The Analyst’s Formation – Transmission of Psychoanalysis
The history of the psychoanalytic movement maintains an unpaid debt in relation to “the widespread discontent regarding the formation of analysts.”
Such history reveals many situations where the so-called “analyst” has become more attached to the bureaucratization of power, the struggle for prestige itself, and, ultimately, the title imposed on a deceit.
And this is also valid for those of us who feel indebted to Lacan’s teachings.
In fact, the term “Analyst” is not the name of a profession, nor is it a name that a parent may choose, nor is it a “label” to be stuck to any BEING.
The issue regarding the formation of analysts calls us to make a stop and re-open the debate with its questions and the subjects at stake. There is no “sufficient formation” that may comprise the endless aspects of such formation in full.
Background
During the first decade of the 20th century, an individual could call him/herself “analyst” if he/she supported the practice of psychoanalysis and was recognized by Freud. Accepting the discovery of the unconscious and practicing a new therapeutic approach was the mark of his first disciples. However, when the number of interested parties grew and they were no longer individuals within his “circle”, there was a need to create Psychoanalytic Societies. And when such societies began to have international implications, there was a need to agree upon certain “formation criteria” for anyone who would be interested in becoming an analyst.
In this sense, the first Psychoanalytic Societies allowed for assuming a certain degree of formalization regarding what to expect from analysts in times when psychoanalysis had begun to spread in such a way that people interested in this new therapeutic approach were to be found in many European cities and in the United States of America.
By 1920, and in view of Freud’s health deteriorating, a need arose to establish certain “formation criteria”.
It is worth noting that, prior to the Bad Homburg Congress (1925), a Preliminary Conference was held in order to discuss the aspects of formation and the proposal to create an international formation organization aimed at fostering “uniform models”: formation would not be dependant on individual initiatives.
On the contrary, the different countries should create Institutes to that purpose, and their respective rules regarding the formation of analysts should be elaborated in relation to the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Each Member Society should select a Formation Committee, consisting of no more than seven members, and such committees should join efforts to create an International Formation Council.
However, we know the results: what once seemed to help protect the Freudian discovery ultimately found in these uniform models a way of rejecting the Freudian proposal.
Where was Freud’s insistence in treating each case as if it were the first one? (highlighting the specificity of the knowledge appearing in the analysis). Where were the conditions that might allow for finding the beginning, the starting point of a given analysis? (i.e., the transfer function in the singularity of a case-by-case approach). And, where was desire to be found and how was it possible to formalize the work of the so-called patient?
The following criterion was established: “Every analyst should be analyzed”… and we could even add, “supervised”, as well as be provided with theoretical teachings. While intending to provide certain guaranties, this situation, on the other hand, limited the analyst’s title to a ritualized “profession”.
Thus, the analyst’s title not only was granted by “Other” but also meant going through the experience to finally ending up in the conclusion of the analysis, “identified” with the analyst. We may clearly notice, then, what was the position assigned to anyone intending to become an analyst.
The breach opened by the Freudian desire allows for understanding the term “Analyst’s Formation” in two senses of the genitive: On the one hand, from an object’s viewpoint, the formation of the analyst implies the training conditions necessary for an analyst to be formed; on the other hand, from a subject’s viewpoint, it highlights what the analyst contributes to such formation. Therefore, the formation of an analyst implies the difficult task of approaching a key issue both in the practice and in the transmission of psychoanalysis from two different dimensions: as the object and as the agent of formation. And, in my opinion, it is precisely this duality what Lacan was able to read in Freud and keep alive throughout his teachings.
It is a way of highlighting the active position that is always present in any stage of formation: a teaching subject, instead of a learning receptor; an analyzing subject, instead of an analyzed one.
From the dialogues between Lacan and Freud, we may observe the transmission of such an active position: by positioning himself as a reader –not merely a receptor– Lacan read –in fact, interpreted– what was already found in Freud and, at the same time, he produced his own writings.
And these writings were based on logic. The fact that he emphasized the signifier or the ghost, the discourse or the topology, does not imply the rejection of his repeated –although always renewed– proposal, which we received as his teachings and made our own at the cost of reinventing it.
In January 1980, Lacan dissolved the Freudian School of Paris. He finds in this dis-solution a solution for his former proposal, taking advantage of this situation to transmit his teachings again: “According to my Borromean knot, it is enough to cut one of the rings to set the others free, and this is a truth for each one; it is necessary for me to become that in relation to my School (...). I am firm in this decision, since the School would, otherwise, operate contrary to the purposes for which I have created it.”
It is worth mentioning that Lacan both creates and dissolves the “school” for the same reasons: In 1964, he creates the school to take up again the breach opened by Freud, correct any deviations from his doctrine, and take the matters related to the “Analyst’s Formation” and the analyst’s desire to the core of the discussion again, allowing for the so-called analysts to prove their well-based formation; in 1980, he dissolves the school because, otherwise, the school would resist psychoanalysis, thus operating contrary to the purposes for which he had created it.
What had been “rejected” in the school he created? Or, on the contrary, what had been infiltrated and installed in the school so that it was deviating from the very reasons it had been created for?
Was he aware of the effects that his very presence had imposed on the school? Was he no longer a sophist master?
Regardless of the scope of what we could identify as a tergiversation of the School’s orientation, I believe that dissolution is the way Lacan finds to transmit, in act, the place he had reached with his teachings, i.e., a way to show, in act, in order to insist and persist in transmitting, through dissolution, a way of making-letting know right there, with the Real that is at stake.
Lacan’s concern in conceptualizing and articulating the notion of the Real –which is present throughout Lacan’s works and teachings– allows us to observe that, since the creation of his School, he proposes a working modality called “cartel”, aimed at limiting the imaginary effects of the group. However –and this is the key of his invention– the cartel will operate in such a way that, based on an anticipated dissolution, a Real is included, which limits (but does not exclude) and cuts through the unifying tendency of the imaginary.
Dissolution allows for circulation and movement, limits crystallization, and eradicates the illusion that the things already established are operating. And we may add: if what is established is the sense that “everything is operating” –discourse of the Master– then there is a knowledge already known and, therefore, we are faced again with the risk and the threat of bureaucratization. I understand that it is, in fact, the dis-solution of the School that allows for thinking in a solution for the future of psychoanalysis.
Simultaneously to the act of Dissolution, Lacan proposes the “Freudian Cause”, a new proposal where he highlights the value of the letter as a way of achieving an accurate transmission.
As Lacan said in the so-called Seminar of Dissolution:
“With regard to Latin Americans, as they say, they have never seen me or listened to me –unlike those who are here– and that very fact does not prevent them to be Lacanians.
I have transmitted myself in writing over there, and it is said that I put down roots. Anyway, so they believe.
In fact, that is the future. And that is why I am interested in going there and seeing it for myself.
I am interested in observing what happens when my person does not overshadow my teachings.It is possible that my matheme[1] is useful to them”.
“I have transmitted myself in writing over there”: Transmission is possible whenever we are aware that “not everything” can be “symbolized” or imagined. The Real –the impossible– is reached by some letters, remains, and fragments,
by forcing, trying and retrying each time, in order for any type of transmission to occur. Lacan called it “Object A”, instead of a cause, based on which he supported his teachings in an analyzing position, always reminding us that, from such a position, the pass was ceaseless.
Lacan, as an author, highlights the point where his life was reflected in his work, where the opacity of the unfulfilled remains. Thus his writings and his discourse.
Our Experience: The School and the Pass
In the midst of the Argentine military dictatorship, in 1979, a group of enthusiasts created the “Sigmund Freud School of Psychoanalysis of Rosario”. We declared ourselves practitioners of psychoanalysis and decided to create a place of formation, a place of learning and teaching, a place where our practice could be subject to questioning.
Those were difficult times, and the school provided us with a double space: on the one hand, we intended to make it a place for our formation and, on the other hand, it was a way of limiting the prevailing social censorship, since meeting, speaking, and dissenting was prohibited at that time.
Calling it a “School” without even implementing its mechanisms was an indication of our indebtedness towards Lacan’s teachings. And those teachings were marked by what was inevitably lost: Lacan’s presence, his voice, his modulations, the things that allowed for homophonies, and the effects his very person generated. Those of us who called ourselves his readers, read his writings as well as the transcriptions of the recordings of his voice when he gave his seminars –which were, in turn, translated into Spanish. We converted such insufficiency into our singularity.
Etymological Considerations
The term “school” derives from the classic Greek term σχολή (eskholé) and, by intermediation, from the Latin term schola. During the Hellenistic period, this term was used to identify the philosophical schools and, by extension, it adopted its current meaning of “center of studies”, which has been permanently related to teaching.
However, there is another source for this term: curiously, its original meaning in Greek was “leisure”, “quietness”, and “spare time”. Both “leisure” and “spare time” imply a time of retraction, a time for keeping away from daily worries in order to think and meditate “with others”.
The term SKOLE is subsequently used to indicate the place where such leisure activity was carried out –an activity that, for the Greek, was to be performed by free men. From common language, this term then enters the philosophical field as a concept that defines the necessary state to engage in philosophizing.
Notwithstanding this, I would like to point out that the term “sjolé” appears with its opposite term “asjolía”, which –based on a slight sound difference– turns “school” into “lack of school”.
“(…) the interesting fact is that the original term we transcribed (more than translated) into school has an opposite term which we lack, formed with the prefix “a”, thus its meaning being more restricted”[2].
In the same way that the sjolé takes us to the environment of free men’s creative leisure, the asjolía –the lack of school– takes us to the “want” of a school:
We “wanted” a school.
There is no intention of “naturalness” in what a School “does”, and this circumlocution –plus the contribution of the etymological value– allows for establishing that, as regards psychoanalysis, a school cannot be thought of as something permanent. As if it were all about what is always there: like the building.
My hypothesis is that the School is real-ized where something of the teachings and/or the transmission of psychoanalysis is produced and shown. And this situation has had its occurrences, being verified by its effects.
During the early years of the school, we kept our questions open and started to identify the group effects arising from the “recognitions”, which allowed us to work in line with Lacan’s School.
Thus, in a sort of “re-founding”, we took the “October 9th Proposition”, in view of the ups and downs faced by the Freudian School of Paris and the well-known “failure” of the pass. Accepting the Proposition literally implied embracing the logic behind its mechanisms.
Giorgio Agamben reminds us that the history of men is nothing else than the endless “head-to-head confrontation with the mechanisms they have produced themselves, especially and first of all, language”.[3] And these mechanisms should be detached from their possibility of being used, i.e., their possibility of being set in motion.
A school of psychoanalysis is created as a bet, like its mechanisms.
Titles and nominations are operating in our school by being able to be read, since having a mechanism is not the same as stopping our questions regarding the principles of an evident qualification. And this is applicable to all those who have not lost, due to their experience, the always-opened interrogation as regards the teaching and formation of analysts, all those who do not limit themselves to a new “ideal” that mystifies the purpose of analysis.
The School is realized in Act when the mechanisms are not idolized but can be used as available devices so as to give way to the occurrence of a contingency. Because the reason for the desire is contingent –i.e., “it may be or it may be not”– but, when it appears, then it is recorded, and this has consequences.[4]
If the school is a discursive bet, lacking any guarantees that the group will not impose itself on the discourse, will it be able to find itself, to invent itself?
When we decided to start the pass experience, we were reminded of Lacan’s opinion about it: “Do as I do: don’t imitate me”, so from the very beginning we thought about the formation of the panel of judges in a different way than the pass panel of judges had been selected in Lacan’s school. This invention –if we can think of it as such–, which consisted in forming the panels of judges with AEs invited from the Buenos Aires Freudian School and the Argentine Freudian School, allowed us not only to bring fresh air to the “endogamic” aspect present in any institution, but also to include, in act, some aspects of the subject’s exile in language, by including others that came from other mechanisms, and used other transfers, and had other ways of conceptualizing the bet, other “lalangues”.
Today, the four schools operating in Argentina –which all follow the Convergence Movement– have adopted this “mixed” way of forming their cartels/pass panels of judges and, as a result, we have made a true rich discovery in such operation.
What can we learn from this school experience and its mechanisms regarding the subject matter of this paper?
There is an evident fact: There is writing in the word. The difference between what is said and what is written appears in the analytic experience, since there is a fundamental misunderstanding that directs the word towards a mistaken place and heads –as a result of the structure– to the error that constitutes it. We could say that it is what the language does to the subject, the PARLÊTRE (or speaking-being): since it was spoken, then it is. The subject, in his/her analyzing position, discovers what he/she owes to “lalangue” that constitutes him/herself and, as a result of the analytic act, the subject finds a cap, a limit, a border.However, also in an analyzing position, the subject reaches the letter that allows for breaking up “lalangue”, thus showing, in act, the great achievement of calligraphy.
There is writing in the word, and also a limit. In other words, the word includes a tension –a “tone”– that makes it possible to hear the “unheard-of” aspect carried by the word. The failure of truth in saying the Real results in a hollow knowledge, another writing that touches and modifies language, that moves, stretches and pluralizes language.
The subject, noticing the signifying articulation that determines him/her, allows for the existence of singularity, which relies on the homophony of the French term “l’homme”: “man” is written “HOMME” but is heard of as “LOM”. This man, in his singularity, produces a writing that not only derives from the signifier but also sustains an experience in act, where subject and object are formed and transformed through each other, what we call a “style”.