BERLIN : Discussion Zvi Lothane.

Transcription

1 1 BERLIN : Discussion Zvi Lothane. Patrick MILLER Dear Zvi, You seem to be in a permanent internal dialogue with S. Freud, like it were the native ground of your analytic listening. Shall I dare use a word which came to my mind as I was reading your text : «refreshing». And as I am writing this word I free-associate on a contemporary computer expression : click on the «refresh» button. In other words : update your webpage, you may find news data emerging from the boundless network. In our contemporary analytic world, where so many authors leave Freud on the side of the road as «passé», your presentation means : I can work analytically nowadays with Freud s legacy and without alluding to much of the post-freudian theorising. For you freudian technique seems to be, still, up to clinical data. Up to data. The Ratman asked Freud to be dispensed of having to narrate what was on his mind about the rat torture. Freud s answer, referring to the grounds of his method, was that he could not dispense his patient from what he had no power on. He, the inventor of psychoanalysis,was also subjected to the laws of functionning of psychic reality. In saying so, he was telling his patient about the significant difference between the projective cruel omnipotent figure of the Captain and the scientific thinking of the analyst. He was linking together the scientific with the technical and ethical aspects of analysis. He also told his patient something very important about symmetry and disymmetry in the analytic work between patient and analyst. Symmetry : we are both human beings and, as such, our minds are subjected to the same rules of psychic functionning. Analytic listening and understanding is not about a narcissistic omnipotent conception of truth and interpretation. It has to do with accepting to follow the paths of free-association which are not so free (and this is a fertile paradox) because they are determined by organizing rules, hence they

2 2 imply giving up the illusion of «free will». Free-association, by not being so free, leads us to having to deal with reality-testing versus the pleasure principle. That is : if we think that our mind and subjectivity can be used as a scientific tool in the analytic work. In free-association work there is an inter-dependance between analyst and analysand : they depend on each other for the dynamics of the cure, constantly transforming procedure into process. They draw on the resonances between each other s subjective inner worlds, with the specifics of their individual histories. I think this is what you call the reciprocal aspect of free-association. But these subjective resonances always run the risk of becoming an endless hall of mirrors, leading to mutual narcissistic satisfaction and endless analysis. When I say «mutual» I have Ferenczi in the back of my mind, and his idea of a possible mutuality in the analytic process, quite different I assume from what you are tackling with the notion of reciprocity. And here lies the disymmetry : it is the analyst s task and responsibility to bring this reciprocal interchange of associations to a new level of understanding through interpretation. This new level of understanding corresponding to a change in the organisation of ego functions. This remark to introduce to the rich complexity of having to listen with reference at the same time to the first and the second topography. Pre-conscious working through is certainly the soil of creativity in analytic work between patient and analyst. It is the essential motor of psychic change. But in order to confirm and stabilise the change and the transformation I think it is important that the analyst know how to use the dialectics between his preconscious working-through and his secondary thought processes and ego functions. And this may be the specificity of free-hovering attention, which cannot be equated with free-association. Free hovering attention is certainly a pre-condition for a patient s free-associations to become analytically effective. The dialectics between free-association and freefloating attention (as we call it in France) form a kind of co-constructed object with a life of its own. Free-hovering attention also implies self-observation like freeassociation, and is thus caught in the same kind of paradox. It is not a permanent

3 3 state of mind, it fluctuates considerably during the session, between two extremes (which are rarely met as such) : clear-cut conscious secondary thought processes, closer to perception, and, due to formal regression, dream-like states, closer to hypnoïd states or more hallucinatory modes of functionning. There is an aspect of self-hypnosis in the deliberate attempt, by the analyst, to reach a certain kind of modified awareness favouring free-hovering attention. The fluctuations of attention during the session are also a signal, or rather a touchstone, of the dynamics of patient and analyst resistances. Let me just note, in passing, that the notion of free-hovering attention is a much later occurrence in Freud s writings (1912) than free-association, already present in the pre-analytic papers of the 1890 s. Let me just form the hypothesis that freeassociation is a methodological tool forewarning of the first topography, and congruent with it, whereas free-hovering attention would already announce the technical difficulties leading to the remodelling of theory by Freud, i.e the second topography. Free-hovering attention deals with the modification of ego boundaries during the analytic work, and not only with the repression of content. Let me now focus on some of your clinical material. First I would like to stress how much you convey, in such short vignettes, of the «ambiance» and innerworld of both patients, both with their somehow kafkaiesque Umwelt. Also underline the fact that they don t seem to belong to the (more and more elusive) category of «classical» neurotic patients for couch analysis. The man sounds at times as if he might be, not simply paranoid but paranoiac, and the woman somewhere between neurosis and paranoia of destiny. However your method and technique follow freudian guidelines with elaborative results. Let us first examine repetition : she is repeating for the nth time the same complaints about «external» reality. You are listening, once more. After nine years no great change in that respect. You first notice an affect : boredom. We may suppose that this conscious perception may be a counter-cathexis of more agressive feelings and thoughts. So we are typically confronted with conscious and pre-conscious aspects of countertransference.

4 4 In order to perceive your boredom you have come out of a slightly regressed state of mind where you were experiencing something without really being aware of it. Fluctuation from experiencing to conscious thinking. And an implicit question : why am I bored? How does this relate to the material? Why do I allow myself to be bored and reflect about it now, in this session? Question that cannot be answered immediately, or only in the most general, least specific way. Following the analytic method, evenly suspended attention, you don t want to jump to the conclusion. Now the enactment : In your previous state of regression you were doing something : movements in your fingers. Is it a resistance, an acting out or an enactment? You become aware of the movements and, within the context of boredom awareness, you give them a meaning : the motor image is associated to a mental visual image : «a spider in my mind». The enactment is a form of pre-conscious thinking in action. The meaning of the mental scene emerges as you go from motion to image and to thinking. Your mind emerges from the paralysing spider web. I can imagine that a certain kind of broadening takes place in your mind, which enables you to enrich your perception of certain aspects of your countertransference, of your patient s transference and of her unconscious fantasies which have impaired her life. A poisonous black widow stinging her analyst s mind, crippling her whole family and exciting daddy into eroticized temper tantrums. You decide (consciously or pre-consciously) not to interpret. But simply to communicate your own association in image. What fell into your mind (Einfälle) while listening. Actually the image has not just «fallen» from the sky. It is most likely the elaborative result of a long working through, and as such, a «trouvaille». What you are communicating to your patient, as an interpretation, is the manifest content of a dream you had about her, in that «state of reverie peculiar to the analytic setting.» After the sequence (in the analyst) : repetition working through enactment thinking interpretation, the patient can remember. Your association, as a result of a work in common, unravels the complex network of her memories. Somehow the spider, is the «fruit» of your work together. The fact that you were able to dream

5 5 and think about her as a spider, has a re-assuring effect, in the best sense of the term : she may now feel : my being a spider is thinkable, and it is not deadly because my analyst s mind is still creative, I have not crippled him. With these last remarks I think that I am slightly moving away from a strictly freudian perspective, into a way of thinking which owes a great deal to Klein, Winnicott and Bion. But so do you, sometimes. Are you aware of it?