytic work, the analyst loses his analytic position; his analytic Knowledge has lost its position of Truth in the Discourse of the Analyst. The analyst becomes a conflicted Agent in the Hysteric's Discourse – a Discourse where the Objet Petit a is situated in the position of the analyst's unconscious Truth. The analyst's Desire becomes the unconscious prime mover in the analytic relationship.

When we turn to the diagram of the Discourse of the Analyst with this loss in mind, what is portrayed? With the loss of analytic Knowledge (perhaps the true meaning of Hoffman's ‘throwing out the book’) to support the analyst's Desire as analytic Desire, Desire falls ‘under the line’ – out of consciousness – and with one quarter rotation back, the analyst has been hystericised. The conflicted analyst subjects the analysand to

the Master Signifier of the moment. S is in the place of Agent – S₁ in the place of the Other. In Hoffman's case, one suspects a Master Signifier in the region of ‘disidentification’. In Hoffman's vignette he reports the ‘richness of the subsequent conversation’. Maybe so – but then, the Other in the Hysteric's Discourse is always a producer of Knowledge, as they struggle unsuccessfully to address the lack in the Other. Additionally, in this case, the subsequent dialogue might be an attempt on the part of the analysand to repair the analytic relationship.

In conclusion, not all work that appears personal or informal and seems to contravene the classical behavioural injunctions of abstinence and neutrality fall out of the Discourse of the Analyst. Similarly, not all work that appears to comply with those behavioural injunctions necessarily falls within the Discourse of the Analyst. Behavioural limits are to some degree a marker or a protection, but do not of themselves indicate the location of the analytic pair in relation to the Four Discourses. The Discourse of the Analyst is constituted by the positions and the effects in discourse of the analyst's Knowledge and Desire. The test isn't the analyst's behaviour, but the effect of the analytic relationship – whether the subject can move from giving ground to their desire to articulating it. Abstinence is the analyst's assumption of that position in Discourse which locates desire as Agent rather than as Other or Truth. Neutrality is the analyst's assumption of that position in Discourse which locates analytic knowledge as Truth, rather than Agent or Product. What counts as an analytic position and a potentially effective interpretation depends on the analysand's structure. The importance of the analysand's structure in the respective triad with the analyst's Knowledge and Desire is reflected in positioning of the Divided Subject in the place of Other in the Discourse of the Analyst. In clinical terms, the location of S, the structure of the Subject, as Other, highlights the importance of differential diagnosis in framing interventions.

Granted, not all the work in analysis falls within the Discourse of the Analyst. At times, other ways of relating may be required to preserve the analysis, including the holding provided by imaginary relating for a traumatised patient who is fragmented and actively dissociated, or a more

robust position to protect the analytic frame from aggressive attacks or the unmanageable effects of a symptom. The clarity and formalisation of the Four Discourses should not imply a purist or instrumental approach to clinical technique. However, it does offer an opportunity to consider whether or not suggested incidents of excess, suggestion and gratification are as they appear, and allows us to understand when a theoretical analytic position places a demand on the analyst to occupy simultaneously two conflictual discursive positions and the effect of that in terms of analytic excess. Even if one is not inclined to adopt the Lacanian emphasis on the signifier, the Discourse of the Analyst provides a useful model for the positioning of Knowledge and Desire. A positioning on the side of elaboration and enlargement, mindful of the fact the same speech/act may be neutral or abstinent in respect of the structure one analysand but not in respect of another.

We finish with a vignette recounted in an interview that forms part of Gérard Miller's film ‘Rendez-vous chez Lacan’, a video excerpt of which can be seen at , together with a discussion by Owen Hewitson, (Hewitson, 2012). Interestingly, in this vignette, the intervention is made through touch rather than speech. Suzanne Hommel recounts an episode from her analysis with Lacan in 1974, in which she describes her traumatic childhood experience of the Gestapo in wartime France.

This exchange could be misread as an example of the analyst moving into the imaginary dual relationship, when they should remain ‘out of it’. In fact, there is no staying out of the imaginary - as portrayed by the Borromean knot in Lacan's Seminar XXII, ‘RSI’. (That seminar was being conducted the same year as this clinical work). The point is not to move from one register to another - all three are always and necessarily in play. Rather, what is important is that it is a shift within the symbolic that provides the fulcrum of change for the neurotic subject. Further, the nature of the shift is to be divined by the structural effect of the intervention - not merely by its behavioural manifestation. A touch on the cheek does not necessarily represent a move further into dyadic relationship – and cannot automatically be labelled as an instance of gratification.

As discussed by Hewitson (2012), Lacan's intervention does not represent the deployment of knowledge in terms of a spoken interpretation, much less suggestion. Neither is it the gratification of a hysterical demand for love – it represents a surprise, rather than a response or capitulation to comfort seeking. It is offered as an example of analytic work where a therapeutic shift is effected by an intervention related to a specific signifier. The production of a new signifier – or the new interpretation of an existing one by the analysand – leads to a shift in the suffering associated with a childhood trauma. The traumatic effect of the signifier is loosened via the analysand taking up a more personal and idiosyncratic use of that signifier. In terms of Lacanian Discourse, the location of S₁ as Product is, of course, an indication of the Discourse of the Analyst. Within the Discourse of the Analyst, we can see the actual location and effect of the analyst's Knowledge. Not as suggestion or an instruction about self-care—but rather Knowledge positioned as the

analyst's unconscious Truth—allowing for the installation of the analyst by the analysand as the Supposed Subject of Knowledge. We hear Hommel's interpretation of Lacan's wordless interpretation – Lacan's actual intention and explanation becomes extraneous to the effect it has. In this emphasis on the effect of an interpretation rather than the apparent truthfulness of its content, we are brought back to Freud's position regarding the assessment of interpretations in ‘Constructions in Analysis’ .