DEPRESSION, SIGN OF THE TIMES?

ON THE REAL IN CLINICAL WORK

Els Van Compernolle

Introduction

Depression is omnipresent in contemporary clinical praxis. With

statistics showing an enormous increase in the number of depressions in
the last decades, depression is diagnosed as a sign of the times,
inextricably bound u p with the fate of the post-modern subject.
Simultaneously, another change or shift is taking place: the so-called
classical symptoms, with a psychosexual aetiology, seem to have
disappeared (the disappearance of classical hysteria being a well-known
example); instead, 'new symptoms' are emerging, with borderline, self-
mutilation, eating disorders, aggressive and sexual acting out, etc...
operating as new labels. It is as if the real is gaining ground on the
symbolic in present-day psychopathology.
In this paper, I discuss whether these two parallel trends are linked
through a common cause, meaning that there is an underlying structural
reason. My central thesis is that what we are seeing today in the high
prevalence of depression is an anxiety-neurotic depression. By this I mean a
form of depression functioning as a limit of the psychosexual or symbolic
efficacy, situated at the border between the Real of puissance (the Other of
the body) and the symbolic play of signifiers (the Other of language). I
will argue, firstly, that depression can be phenomenologically present in
the different clinical structures (that there's the possibility of a psychotic,
perverse and neurotic way of being depressive), and secondly, that
different modalities of depression in one and the same structure can occur,
by opposing the anxiety-neurotic depression to the 'classical depression'
(as can appear in the transference situation). Here, I will confine myself
explicitly to the neurotic structure.

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 To begin, I will situate this discussion by elaborating the conceptual
framework underlying these ideas. I will make a distinction between an
actual-neurotic problematic (which is where Freud placed anxiety-
neurosis) and a psycho-neurotic problematic (such as hysteria). Then, I'll
move on to a discussion of the anxiety-neurotic depression, finding
supporting arguments not only in Freud, but also in contemporary clinical
praxis. Finally, I will make an explicit connection with conditions in
present-day society and the changed position of the Other in an attempt to
account for the high prevalence nowadays of this variant of depression.

Psychoneurosis versus anxiety-neurosis; conflict and defence versus

jouissance

We'll start with the general framework. For Freud, sexuality is

fundamentally double-sided. On one side is the somatic sexuality, a sexual
tension, functioning as an endogenous source of excitation. He calls this
the quantitative factor in instinctual life and conceptualises the drive as a
border-concept between the somatic and the psychic: 'the concept of
instinct is thus one of those lying on the frontier between the mental and
the physical'. 1 The somatic excitation in itself is non-psychical, which
means that it cannot completely be represented or put into words. 2 Freud
assumes, in his first theory of anxiety, that somatic sexuality
spontaneously and continuously transforms into anxiety when it is not
bound by the psychical representation. Lacan calls this part the Real, or
the Real of puissance. Anxiety is the unpleasurable experience of the Real
of puissance, which escapes representation.
On the other side, we have psychosexuality. This is the unconscious
and its accompanying pleasure principle. For Lacan, this is the

1
S. Freud. (1905) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S.E., VII, p.168.
2
S. Freud (1915) Repression. S.E., XTV, p.152: 'Clinical observation now obliges us to
divide up what we have hitherto regarded as a single entity; for it shows us that besides
the idea [Vorstellung, of the instinct/drive], some other element representing the instinct
has to be taken into account.

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symbolico-imaginary, with the phallus as its central signifier. Here the
entire representational/ signifying system functions as a means for the
subject to gain control, that is, the processing and elaborating of the
somatic sexuality by way of representation.
The identification with the signifiers of the Other, the elaboration of
this psychosexual dimension as a way of mastering the Real, forms the
nucleus of the constitution of the subject. We can say without too much
simplification that the construction of the subject is fundamentally a
process of absorbing signifiers, which takes place in accordance with the
desire of the Other. A fundamental Lacanian concept here is the ego-ideal,
denoted by Lacan with the matheme I(O). The ego-ideal is the point of
reference in the construction of the subject, the point of symbolic
identification. It denotes the lack in the Other as it is interpreted by the
subject. By identifying with its own interpretation of the lack of the
Other, the subject positions itself vis-a-vis the lack in the Other. This is
the fundamental fantasy, the subject's way of formulating or devising his
relation to the Other. In this way, the subject's identity is constructed, by
way of an alienation in the signifiers of the Other.
These two sides of sexuality form the basis of the distinction Freud
develops between two categories of psychopathology: the psychoneuroses
on the one hand and the actual neuroses on the other hand. In the
psychoneuroses, the central aetiological factor is situated in the field of
psychosexuality (conflict and defence), while in actual neuroses it is the
lack of representations for the Real that plays an essential role.
The origin of what Freud calls the Abwehr-Neuropsy chosen, or
psycho-neuroses, is situated in what I have described as the psycho-
symbolic elaboration of sexuality, whereby the subject takes its place
within the chain of signifiers in accordance with the Other's desire and in
relation to his lack. The psychoneuroses and associated symptoms can be
understood in this context. The central notions are conflict, regarding
sexuality and desire, and defence against conflict. The prototype of the
psychoneurosis is hysteria, whose conversion symptoms are to be read as
the intersections of conflicting desires.

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 It is within this psychoneurotic category that we can understand
depression as it is classically conceptualised. Here, depression boils
down to a tumbling out of the fundamental fantasy, that is, a falling out of
the psycho-symbolic elaboration by which the subject constructed his
identity in accordance with the Other's desire. In classical depression, we
can say the subject falls out of the desire of the Other.
On the other hand, Freud distinguishes the actual neuroses,
Aktualneurosen. Their origin is also sexual, but in a completely different
way. Here, it is the somatic-sexual part that is problematic, or, to p u t it
more accurately: that remains problematic.
The typical characteristic of the actual neuroses is the absence of a
symptomatic superstructure and its associated phantasmatic development
with regards to sexuality. Hence, the attempt to master the somatic-
sexual part has failed. In the actual neuroses, the subject has been unable
to produce signifiers for what is Real in sexuality. Symptoms are limited
to somatic phenomena, possessing no additional meaning. The accent is
rather on anxiety and the somatic equivalents of anxiety. 3
The prototype of the actual neurosis is the anxiety-neurosis .4
According to Freud, the aetiological ground of anxiety-neurosis and, to a
greater extent, of actual neurotic psychopathology is something real and
actual. More specifically, the somatic-sexual factor functions as an
endogenous source of excitation, which cannot sufficiently be p u t into
representations or ideas and be mastered thereby. Instead of a psychical
elaboration of this somatic sexuality, a direct transformation of the accumulated
tension in anxiety takes place. This is the central mechanism of anxiety-
neurosis. 5 To put this in Lacanian terms: the Real of puissance is not

3
J. M. Masson. The Complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess. 1887-1904.
Cambridge-London, the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985. pp. 39-44 &
pp.78-83.
4
S. Freud. (1895). On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia
under the Description 'Anxiety-Neurosis'. S.E., III, pp.85-115.
5
P. Verhaeghe. Over normaliteit en andere ajwijkingen. Klinische psychodiagnostiek in termen
van verhoudingen. Leuven, Acco, 2002, (in Press).

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bound by the phallic signifier and so it produces anxiety. My discussion
of anxiety-neurotic depression is closely linked to this Lacanian thesis.

Depression within the construction of the subject and anxiety-neurotic

depression

With this general overview in hand, we can now move on to the

topic of depression. My central thesis concerns the existence of an anxiety-
neurotic depression equivalent to the anxiety that dominates the original picture
of anxiety-neurosis; here, anxiety is replaced by depression.

Depression in the construction of the subject: dis-identification

Depression is not usually conceptualised in the way I just described

it. Traditionally, depression is elaborated in psychoneurotic terms which,
as we just saw, situates it explicitly within the process of subject-
formation. Depression is regarded as a shaking of the fundamental
fantasy, accentuated by a confrontation with the lack in the Other.
Clinically, this can be determined in the onset of depression: depression
breaks out at the moment that the subject thinks he or she no longer fulfils
the desire of the Other and thus falls out of his fundamental fantasy,
precisely, into nothing. This is a typical moment of loss of identification.
The subject loses himself at the moment he feels that the Other no longer
desires him and directs its desire elsewhere. The implication is that the
ego-ideal fails as the central point of reference for the constitution of the
subject. Depression refers here to that situation where the subject has
fallen out of the process of alienation-separation and defines itself as
'nothing' in relation to the Other ('I do not desire' and 'I am not desired'). 6
In most cases, depression functions as a moment of transition,
without fundamental changes in the relation of the subject to the lack of
the Other: the desire of the Other becomes filled in again, after a period of
mourning, but the incarnation of the ego-ideal, I(O), is maintained.

6 ibid.

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Depression as an equivalent of anxiety in anxiety-neurosis

In opposition to, or rather, at the edge of these psychoneurotic

forms of depression, we can now understand another modality of
'depression' that functions as a limit to the Symbolic and its accompanying
alienation, and in which puissance plays a pronounced role: the anxiety-
neurotic depression. This variant is not to be conceived in terms of a
shaking of the fundamental fantasy at a certain point in the constitution of
the subject, but rather should be understood as an immediate consequence
of the lacking of a fantasmatic development, a failure of the psychical
element or the psychoneurotic elaboration.
The central idea is that this depression functions as an equivalent for
the anxiety that normally dominates the picture of anxiety-neurosis, depression
taking the place of anxiety. In contrast to the psychosymbolic aetiology,
where depression was conceived as occurring within the constitution of
the subject, here we have the actual, real aetiology of the anxiety-neurosis
(at the limit of the chain of signifiers). 7 We find support for this in Freud's
theoretical elaborations and clinical praxis, and in the contemporary clinic.

The Freudian argument

Already in his earliest writings, Freud pointed out the close

relationship between anxiety-neurosis, depression, and hysteria. 8 Firstly,
in his letters to Fliess in the early 1890's, he considers a periodic light
depression as a possible form of anxiety-neurosis. In Draft A of his letters
to Fliess, he says: 'Periodic depression is a form of anxiety neurosis, which

7
L. Jonckheere. 'Latent Freudian Thoughts towards a Theory of Neurotic Depression: Part One
- The Anxiety-neurotic Depression' in The Letter, 13,1998. pp. 1-25; L. Jonckheere. 'Latent
Freudian Thoughts towards a Theory of Neurotic Depression: Fart Two: A Purely Hysterical
Depression' in The Letter, 13,1998. pp.26-38.
8
See especially L. Jonckheere. op. cit. The Letter, (13), 1998. pp.1-25.

217
otherwise manifests itself in phobias and anxiety attacks'.9 Secondly, in
his discussion of psychosomatics, Freud conceives of anxiety neurosis
(with its fundamental depressive affect) as a structural or real limit of
hysteria.
In 1890, he discusses a kind of fundamental depressive affect in
hysteria that cannot be expressed in normal body language or find its way
out of the body by way of the symbolic body language. Instead, it
remains in the body to which it causes damage in the form of
psychosomatic phenomena. Freud regards these phenomena as the
reaction of the body to what he calls persistent affective states of a
depressive nature, such as worry and grief.10 Unlike conversion
symptoms, these affects do not impair the bodily functions by way of the
signifying effect, but instead they affect the organic body in an immediate
way. These depressive affects behind psychosomatic phenomena can be
considered the sign of something real: the Real of puissance, which escapes
the signifier of the phallus. Here Freud presents an image of the self-
destroying 'auto-puissance* of the body. Beyond a certain limit, puissance
no longer finds a way out of the body by way of the phallic signifiers that
enable representations to be brought into a displaced and condensed
relation with the supposed knowledge of an assumed Big Other.11
Thirdly, in Freud's Studies On Hysteria, we see how Freud treats the
relationship between conversion, anxiety-neurotic depression and the
efficacy of the Symbolic.12 In the background, there is constantly the
problem of the relationship or even the proportion between the somatic
symptoms of conversion with their psychic aetiology on the one hand, and
the psychical symptoms of anxiety-neurotic depression with its somatic

9
J. M. Masson. (1985). op.cit., p.38.
10
S. Freud. (1890). Psychical (or Mental) Treatment. S.E., VII, p.287. 'Persistent affective
states of a distressing or 'depressive' nature (as they are called), such as sorrow, worry or
grief, reduce the state of nourishment of the whole body, cause the hair to turn white, the
fat to disappear and the walls of the blood-vessels to undergo morbid changes'.
11
L. Jonckheere. (1998). op.cit., pp.12-13.
12
J. Breuer&S. Freud. (1893-1895). Studies on hysteria. S.E., II, pp.1-309.

218
aetiology on the other. In his early case studies, conversion and
depression seem to be inversely proportional.
For instance, with the case of Elisabeth von R., Freud shows that
the more conversion dominates the picture of hysteria, the more the
psychical depression disappears behind 'la belle indifference', which can be
described as a paradoxical puissance in suffering. In the case of Emmy
von N., however, we see the other side coming to the fore. Conversion
recedes to the background, while the depressive mood of anxiety-neurosis
shines increasingly through. It is in respect of this that Emmy von N. has
been called the patroness of the modern hysteric™ I'll clarify this remark in a
moment. Let us just note for the present that already in his earliest works
Freud is investigating the connection between depression as a direct
transformation of the Real of puissance, and its symbolic elaboration or
mastery through the pleasure principle in the hysterical symptoms.

Contemporary clinical praxis

Arguments for this modality of depression are also available in

contemporary clinical praxis. First of all, both in research and in clinical
praxis, we find a clear relation between panic disorders and depression.
Research indicates a very high (44%) correlation between these two. 14
Furthermore, the diagnosis panic disorder is becoming increasingly
popular. We can see very easily that this disorder, characterized by
periods of intense anxiety, with somatic equivalents of anxiety and lack of
psychical elaboration, can be redefined as the modern version of the
ancient anxiety-neurosis. Once we have recognized this, it becomes easy
to understand that the high correlation found between panic disorders
and depression, in fact, constitutes a confirmation of the relationship
between anxiety neurosis and depression.

13
L. Jonckheere. (1998). op.cit, pp.19-20.
14
G. A. Clum & D. Pendrey. 'Depression Symptomatology as a Nonrequisite for Successful
Treatment of Panic with Antidepressant Medication' in Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 1(4), 1987.
pp.337-344.

219
 Simultaneously, the present day clinic is characterized by another
shift that seems to offers support for the thesis that anxiety-neurotic
depression is (partly) responsible for the high prevalence of depression in
our society. The so-called classical symptoms with psychosexual
aetiology seem to have disappeared (the disappearance of hysteria from
contemporary psychiatric praxis is a well-known example); instead 'new
symptoms' emerge, and new labels and disorders (borderline personality
organisation, self-mutilation, aggressive and sexual acting out, poly-
addiction, anorexia, bulimia etc.), make us forget the previous ones. This
seems to indicate a gradual atrophy or impoverishment of the symbolic
dimension, with the Real gaining ground in the picture of present-day
psychopathology. Demoulin speaks of 'une clinique de la puissance egaree\
of puissance running riot, untamable by the Symbolic. 15
Is this, then, the new form of hysteria? Increasingly Real, puissance
in the symptomatology, with two forms pushing to the forefront: anxiety-
neurotic depression (beyond the language of conversion, as seen for
instance in Emmy von N.) and the systematic acting out of the
borderline? 16 If this is indeed the case then there must be an underlying
reason. If these findings (the increase in depression and the increasing
share of the Real in clinical praxis) indicate an increasing 'puissance1 or a
'drifting' puissance, what is the cause of this? In the following concluding
section, I will suggest that it has to do with the changed position of the Big
Other in contemporary society.

15
C. Demoulin. 'De la pratique lacanienne: ethique, technique et clinique face au malaise du
desir aujourd'huV in Psychoanalytische Perspektieven, 45, 2001. pp.9-17.
16
My attention has been drawn to this possibility through a number of sources,
principally by Lieven Jonckheere in a personal communication; also in: R. Harari. Lacaris
Seminar on 'Anxiety': an Introduction. New York, Other Press, 2001, and of course J. Lacan.
he Seminaire. Livre X. VAngoisse, 1962-63, session of December 19th 1962. Unpublished.

220
Structural cause: the sadness of the post-modern subject?

As was mentioned above, depression is often diagnosed as a sign of

the times.17 Moreover, in psychoanalytic discourse, the so-called 'new
clinic', as I just described it, is also related to the malaise of our present-
day society. What is accentuated as characteristic of this era is the decay
of patriarchy, which as many commentators have noted has been eroded
by the discourses of science and democracy, and the reversal of the
discourse of the master by the discourse of capitalism.18 The signifier of
the Name-of-the-Father has fallen into discredit, and the traditional
institutions which gave sense to the Real, have fallen away. This era of
the so-called declin du pere, is the era of the non-existence of the Big Other,
'L'Autre qui n*existe pas...[.19

17
E. Roudinesco. Pourquoi la psychanalyse? Paris, Flammarion, 1999.
18
C. Demoulin. 'Enjeux de la theorie lacanienne' in Psychoanalytische Perspektieven, 46, 2001.
pp.7-18. E. Laurent, and J.-A. Miller. VAutre qui n'existe pas et ses comites d'ethique. (1996-
1997). Unpublished, except for the meeting of the 20th November 1996, in: La Cause
Freudienne, 35,1997. pp.3-20.
19
The inexistence of the Other, does not have the same meaning as the expression that
God is dead. The death of God, comparable to the death of the Father, only confirms the
authority of God/father and belongs to the same era as the 'empire' of the Name-of-the-
Father, which, at the least, is the signifier that the Other exists - the era of Freud. Lacan
wanted to put an end to this: S(0), les Non-dupes errent, no longer the victim of the
existence of the Other. In this era, the sense of the Real has come into question. It is not
a crisis of knowledge, but a crisis of the Real. Up until now, the discourse of science has
fixed the sense of the Real for our society, and it was by departing from that fixation of
the Real that Freud was able to discover the unconscious. Nowadays, there's a trend
towards a dissolution of that fixation of the Real, to the point where the question 'what is
the Real?' only gives rise to contradictory, inconsistent, insecure answers. See the session
of November 20th 1996 from E. Laurent, and J.-A. Miller. Op.cit.

221
 This modification of the function/position of the Big Other has
clear repercussions for the ego-ideal and, therefore, also for the subject.
We can consider this modification as the shift from I(O) to 1(0).
As we saw before, the ego-ideal is a central point of reference in the
constitution of the subject. It refers to the primal identification, the point
of symbolic identification, linked to the Other and dependent upon the
Other. This primal identification functions as a substitute or a filling for
the gap or split of the barred subject and as a starting point for the
construction of the subject. The Other's task is to support this
identification by being a consistent, existing Other. So the ego-ideal is
based on the premise that the Other exists.
What are the vicissitudes of identification when the Other is
inconsistent, when this inconsistence/ inexistence extends to the level of
identification: I(0)? 20
Verhaeghe calls this a variant of the traditional Oedipus complex,
and one which is more and more frequently met with in our era precisely
because of the decay of traditional institutions and the discrediting of the
signifier of the Name-of-the-Father in our culture. 21 Something is going
wrong in the primordial identification with the grounding symbolic
function, that is, with the father as its main representative, which is the
anchorage of the sense of community and identity. 'The macro-social
Oedipus complex has gone through an evolution', he asserts, and in its
wake, so has the individual Oedipus complex.
This lack of anchorage for a sense of community and identity places
the subject in another position vis-a-vis the Real of puissance. As the
reference to the ego-ideal disappears, the object little a, the real of
puissance, gains ground and the function of *plus-de-puirl is increased: I <a.
Already in Television Lacan is predicting this: ]la precarite de notre mode [de

20
ibid., sessions of November 27th and of December 4 th 1996.
21
P. Verhaeghe. 'Borderline, een gewichtige zaak' in Psychoanalytische Perspektieven, 18,1993.
pp.99-115; P. Verhaeghe. Love in a Time of Loneliness: Three Essays on Drives and Desires.
New York, Other Press, 1999.

222
puissance], qui desormais ne se situe que du plus-de-jouir.22 In the era of the
inexistence of the Other, our mode of puissance is no longer guaranteed by
the collectivity of the modus of puissance, fixated, organised by the ideal,
with its emphasis on the negation of puissance. This makes it precarious.
Lacan's thesis is that it is the plus-de-puir, the residue of puissance that
cannot be caught by castration, that has the privilege of situating
contemporary puissance. 'Notre puissance ne se situe plus de Videal, il se
22
situe du plus-de-puir?' '
The major effect of this evolution is the fact that protection against
the Real is no longer guaranteed. And this returns in the shape that the
symptoms have nowadays:

After all, every symptom can be conceptualised as

having a double structure: an invariable nucleus and a
variable part. The invariable nucleus is the core of puissance
(a), the part of the symptom, attached to the drive. The
variable part has everything to do with the inscription of the
symptom in the field of the Other, its dependence upon the
discourse of the Other, and as this changes, so does the
formal envelop of the symptom. The core of puissance
however remains the same. With the decay of the ego-ideal,
the latter will come to the forefront.24

This framework perhaps offers a possible explanation for the increasing

number of depressions and the increasing contribution of the real in
present-day psychopathology.
However, w e might also well ask whether psychoanalysis is not
somehow at fault here? We could ask ourselves whether it is really
necessary to turn to macro-social changes for an explanation. Are the

22
J. Lacan. Television. Paris, Seuil, 1973. p.54. 'the precariousness of our mode [of
jouissance], which from now on takes its bearings from a phts-de-jouif. (My translation).
23
E. Laurent, and J.-A. Miller. Op.cit, session of May 14th 1997.
24
ibid, session of May 21 th 1997.

223
'noted' shifts (in culture, in symptomatology) really fundamental changes
with respect to a hundred years ago? Some of Freud's case studies in
Studies on Hysteria could probably be rediagnosed, retroactively, as
borderlines or as depressive. 'Real' phenomena were certainly present
then too. Thinking along these lines, we could reframe the recent trend in
psychodiagnostics as an artefact of a certain way of handling
psychoanalysis: when there's no attention given to the symbolical
dimension in symptoms and in the speech of the subject, the subject is
driven towards a limit of psycho-symbolic efficacy. Acting out and real
phenomena can then be regarded as a direct consequence of the negating
of the symbolical dimension by the analyst!
Dangerous ground! We will not go any further into this in the
present paper, other than to state that these two factors, that is, the decay
of the Big Other and the effect of a certain way of handling
psychoanalysis, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. 25

Address for correspondence: Ghent University

Dept. of Psychoanalysis and
Clinical Consulting
H. Dunantlaan 2
B-9000 Gent
Belgium

email: EIs.VanCompernolle@rug.ac.be

25
We leave unanswered the questions raised in this final paragraph. For a more thorough
discussion of this topic, see L. Jonckheere. 'Borderline' in: Psychoanalytische Perspektieven,
18,1993. p p . 81-98.

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 FREUD'S CLINICAL CATEGORY OF 'ACTUAL NEUROSES':
THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED *

Ann De Rick

Introduction

Over the past decade, our society has had to confront the so-called
'new illnesses of the soul'. More and more, clinicians are confronted with
pathologies that do not seem to fit into the three major Freudo-Lacanian
diagnostic categories of neurosis, psychosis and perversion. These
pathologies are borderline personality disorders, posttraumatic stress
disorders, substance abuse, self-mutilation, attention deficit hyperactive
disorder, psychosomatic phenomena, etc. Since psychoanalytic treatment
is worked out only for the three categories mentioned earlier, especially
neurosis, any attempt to treat the new patients in the same way is doomed
to fail.
Based on literature studies on these new pathologies, it can be
hypothesised that they can be classified under the nosographic label Freud
called actual neurosis. In order to confirm this hypothesis, we'll start with a
discussion of actual neurosis as it was described by Freud. Next we will
shed light on this theory from a Lacanian point of view, with special
reference to Lacan's view on the emergence of the subject. Then, we will
compare the findings of the literature with our theoretical notions. Finally
we'll discuss some implications for treatment.

The return of the repressed

At the beginning of his career as a psychiatrist, Freud introduced a

* This article is the text of a lecture given at the international symposium of

psychoanalysis organized by the Sichuan University Department of Philosophy and
Sichuan University Institute of Psychology. April 15-18, Chengdu, P.R. China.

120
primary diagnostic categorisation into the clinical field. He distinguished
two main categories: the actual neuroses and the psychoneuroses.
Originally, the actual neuroses concerned neurasthenia and anxiety
neurosis, Freud adding hypochondria to this list later on. The
psychoneuroses concerned hysteria, obsessional neuroses and paranoia.
In time, these psychoneuroses were expanded to include the categories of
psychoses and perversions. The latter category modified the clinical
differentiations commonly used in psychoanalytical theory and practice
today. Soon after he formulated the nosographic label of actual neurosis,
it disappeared from Freud's work. Freud and many after him focused
mainly on the psychoneuroses. Even in Lacan's work w e do not find
anything at all about the actual neuroses. The reason for this repression
lies in the fact that they fail to meet one of the main criteria for
psychoanalytic treatment, which is the occurrence of an emotional tie
connecting the patient to the analyst. Today it seems we are confronted
with the return of the repressed.
When examining the literature published on the new pathologies,
we can conclude that they have three things in common: firstly, in most
cases the aetiology is situated in a disturbed relationship with primary
caregivers. Secondly, the symptoms have a particular relationship with the
body in the sense that there is a strong tendency towards somatization.
Thirdly, the people who suffer from these pathologies show problematic
interpersonal relationships such as ambivalence, withdrawal, and social
isolation. Furthermore, these social interactions influence the therapeutic
alliance in a specific way. Because of these shared features, they often
coincide with each other. As a consequence, clinicians are confronted with
the problem of 'multiple' diagnosis. We'll discuss these three issues in
more detail with regard to a Lacanian revision of Freud's category of
actual neurosis.

The actual neuroses as a Freudian nosographic label

In order to understand the actual neuroses, we have to distinguish

121
them from the psychoneuroses. This distinction is situated at the level of
the aetiology as well as symptomatology. With regard to aetiology,
consider the comparison Freud made between anxiety neurosis and
hysteria. 1 In both cases there is an accumulation of excitation and a
psychic inability to master this excitation. As a result, sexual tension is
deflected from the psychical field - a tension which would otherwise have
made itself felt as libido. There is not the elaboration of the starting point
through the mind that we can observe in obsessional neurosis and phobia.
Instead, there is a restructuring of the tension through the body. So far,
there does not seem to be any difference in the two categories of actual
neurosis and psychoneurosis. The distinction is to be found in the starting
point itself, particularly in the nature of the excitation. In the case of the
actual neuroses this excitation is of a somatic nature only: Freud calls it a
somatic sexual excitation. In the case of hysteria, the excitation is
psychological, which means that it is provoked by a conflict. Later, Freud
calls this kind of excitation libido.
To put it briefly, the distinction between actual neurosis and
psychoneurosis has everything to do with the distinction between soma
and psyche, and the drive as a concept on the border between them. This
drive insists on being connected to a representation and becoming libido:
that is, it insists on being shifted into a psychical stimulus. Where this
process is lacking, as is the case in actual neurosis, the tension is changed
into anxiety and somatic equivalents of anxiety, instead of being
psychologically processed. In the psychoneuroses a connection with
representation has already happened, but the latter enters into a
contradiction with another representation, which causes a 'psychological'
tension instead.
It should be noted that the two categories are not independent
entities. Freud emphasised that actual neurosis rarely appears on its own.
More often than not, there is a dialectal intermixture of actual neurosis
and psychoneurosis. The distinction is a dialectal one, in the sense that
1
S. Freud (1895). On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular SyndromefromNeurasthenia,
Under the Description 'Anxiety Neurosis,' S.E. Ill, pp. 87-115.

122
almost every actual neurosis tends to evolve into a psychoneurosis, and
that every psychoneurosis can regress to an actual neurosis. The latter is
especially clear in analytic practice. Every analysis of a psychoneurosis
leads to a confrontation with this starting point. In The Interpretation of
Dreams, Freud calls this the navel of the dream: Lacan emphasizes the Real
kernel of every symptomatic formation. The former evokes the idea of
development. The evolution from actual neurosis to psychoneurosis
indicates that the development of the psychical apparatus is layered. First,
there is a primal repression, and then an 'after repression'. The actual
neuroses can be situated at the level of primal repression, with the border
presentation as primary symbol and thus primary symptom. The
psychoneuroses go much further than this, and concern 'after-repressions,'
which can be considered a way of psychological processing. It may be
clear that the evolution from actual neurosis to psychoneurosis has
everything to do with what Freud calls the development of the ego, which
Lacan revises in terms of 'the becoming of the subject'. The long and the
short of it is that this evolution implies the process of identity formation.
After all, the starting point of this formation is situated in the split
between soma and psyche: in other words, it is situated at the level of the
dialectic opposition between the inside world and the outside world.
For Freud, the primary, primitive mechanisms at work here are
incorporation and expulsion. The pleasure that comes from the outside
world is taken in and stays inside, while what is unpleasurable is expelled.
The latter can only become unpleasant after being taken in and confronted
with other parts. Once these primitive mechanisms are associated with
language, we can speak of an identification with pleasurable
representations and a repression of unpleasurable ones. From a Lacanian
point of view, w e can speak of alienation and separation. Primary
alienation refers to the Freudian notion of primal repression, with the
master-signifier (SI) playing the role of a primary defence. This
alienation is situated at the level of the body, particularly at the point
where the symbolising of this body by the Other occurs. Lacan illustrates
this by way of the mirror stage, where an organism acquires a first identity

123
by means of an externally imposed, unified image of the body. The body
image is a construction built with the help of significant others, especially
with the words of these others. Our identity depends in the first place on
how the other sees us and what the other tells us about ourselves. In
presenting the master-signifier T to the subject, the Other makes it
possible for him to make the move from 'being an organism 1 to 'having a
body'. With regard to this, it is worth noticing that children cannot locate
their pain before they have constructed an image of the body: that is, a
body in their mind. 2
With the mirror stage, it becomes clear that the becoming of the
subject is an intersubjecrive process right from the start. This idea can
already be found in Freud, although it is only with Lacan that it receives
an explicit formulation. In concrete terms it comes down to this: the
starting point of human development is an original experience of
helplessness with regard to a situation of distress. Since the infant cannot
manage this situation on his own, he shouts, cries, stamps with his feet ...
in this way, he appeals to the other to be relieved of the inner pressure.
This crying, shouting and stamping is already an expression of the drive,
which later on becomes a representation by means of a demand. Since the
other interprets this expression or demand from his own point of view,
there will never be a perfect match between the interpretation, the cry and
the drive. As a consequence, the answer of the Other will never be
adequate, it will be either 'too much1 or 'too little,' but never 'just right'.
This is the structural lack or the structural trauma everyone has to face,
and which Lacan places in the eternal gap between the Real and the
Symbolic-Imaginary: the latter will never be able to cover up the gap and
thus master the Real. Although the Other will never be right, it is very

2
Before the construction of the body image takes place, they can only experience a
generalized pain: a somatic discomfort instead of a localizable pain, (see H. Krystal.
'Disorders of emotional development in addictive behavior' in The Psychology and Treatment of
Addictive Behavior. Workshop series of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Monograph
Eight. Ed. By Scott Dowling, M.D. International Universities press, inc.
Madison/Connecticut, 1995. p.78).

124
important that he comes up with an answer when he's appealed to. The
sudden, unexplained death of some babies may illustrate the importance
of this appearance. When there is nobody to stop the crying and thus to
stop the internal excitation, the child enters a situation of complete
helplessness and panic, and vital bodily functions stop.
To summarize, it may be said that Freud considered the actual
neuroses to be the starting point of the development of the ego. This
starting point consists of an inability to handle somatic sexual excitation.
The psychoneuroses contain a verbal attempt to cope with this excitation,
which is lacking in the actual neuroses. To understand this, we have to
take the Lacanian theory on the becoming of the subject into account. For
Lacan, the somatic sexual excitation is the Real of the body, which has a
traumatic impact. The mirror image envelops this Real. From that
moment on the Real body is covered up by language - although not
completely - and is changed into a symbolic-imaginary body. This move
from the Real to the Symbolic-Imaginary does not happen automatically,
but is contingent upon the words of the Other, which allow the subject to
construct an identity. It is this Symbolic Other who fails in cases of actual
neurosis, and this failure can easily be found in the new pathologies.

Disturbances in the relationship with primary caregivers

From the perspective of object-relation theories, and more recently

from attachment theory, inadequate parenting is brought into focus as an
intermediating factor in the cause of the new pathologies. 3 It is
hypothesised that the internal-external dialectic is seriously disturbed as a
consequence of a failing (m)other-child relationship. 4 Since the mother
doesn't respond adequately, or not at all, to the signals of the child, the

3
K . A n n e l i u s & A . Granburg. ' Self-image and Perception of Mother and Father in Psychotic
and Borderline Patients1 in Psychotherapy Research. US, Oxford University Press. 2000. Vol
10 (2), pp. 147-158.
4
K. Volkan. Dancing among the Maenads: The Psychology of Compulsive Drug Use. N e w
York., Peter Lang Publishing, 1994.

125
child fails to internalise self-regulating functions: that is, the child fails to
identify itself with the answer and thus the desire of the mother. It cannot
make a distinction between the Real mother and the Symbolic-Imaginary
mother, that is, between the real presence of the mother and its
representation. Hence the strong dependency these babies develop later
in life towards the concrete presence of the other. Confirmation of this is
found in research on children who did not have a secure attachment, who
were not able to play alone and explore the world and themselves. The
only thing they wanted was to be close to their mother. 5
From a Lacanian point of view on the becoming of the subject, we
can speak here of a failure of the Other to handle bodily excitations. In
short, the Other failed in his signifying and protective function concerning
the somatic drive. This failure of the Other in his symbolic function can
take on many forms, from humiliations to physical maltreatment and
sexual abuse. But also, the death of a loved one - for example, one of the
parents - can be of great importance here.
The consequence of the failure of the Other in his symbolic function
is a lack of alienation, as a result of which the separation process cannot
come about. This implies that these people have a strong tendency to
alienate and show dependent behaviour. That's why in the scientific
literature one speaks of separation problems and separation anxiety.6
Investigations of the impact of a mother's object relations on the ADHD-
child found a pattern of enmeshment and separation anxiety between

5
D.W. Winnicott. 'Mirror-role of the Mother and Family in Child Development' in The
Predicament of the Family: A Psycho-Analytical Symposium. London, P. Lomas, 1967. pp.26-
33.
6
H . Hassan. 'Self mutilation' in Arab Journal of Psychiatry. Jordan, Arab Federation of
Psychiatrists, 1999, Vol 10 (2): pp.141-150.
D.B. Reich, M.C. Zanarini. 'Developmental Aspects of Borderline Personality Disorder' in
Harvard Review of psychiatry. England, Oxford University Press, 2001, Vol 9 (6): pp. 294-
301.

126
mother and child. 7 Other studies show high co-morbidity along with
separation anxiety. 8 Also, studies on the quality of the attachment to
primary caregivers in the lives of substance abusers indicated a
considerable impairment in childhood attachments in the substance abuse
group compared to the controls. As adults, this group had a significantly
greater degree of anxiety about being abandoned and unloved in
relationships with significant others than the control group did. 9 From our
Freudo-Lacanian point of view, we can speak of an alienation problem
instead of a separation problem, in the sense that there is a lack of
alienation and hence a lack of identity. The Other doesn't provide enough
signifiers to cover up the real. This is why in the new pathologies,
especially in borderline personality disorder, one often speaks of an inner
barrenness or emptiness. Indeed, from a Lacanian point of view the
development of the subject starts with an inner emptiness, a lack, which
can be filled by something coming from outside. In cases of actual
neurosis this attempt to fill up the lack is insufficient or non-existent, and
as a result the subject does not know how to cope with the somatic drive.
There is no secondary elaboration, and thus no basic fantasy because this
basic fantasy implies a representation of self and world, a symbolic-
imaginary processing of the Real. This explains the lack and
impoverishment of the fantasy life frequently observed in the actual
neurotic pathologies.

7
L. Gavshon. 'Assessment of the Object Relations of Mothers with an ADHD Child1 in
Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering. San Diego, US,
California School of Professional Psychology, 2001. Vol 62 (4-B): p.2056.
8
J. Hudziak. 'Latent Class Analysis of ADHD and Co-morbid Symptoms in a Population
Sample of Adolescent Female Twins' in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied
Disciplines. United Kingdom, Blackwell Publishers, 2001. Vol 42 (7) pp. 933-942.
9
B. Sicher. 'The Relationship Between Security of Attachment and Substance Abuse' in
Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering. Los Angeles,
US, California School of Professional Psychology, 1998. Vol 59 (4-B): p.1868.

127
The relationship with the body or the tendency towards somatization

Because there is no symbolic-imaginary processing of the Real in

the actual neurotic, the symptoms only exist at the level of the body. This
tendency towards somatization is frequently found in the new
pathologies. 10 At first sight, this is nothing new. We already know this too
well from the descriptions Freud made of his work with Charcot, but also
from daily practice where we meet hysterical patients w h o love to
complain about their body. However, in the new pathologies this
complaining is hardly present, so another kind of body is at stake here. In
the distinction he makes between the anxiety neuroses and hysteria, Freud
is very clear about aetiology. The former is caused by a sexual factor
occurring in current life;11 the latter is caused by a sexual factor that refers
to childhood. This childhood gets another meaning from within the
current context: hence his notion of Nachtraglichkeit. From a Lacanian
perspective this is the signifying chain in which the signifier gets a
meaning by means of its relationship to other signifiers.
As regards symptomatology, Freud is less clear. For anxiety
neuroses as well as for hysteria, there is an accumulation of tension and a
psychical insufficiency to abreact this tension; as a result, somatic processes
arise. Freud does not explain in which sense the somatic processes in
anxiety neurosis and in hysteria differ from each other. But when we take
a look at his description of actual neurosis it becomes very clear that it
resembles what we call today 'arousal 1 . Either the arousal is too high,
resulting in the symptoms of anxiety neurosis like irritation, panic
reactions, somatic anxiety-equivalents in the stomach, the chest ... or the
arousal is too low, resulting in neurasthenia, with symptoms like
abnormal fatigue and constipation. In object-relation theory these
arousals are referred to as 'physical sensations,' and are compared to

10
D. Bender, B. Farber & J. Geller. 'Cluster B Personality Traits and Attachment' in Journal
of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. US, Guilford Publications, 2001. Vol 29 (4): pp.
551-563.
11
Hence the name 'actual' neurosis.

128
emotions that concern the psychic experience of the somatic sensations.
The latter are characterised by meaning and have a narrative structure, the
former have none.
In his Project, Freud already pointed this out by distinguishing
between pain as a direct toxic phenomenon and the reproduction of this
pain in an affect, as in a hysterical headache. From a Lacanian perspective
this points to the distinction between the order of the Real and the order of
the Symbolic-Imaginary. In this sense we can say that the symptoms of
actual neurosis are to be found on the level of the Real body - that is, the
body as organism - while hysterical conversion symptoms are situated at
the level of the Symbolic-Imaginary. The latter explains why these
conversion symptoms never follow the anatomical lines of the body, but
concern the body as spoken.
Research into the domain of the new pathologies confirms our
hypothesis that the body at work here is the Real body and not the
Symbolic-Imaginary one. Because people who suffer these pathologies
have a lack of fantasy and thus also a lack of symbolic representation, they
have a hard time explaining what they feel in the body, and cannot put
their feelings into words. In the American literature this phenomenon is
called 'alexithymia/ and has been the focus of a lot of research showing its
high frequency of within the new pathologies. This lack of symbolisation
of bodily sensations indicates that the symptoms of the actual neuroses do
not have a narrative structure, that they are not part of the (hi)story of the
subject. That is why there are no associations to be found as there are in
hysteria, and that is probably the reason why Freud was not interested in
them. Since these symptoms have no symbolic meaning, they cannot be
analysed. In fact, in the actual neuroses, we cannot speak of symptoms in
a strictly analytic sense. Following Freud and Lacan, the symptom is a
symbolic construction built around a real, actual neurotic kernel. The
secondary elaboration, or the symptom formation, is a defensive process
against anxiety. This process is lacking in the new pathologies, which
makes it the case that one gets stuck with a border presentation or the
master signifier SI. Sliding from SI to S2 is impossible, and as a result

129
meaning cannot come into existence. As a matter of fact, in the Lacanian
literature on psychosomatic phenomena this idea has frequently been put
forward, although a link with actual neurosis has never been made.
Since there is no secondary processing via language, there is only
an automatic unmediated anxiety and anxiety equivalents. There is a
somatization instead of a symbolisation. Since symbolisation, or the
signifying chain, represents the becoming of the subject, we cannot even
speak here of a divided subject (divided by different desires). Instead, we
meet with a split subject. These people extensively use primitive defence
mechanisms such as splitting, projection, dissociation, and denial.

Problematic Social interactions

When Freud worked out his differential categories of actual

neurosis and psychoneurosis, he stressed the intra-psychical process.
With regard to social interactions, the only thing we can say concerning
the two categories is that in actual neurosis an 'adequate action' to abreact
the tensions is lacking. For Freud, the adequate action is coitus, which is
certainly a social affair because it takes at least two people. In the further
evolution of his work, with the formulation of the Oedipus complex, he
pays more attention to intersubjective processes. But it is the merit of
Lacan to have made explicit the fact that the development of identity takes
place in the relationship between Subject and Other, and that in this
relationship the Subject is created at the same time as the Other
We already explained that this development is disrupted in actual
neurosis. The consequence is that there is no secondary processing within
the imaginary and the symbolic. That means, as we already mentioned,
that there is no construction of a basic fantasy. Since this fantasy
determines our view of ourselves, the world, and the way we get in touch
with other people, the lack of this fantasy has serious implications for
social interactions: either people show a strong dependency on the other
in the hope of installing a relationship, or they skirt the Other and search
for other methods of coping with their anxiety, for example, in substance

130
abuse.
Since this basic fantasy or primary relationship with the Other is
repeated in the analytic transference, classical analytic treatment does not
w o r k for the new pathologies.

Implications for treatment

In a classical analysis of hysterical patients one goes back into the

signifying chain to reduce meaning and end up at the point of no-
meaning, the real kernel of the symptom. In the actual neuroses, the
opposite needs to be done. This means that the treatment must start with
the installation of a symbolic relationship, a basic fantasy, on the ground
of which the subject can start constructing his identity. Instead of an
analysis of the subject, the therapeutic goal has to be a kind of subject
amplification. 12
In accordance with the dissociation or splitting of the subject and
the problems involved in engaging in and maintaining social networks in
actual neuroses, the transference can appear in two ways: it is either
completely lacking or completely overwhelming. That is why in treatment
one should find a good combination of empathic attention and reflection
on the one hand (alienation), and the establishments of limits on the other
h a n d (separation).

The actual neurosis in our (Western) society

To conclude, I would like to shed some light on actual neurosis as a

current problem in our Western society. In Freud's time it was
understandable that the prevalence of actual neurosis was linked to sexual
abstinence. After all, abstinence was the only method of birth control.
From this point of view, actual neurosis should have disappeared in our
society because our techniques of birth control have evolved with an
amazing speed. We can even notice that today the problem of birth
12
P. Verhaeghe. Beyond Gender. From subject to drive. New York, Other Press, 2001.

131
control is displaced onto the problem of fertility.
Taking into account the revision of Freud's theory of actual neurosis
from the context of Lacan's theory on the becoming of the subject, we can
hypothesize that actual neurosis has everything to do with the failing of
the Other in his alienating/symbolic function. That the Other is more and
more failing in our society becomes clear when we take statistics on
physical and sexual abuse into account. The growing prevalence of these
abuses is alarming. But the failing of the Other does not always have to
take such an aggressive form in the production of actual neuroses. There
are also many cases in which w e can speak of emotional neglect, although
with the best intentions. But everyone knows that most dramas are based
on good intentions. In our Western society, individuality is highly
praised, also with respect to children. In raising children, the child's
ability to make his or her own choices is strongly emphasized. Caregivers
are all too ready to let children go their own way. What people tend to
forget is that separation is not possible without alienation. You cannot
take distance from something that you have never been close to.

Address for correspondence: Ghent University

Department of Psychoanalysis
H. Dunantlaanl
9000 Ghent
Belgium

email: Ann.derick@rug.ac.be

132
 FULL AND EMPTY SPEECH WITHIN PSYCHOANALYTIC
PRACTICE

Frederic Declercq

At the beginning of his teaching, what motivates Lacan is, according

to his own saying, 'to clear away the imaginary, which was too prevalent
in technique' 1 . Since post-Freudian theory and technique revolve around
the axis of the ego and its resistance, Lacan seeks to define the respective
domains of the symbolic and the imaginary within analytic practice. One
of the crucial topics underlying Lacan's elaboration of the agencies of the
ego and the subject of the unconscious throughout his first seminars
concerns the question of the way to deal with the ego-defences within
clinical practice. To p u t it bluntly: can one interpret the ego-defences?
Following Freud, Lacan demonstrates that the interpretation of the ego
defences is a technique that just doesn't work.

The agency of the ego: Freud and Lacan

Picking up and radicalising Freud's work, Lacan splits Freud's

concept of the ego in two, into the subject and the ego. Lacan calls the ego
the 'mental illness of man,' for it is synonymous with resistance in
psychoanalysis. 2 More precisely, the ego functions like a resistance
operating against the analysis of the subject of the unconscious. As for the
1
J. Lacan. Remarque sur le rapport de D. Lagache. in: tents, Paris, Seuil, 1966, p.682.
'...temps preliminaire de notre enseignement oil il nous fallait deblayer Vimaginaire comme trop
prise dans la technique'. (Our translation).
2
(...) the ego is structured exactly like a symptom. At the heart of the subject, it is only a
privileged symptom, the h u m a n symptom par excellence, the mental illness of man.1 }.
Lacan. The Seminar of J. Lacan, Book I, Freud[s Papers on Technique, Cambridge University
Press, 1988, p. 16.

109
nature of the defence mechanisms, Freud and Lacan found that the ego
resists in a rather typical, paranoid way, namely by denial and projection.
Lacan's doctoral dissertation was about the link between paranoia and
personality. However, after 40 years of clinical practice with neurosis and
psychosis, Lacan no longer talks about the link between them; his final
statement on the matter is that the ego is paranoia. In this respect, w e
emphasise again that Lacan's conceptualisation of the ego is different from
Freud's. Lacan was fully aware of Freud's inability to define the ego in a
consistent way, and his differentiation between the subject of the
unconscious and the ego is an attempt to make u p for this inability.
Indeed, it is obvious that throughout Freud's work, the theory of the ego is
full of holes, and is never finished. Even his last paper, published after his
death - The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence - produces more
questions than answers.
The early Freud considered the ego to be the agency that stands for
consciousness, the reality principle and synthesis. However, one tends to
forget that from the mid 1920's on, Freud himself is continuously
deconstructing and rectifying his very own conception of the ego. 3 His
clinical experience taught him that the loss of reality, for instance, is far
from being typical for psychoses. On the contrary, rejection and the denial
of pieces of reality appear just as well in neuroses and perversions. Hence
Freud had to abandon the idea of the synthetic nature of the ego-processes:

The whole process seems so strange to us because we take for

granted the synthetic nature of the processes of the ego. But we are
clearly at fault in this. The synthetic function of the ego,
though it is of such extraordinary importance, is subject to

3
Chronologically: Neurosis and Psychosis (1924 [1923]); The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and
Psychosis (1924); Negation (1925); Fetishism (1927); An Outline of Psycho-analysis
(1940[1938]); Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence (1940 [1938]).

110
 particular conditions and is liable to a whole number of
disturbances. 4

Indeed, the net result of a clash between drive and reality is the splitting of
the ego, aiming at the denial of certain aspects of this reality. The
conscious part of the ego denies this part of reality; the other, unconscious
one, does recognize it - which is demonstrated by the symptom or the
fetish. The symptom and the fetish testify to the fact that the unconscious
does know about the things denied by the conscious ego, because they are
embodied in the unrecognisable part of the return of the repressed. 5
Among other things, the distinction Lacan makes between the subject and
the ego has to do with this phenomenon of splitting. Instead of clinging to
the idea of the splitting of the ego, Lacan chooses to distribute the Freudian
ego over the instances of the subject on the one hand, and the ego stricto
sensu on the other hand. The subject is the place where unconscious
knowledge or a denied reality has to be situated. The ego is the instance
that denies and disavows these unconscious contents or these aspects of
reality. As a result of this Lacanian redefinition, the differentiation
between a healthy ego (with which the analyst sets up an alliance) and a
sick Ego becomes superfluous. From a Lacanian point of view, the ego is
always sick, because it is the instance that represses, disavows, denies, and
projects. The subject, on the other hand, is not synonymous with the so-
called healthy part of personality, but just comes down to the unconscious.

The ego-defence

In his approach to the ego's resistance, Lacan centres his

commentary on a passage from Freud's paper The Dynamics of Transference.
This paper treats of a well-known phenomenon that happens within the
analytic session. When one follows a pathogenic complex from its

4
S. Freud. Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence, S.E., XXIII, London, Hogarth Press,
p. 276.
s S. Freud. Fetishism, S.E., XXI, op.cit, pp.152-157.

Ill
representation in consciousness to its root in the unconscious, one enters a
region in which resistance makes itself felt very clearly. At this point,
Freud notes that a typical phenomenon appears: an idea is transferred on
to the figure of the doctor. An event of this sort is repeated on countless
occasions in the course of analysis.

Over and over again, when one comes near to a pathogenic

complex, the portion of that complex which is capable of
transference is first pushed forward into consciousness and
defended with the greatest obstinacy.6

And in a footnote Freud adds:

... that this should not lead us to conclude in general that the
element selected for transference resistance is of a peculiar
pathogenic importance. The value of it is purely tactical. Its
purpose is the battle. 7

In his commentary, Lacan starts by emphasising that in fact there

are two resistances at play here belonging, moreover, to two different
categories. On the one hand, he notes that there is a resistance that
emanates from the repressed:

If now we follow a pathogenic complex from its

representation in the conscious to its root in the unconscious,
we shall soon enter a region in which the resistance makes
itself felt so clearly....

On the other hand, he underlines the resistance that Freud

categorises as a transference phenomenon: 'namely the idea projected on

6
ibid.
6
S. Freud, The Dynamics of Transference, S.E. XII, op.cit, pp.103-104.
7
ibid.

112
the doctor and the obstinacy and tenacity with which the patient defends
it.1 We will be focusing here on this latter form of resistance.
First, let us translate Freud's passage into Lacanian terms in order to
delineate as clearly as possible the variable-length session technique. The
unconscious and the analytic work of free association are situated on the
symbolic axis of schema L. Consequently, the resistance which emanates
from the repressed, from the pathogenic complex, as Freud says, is also
situated here. By contrast, the imaginary axis represents the agency of the
ego. Taken u p in Lacan's theory of speech, the symbolic axis is the axis of
what he calls 'full speech'; the imaginary axis of the ego is that of empty
speech. Within Lacan's conceptual apparatus, 'full' and 'empty' stand for
fullness or emptiness of unconscious meaning. 8
Lacan uses the notion of empty speech to address the phenomenon
that Freud describes. According to Lacan, the phenomenon at the heart of
Freud's article is not a transference phenomenon, but a phenomenon that
stems from the agency of the ego. When free association or full speech
stumbles upon the resistance of the repressed, full speech topples over into
empty speech:

It is in so far as the subject reaches the limit of what the

moment allows his discourse to effectuate of (full) speech
that is produced the phenomenon where Freud shows us the
point of articulation of resistance with the analytic dialectic.9

In other words: when free association or full speech stumbles on the

resistance of the unconscious, speech undergoes a twist: the analysand
addresses himself to the analyst. What Lacan tries to pinpoint here is that
8
For further developments of the notions of empty speech and full speech, see C. Soler,
The Symbolic Order, in: Reading Seminars I and II, Lacan's Return to Freud, New York Press,
Albany, 1996, pp.39-54.
9
' Quoi qu'il en soit, c'est en tant que le sujet arrive a la limite de ce que le moment permet a son
discours d'effectuer de la parole, que se vroduit le phenomene ou Freud nous montre le point
d''articulation de la resistance a la dialectique analytique\ J. Lacan. Introduction au
commentaire de J. Hyp-polite, in: tents, Paris, Seuil, 1966, p. 373.

113
it is no longer the subject of the unconscious w h o speaks from then on, but
the ego. The ego of the analysand addresses itself to the ego of the analyst;
the imaginary axis takes over the symbolic axis. From then on speech is
empty - in this respect we could evoke Freud's footnote, according to
which the idea the patient defends against is of no pathogenic importance,
but aims instead at engaging in a battle with the analyst. In other words,
the ego's resistance covers up and conceals the resistance of the repressed.
The imaginary axis of empty speech can take on several
appearances: it can be seductive, hostile ... The analysand can try to seduce
the analyst with literature for instance. In this respect, Lacan mentions one
of his analysands who talked about Dostoyevsky all the time during his
analytic sessions. 10 Maybe he wanted to move Lacan, or awaken his
interest in Dostoyevsky's literary talent. We don't know, of course.
However, what we do know is that his discussions of Dostoyevsky aimed
at installing an ego-to-ego relation between himself and the analyst, by
means of which true analytic work was avoided. Of course, the bond that
empty speech tries to install does not have to be a seductive one. It could
be a hostile one too: witness again Freud's footnote to the effect that the
purpose of the so-called transference-related element is a battle between
the analysand and the analyst. However, irrespective of the appearance
the imaginary axis takes on, in the end it all comes down to the same thing;
empty speech aims at creating a relation between the analysand's ego and
the analyst's ego. Empty speech is speech that hooks on to another ego - it
mediates between two egos. Therefore, it is always embedded in a
communicative matrix.
So, what's wrong with communication in analysis? 11 What's wrong
with the analysand communicating feelings, ideas, opinions, e t c . ? Of
course, communication is a preliminary aspect of analysis. The analysand
has to tell the analyst who he is, what is going wrong with him, w h a t he
expects or wants ... But communication is not itself analysis. The analysis

10
J. Lacan. Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, in: Ecrits, A
Selection, Routledge, Tavistock, 1977, p.100.
11
We're not talking about communication outside the field of psychoanalysis.

114
of the unconscious begins where communication ends. Here we meet with
Lacan's famous proposition that within psychoanalysis 'a signifier
represents a subject for another signifier'. This proposition has nothing to
do with communication since in communication a signifier represents a
subject for another subject. In communication an ego addresses a signifier
to someone else, to another ego. However, this is not what psychoanalysis
aims at. In psychoanalysis the signifier is not addressed to someone else,
but to another signifier. As a matter of fact, this Lacanian proposition is
none other than a linguistic translation of the principle of free association,
since, by freely associating, the subject is not expected to communicate
with the analyst but to follow the course of the signifiers as they appear in
his mind. Indeed, what Freud discovers is that a symptom, thought,
dream, or lapsus (SI) will reveal its unconscious meaning only when
inserted into the unconscious chain of signifiers it is part of (S2).
Accordingly, the unconscious meaning of the Rat-man's obsession with
rats, for instance, was found by means of the articulation of the signifier
'Rarte' with the signifiers ]Rate] (instalments), 'Heiraren' (to marry),
'Spielnzfte' (gambler), etc. Because full speech doesn't aim at hooking onto
the analyst's ego, it is not situated on the axis between two egos on the L-
scheme, but on the one that goes from the subject to the Other. 12
So, the ego's resistance manifests itself at a very precise moment.
The imaginary axis of communication takes over free association or full
speech when the latter stumble upon the resistances of the unconscious. 13
At such a moment, when full speech topples over into communication,
Lacan advocates cutting off the session. Having defined empty speech, we
n o w have a first insight into the purpose of this technique. The suspension
of the session comes d o w n to a refusal to leave the analytical position by
taking on the position of an ego. By suspending it, the analyst withdraws
himself from the imaginary bond by means of which true analytic work is

12
In the L- schema, the Other stands for the unconscious chain of signifiers.
13
This stumbling needn't necessarily appear in the midst of the session. It can be that the
ego-defence was already triggered before entering of the session, the analysand's speech
being empty right from the start.

115
avoided. Indeed, since the ego's resistances imply a dual-communicative
structure, they can only work if the analyst steps into them. That's why
Lacan stresses that when an ego-defence succeeds in hindering or blocking
the progression of analytic work, the analyst is always u p to his neck in
that defence. This means that the analyst has entered the game by taking
on the position of an alter-ego, which explains Lacan's colourful claim that
there is only one resistance in psychoanalysis: the analyst's. 14

Circumvention versus interpretation

Now, if cutting off the session comes down to cutting off empty
speech, one can still ask if there's no other way to restore full speech. Put
differently: can one not just interpret the ego's resistance? Acknowledging
the difficulties analysts have in interpreting the ego-defence, Lacan
undertakes to demonstrate that such interpretation just doesn't work.
Interpreting the defence doesn't work because an imaginary setting
absorbs everything into its own imaginary logic. In other words, every
interpretation is imaginarised in a typically paranoid way by the ego.
Lacan is not the only one to have noticed this. As a matter of fact, the
communication theorists Watzlawick and others also discern this
imaginary-paranoid aspect of communication. 15 We'll illustrate this with
one of the clinical passages they quote:

Suppose a couple has some marital problem to which he

contributes by an attitude of passive withdrawal, whereas
her 50 per cent consists of nitpicking criticism. Explaining
their frustrations, the husband will declare that his
withdrawn attitude is his only defence against her nagging,
whereas she will label this explanation as a gross and wilful
distortion of what 'really' happens in their marriage: that is

14
'Cest pourquoi il m'amve de dire qu'il n'y a dans Vanalyse d'autre resistance que celle de
Vanalyste '. J. Lacan. Ecrits, Paris, du Seuil, 1966, p. 377.
15
Which can be found in their definition of communication as being a 'circular process'.

116
 to say, she criticizes him because of his passivity. Discarding
all inessential and fortuitous elements, their fights consist in
a monotonous exchange of the messages 'I withdraw myself
because you nag' and 'I nag because you withdraw into
yourself'.16

Translated into psychoanalytic terms we see at work here the ego's

characteristic dialogue-forms, namely denial and projection: 'It wasn't me,
but you who...' One can easily put the findings of this communication
theory on the same line as Lacan's, when he points out that the imaginary
is a domain beyond truth and lies, beyond right or wrong. Who indeed
will decide who is right, whose reality is really real, the husband's or the
wife's? Within the imaginary dual field, the two of them are equally right
or wrong. The following statement by Lacan is very telling on this matter:
'As soon as you put two subjects together - 1 say two, not three, - feelings
are always reciprocated'. 17 Indeed, once stuck within a dual
communicative situation, any signifier, idea or emotion can be denied and
projected ad infinitum.
The paranoid dynamics of the imaginary is the common
denominator of the difficulties clinicians encounter with respect to the
ego's resistance. Witness a clinical example from Anna Freud's work that
Lacan comments on. 18 She related that one of her analysands used to look
down on her symptoms and anxieties with ridicule and contempt, that
way avoiding bringing them into analysis. As A. Freud tried to interpret
her analysand's ego-defence against her symptoms, she inevitably found
herself assimilated by the imaginary axis. The contemptuous and mocking
remarks got re-directed towards A. Freud herself. As she noted, the
analyst became the recipient of these defensive reactions only secondarily,

16
P. Watzlawick, J. Helmick-Beavin & D.D. Jackson. Pragmatics of Human Communication.
WW Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1962, p. 56.
17
J. Lacan. The Seminar of J. Lacan, Book I, Freud's Papers on Technique, op.cit, p.32.
18
A. Freud. (YEAR??) The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, in: The Writings of Anna
Freud, II, International University Press, New York, 1970, pp.35-36.

117
because of her interpretation. Translated into Lacanian vocabulary, Anna
Freud stepped into the game of the ego-defence:

It is on the plane of her own ego, Anna Freud's, it is within

the framework of the dual relation with her patient, that A.
Freud perceived the manifestations of the ego defence.'19

We mention in passing that if resistance needs to be circumvented

instead of being interpreted, this does not mean that analysis leaves the
ego intact. Obviously, analysis does modify the ego. Only it does so
indirectly, for example, via the analysis of the Ego-Ideal. Indeed, what
Sigmund Freud's Mass Psychology and Analysis of the Ego teaches us is that
an imaginary identification or Ideal Ego is always indexed onto a symbolic
one: the Ego-Ideal. Hence, it is the analysis of the symbolically structured
ego-Ideal that brings about changes in the (imaginary) Ideal ego. Anna
Freud's case shows this very clearly. As she noted, her patient's ego-
defence was overcome once the symbolic identification of the analysand
with her father as ego-Ideal appeared in analysis. 20 Since she definitely
didn't make use of the variable-length session, it is a pity Anna Freud
didn't give any details as to what precisely occasioned the restoration of
sterile empty speech into full speech.

Conclusion

Once the analytic situation has shifted and toppled over into the
imaginary, the analyst's interpretive interventions will be absorbed by the
paranoid dynamics of the imaginary. The sessions will be filled with

19
J. Lacan. The Seminar of J. Lacan, Book I, Freud's Papers on Technique, op.cit, pp. 64-65.
20
'Historically, this mode of defence by means of ridicule and scorn was explained by
her identification of herself with her dead father, who used to try to train the little girl in
self-control by making mocking regards when she gave way to some emotional
outbursts. The method had become stereotyped through her memory of her father,
whom she had love dearly'. A. Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, op. cit, p.36.

118
denials and projections. By suspending the session, the analyst withdraws
from an imaginary relation to the analysand's ego. However, if the
suspension of the session is a way to circumvent ego-defence, it has
another very precious side-effect as well. We saw that the ego-defence is
set off at a precise moment, namely when free association stumbles upon
the resistance of the unconscious. As such, the defence of the ego-defence
covers u p and conceals the resistance of the unconscious. Consequently,
by short-cutting the deployment of the ego's concealing activity the
resistance of the unconscious can appear. This gives the analysand the
chance to analyse it, because unlike the resistance of the ego, the resistance
stemming from the repressed or unconscious is liable to analysis.

Address for correspondence: University of Ghent

Henri Dunantlaan 2
B9000 Ghent
Belgium

email: frederic.declercq@rug.ac.be

119
 ON BEING THE OTHER'S OBJECT:
A CASE OF SEXUAL MASOCHISM

Eugenie Georgaca

This paper is a structural account of a clinical case. The analysand,

w h o m I will call by the pseudonym Simon, is thirty-five years old and a
full-time student. I will start with a presentation of Simon's psychosexual
history, which centres around questions of the drive, fantasy and
puissance. This will be followed by a discussion of his presenting
complaint, its signifying history and puissance value. I will then trace the
development of the analytic work with Simon and raise issues of
diagnosis, transference and the direction of treatment.

Psychosexual history

Although elements of Simon's psychosexual history were produced

from the very beginning of the work, it took about a year for a more
detailed picture to emerge, mainly because of Simon's inhibitions around
talking about his sexuality to his important others.
As far back as Simon can remember he wanted to be a girl, he
fancied girls and was turned on by wearing his sister's clothes. This
intensified during early adolescence, when he systematically cross-dressed
and wanted a sex change. During adolescence he had a series of S&M
relations with much older women partners and actively participated in the
S&M scene. He was a heroin addict and in order to get money for drugs
he was involved in drug dealing and he also prostituted himself with men.
H e came out of this period as a physical wreck. His closest friends died of
AIDS, he lost his support networks and realised that if he continued with
this way of life he would end up either in prison, or in a psychiatric
institution, or he would die. At the end of this period he went through a
detoxification treatment. He decided that since he could not have a sex-
change operation to become a woman, he should accept that he is a man.

162
He dedicated the following years to turning himself into one. Over the
course of the following few years, he imitated a number of stereotypical
male images and types. He transformed his appearance with intensive
work-outs, full-body tattooing and other bodily modifications. During
that time he was a member of a biker group which carried guns and was
very violent. At some point he realised he was on the verge of being
arrested, as his friends were increasingly ending up in prison, and so he
dropped out of that group. Since then he applied himself to successfully
completing a number of university degrees.
Simon's current position is that of a sadomasochist and transvestite.
He now practises S&M sex exclusively in long term relationships with
women. He has been with his current partner, whom we'll call Susan, for
three years. He says that, although they have taken turns, he mainly takes
the abuse. He occasionally goes to clubs as a transvestite rather than as a
man, using the whole works to produce a complete transformation of his
image and his self. He feels guilty about his sexuality, especially his
transvestism. Simon describes his sexuality as 'obsessional'. S&M has
always been his exclusive mode of sexual gratification. He says that he
obtains sexual gratification through playing out very specific scenarios.
The content of these scenarios was never recounted, although there are
some indications of their flavour, which will be discussed later.

Elements of structure

Simon's libido seems to be dictated by two formulae - 'being a

woman' and 'being abused' - which appear in different permutations
through his life. 'Being a woman' is linked to the paternal grandmother's
preference for girls - an unrequited wish, since she only had boys - and the
father's preference for Simon's sister. In Simon's discourse the signifiers
'girl' and 'woman' are used almost interchangeably, associated with
descriptions of his childhood and adult life respectively. The
grandmother, Simon says, thought that girls were better at everything and
were more good-looking. At family gatherings at the grandparents' house
the girl cousins - as well as the clever boys - were cherished; Simon was at

163
best ignored and at worst frowned upon and punished. This produced a
core of surplus puissance,1 a fixation of libido on women, which Simon
refers to as 'idolising and fetishising women'.
This translated very early on in Simon wanting to be a girl, being
attracted to them and cross-dressing. Associated to this is a screen-
memory of a castration wish. Simon was in the bath with his sister when
they were little. She said that they both had to have a jab and if he didn't
'his bits would fall off. Simon remembers his joy at the idea that he could
then become a girl, like his sister.
The second current, 'being abused', seems to originate from Simon
being 'ritualistically abused' by his father. His father, Simon comments,
would not see it as abuse but rather as a form of disciplining children. His
father was disciplined the same way by his own father. The associated
screen-memory is of Simon being terrified of getting the strap, running
around the house to escape, his father catching him, taking him into the
toilet, making him kneel and striking him with his belt. According to
Freud, this is the first, repressed phase of the male version of the 'being
beaten' fantasy. 2 Freud links this to male masochistic fantasies and sexual
practices which derive from a feminine attitude towards the father.
Simon's account is that as a child he was naughty and provoked
punishment from his father as an attention-seeking strategy. He does not
remember getting excited by his father beating him, but has memories of
getting off on being beaten by his teachers, whether male or female.
'Wanting to be a girl', thus, derives from the paternal grandmother
and the father. Strangely enough, there is no indication yet of the mother
being implicated in this current. 'Being abused' is consistently transmitted
along two generations from the father and the paternal grandfather. The
mother is indirectly implicated here. Her 'strict' religious law dictates that
any form of sex performed outside marriage and for purposes other than
reproduction is sinful and, therefore, punishable. Simon says that this left

1
See C. Soler. ' The Body in the Teaching of Jacques Lacari in JCFAR. 1995, 6, pp.6-38.
2
S. Freud. (1919). 'A Child is Being Beaten': A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual
Perversions. S.E., XVII, pp.175-204.

164
him in a position in which having sex would have to be necessarily linked
to being punished. He always thought that he would be punished by God
for his sins. Under the influence of heroin he would repeatedly hear God's
voice telling him he deserves punishment; he would curl up and expect to
be kicked about by God himself. In the case of Simon the drive is fixed in
two currents through the demands of his three most important others
($<> D): the grandmother's demand for a girl, the father's demand that his
law be obeyed and the mother's demand - backed up by her God - that he
obey religious law.1
The two currents converged during Simon's adolescence, when he
actively sought sadistic women partners who would make him dress and
behave as a girl and abuse him. Through this Simon is being abused as a
woman by women, occupying the position of both a woman and the
woman's servant. The currents also converge in his sexual fantasies of
being castrated in public. I do not know whether there are variations to
this fantasy or what its precise content is. Simon says, however, that
public castration is his central and recurrent sexual fantasy. On the basis
of this we could infer that the rigid sexual scenarios that are the
prerequisite of his sexual puissance may be variations of this. What he
gets off on, Simon commented at some point, is 'being forced to be a
woman'. This, I believe, is the closest to the fundamental fantasy that
Simon's analysis has reached up to now. Like the fundamental fantasy, it
is supported by a statement which constitutes the point where associations
stop, a formula that is valid as an axiom. It is a bit of the signifying chain
which fixes jouissance and coordinates the signifier and the real for the
subject. It is intertwined with anxiety due to the threat of imminent
encounter with the real.2 Simon's sexual fantasies of castration are
imaginarised versions of the fundamental fantasy and, presumably, his
sexual practices operate as enactments of it.

a
See G. Trobas. 'Perversion of Sexuality/Perverse Subject' in Psychoanalytical Notebooks. 1999,
2. pp.51-60.
2
See P. Skriabine. ' Drive and Fantasyin JCFAR. 1997, 8&9. pp.28-44.

165
drive ($ <> D) being a woman being abused
1 i
(paternal grandmother (paternal grandfather
+father) + father + mother (via God))
i i
I i
i i
screen memories: castration threat being beaten
i i
i i
fundamental fantasy: ($ <> a) being forced to be a w o m a n
i
imaginarisation: sexual fantasies of public castration
i
realisation: scenarios of sexual gratification

Simon's repudiation of the wish to become a woman and

subsequent transformation to a m a n in early adulthood was performed
through external imitation of specific male images, which condense two
trends. On the one hand their origin can be traced to Simon's maternal
grandfather and his friends who according to Simon were 'rough and
tough'. On the other hand he copied his father's friends, who were
'hippies and rockers with leather jackets and motorbikes', whom he
remembers finding glamorous and getting a kick out of as a child. Part of
Simon's fortifying of his masculinity was his becoming a member of a
biker gang. He says that, quite apart from what he saw as the
exemplification of masculinity in them, two things attracted him to them.
Firstly, he enjoyed blind physical violence, both beating and being beaten.
Secondly, he enjoyed the gang's homo-erotism which was quite obvious to
him despite its concealment behind the group's apparent homophobia.
Becoming a biker then, while it is the converging point of masculine

166
 , urt\y of Simon's
as a substitute outlet for both

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year S&M relatvonsruF
get on with his life, he is determined to fight on; he doesn't want to 'curl
up and die1, or, as he said in one session, he doesn't want to 'curl up in a
corner and say ' "don't hurt m e " ' any more.
The fluctuation between anxiety and numbness operates at the level
of being. While anxiety and numbness are superficially linked to the
Other's ideals and located at cross-roads of signifying networks, they
address the issue of what Simon is as the Other's object;5 in other words,
their signifying value is interlinked with a puissance value. 6 While anxiety
is associated with an influx of puissance, numbness is the
phenomenological expression of the evacuation, the draining of puissance.
Both states leave Simon in a depersonalised-like state, which is a
phenomenological expression of the fading of the subject in the encounter
with the real.
The puissance value of Simon's 'depression' does not escape him. In
the beginning of the work Simon treated his 'depression 1 as a physical
condition, a mental illness, and for the first few months he reiterated that
maybe drugs would be the best solution. Gradually he came to realise
that his 'depression' has a psychical basis and from then on he persistently
explored its dynamics and roots in his family history, giving rise to an
analytic demand. In a recent session he complained that analysis does not
seem to work for him because although he is becoming aware of how he
contributes to his depression through his actions and how it relates to his
past, he continues doing the very things that make him depressed. He
then moved on to discuss how he gets himself worked up with regard to
his studies while there is no reason for it other than he enjoys torturing
himself. I interpreted using the signifiers 'depression' and 'enjoyment',
linking the two signifying networks. He was taken aback and after a brief
silence he said that he never thought about it this way, but that, yes, he
enjoys being depressed. He spent the rest of the session recounting how

5
See G. Trobas. 'Perversion of Sexuality/Perverse Subject in Psychoanalytical Notebooks. 1999,
2. pp. 51-60.
6
For the truth-value and thejouissance-vahie of the symptom seeB. Porcheret. 'Hands off
my Symptom* in Psychoanalytical Notebooks. 2000,4. pp.141-146.

170
he has consistently done the very things that his mother would find
outrageous - she is very concerned with health and he took drugs, drank
heavily and had his body ('the temple of God') beaten up and abused; she
is strict about sex and he is into perverse sexual acts; she has a practical
approach to material possessions and he buys the most outrageously
expensive non-practical things. The more outrageous his actions by his
mother's standards, the more guilt he feels - and this is largely why he
does them. He described a cycle common to all three strands of rising
desire, getting satisfaction through performing the act (be it drinking, a
sexual act or buying something), then feeling unbearable guilt, which he
enjoys, then a brief period of peacefulness until desire rises again. Both
Simon's explicit agreement with my interpretation and the subsequent
material he produced in terms of the cycle of guilt he induces constitute an
acknowledgement of the puissance value of the symptom. Indeed the
most recent phase of the work is taken u p by Simon describing his active
staging of and enjoyment of guilt, in clinical terms his subjection to the
puissance of the Other, mainly in the form of super-egoic puissance.7 This,
and its implications for diagnosis, will be discussed later.

Appearance and performance as strategies of existence

In Simon's case at the level of being we encounter anxiety and

numbness, as well as the blind repetition of the drive circling around the
object, in a fixed path mapped by the Other's demand. Simon talks about
being a 'dinosaur', a 'primitive monster', a 'fossil', belonging to a 'different
species'. He keeps reiterating that his friends from his adolescence either
died or grew up to lead a normal life. He did neither; he is 'stuck there',
fixed by a repetition that defines him and he cannot cross; at some level he
does not want to. Terms designating death and fossilisation refer to the
death drive which is active at the level of being and the fossilisation of

7
For the superego as the source of the Other's jouissance see B. Fink. A Clinical Introduction
to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University
Press, 1997.

171
puissance enacted in perverse scenarios. His response to the subjective
destitution that this involves is an attempt to 'exist* through appearance
and performance. He says that he sustained himself when he was
younger through 'his looks' and more recently through a string of
qualifications. He tries to achieve things and do things with his body to
put u p a facade of aliveness and similarity to others. 'Qualifications and
tattoos', he says, 'stay with you for ever'.

being existence
i 1 1
i i i
i appearance performance
i i i
1 circus animal hamster
'dinosaur /'primitive monster'/'fossil'
Simon's transformation into a man took place through imitating
stereotypical masculine images which are marked on his body through
bodily modifications and adornments. He says he chose parts of others to
inscribe on his body resulting in him becoming a 'collage'. He describes
this in moments of superegoic self-criticism as becoming a 'circus animal'.
He says he is extremely insecure about his appearance and goes to great
lengths to modify it as well as spending excessive amounts of money on
flamboyant outfits. I asked him once whether he is worried about the
others' impression of him. He responded that it is partly this, but mainly
that bodily modifications and adornments 'fortify his personality'. I
commented that it sounds like his personality is on the surface of his body,
and he responded that this is exactly where it is. Simon's tattoos are of
special importance. Getting himself tattooed was the point of no return to
becoming a man. He also said that his tattoos are the only aspect of his
appearance which goes beyond imitation; when he had them he did not
know anyone with full-body tattooing. Simon's body, indeed, seems to be
completely covered in tattoos. From the parts I can see, which are not
concealed by his clothes, they start on his wrists, the base of the neck and

172
his ankles; they consist of elaborate abstract designs of interlinking curved
lines which at certain points take the form of creatures like the ones on
coats of arms. On several occasions Simon pondered on the function his
tattoos have for him. He says he grew up to be ashamed of his body and
tattoos cover it up so that he is never naked. On the other hand they mark
his difference; even if he is stripped of his clothes and other adornments,
he would have his tattoos as a sign that he has 'not completely given in'.
Performance is the other strategy which provides Simon with a self.
He says he is a 'performing creature1, a 'hamster'. He sets himself tasks
which he has to complete to his self-imposed perfectionist standards. His
self-confidence is completely dependent on it; if he suspects he will fail, he
falls to pieces and anxiety in the shape of the three fears kicks in. At some
point in the work he commented that the reason he started seeing me is
because he came to a halt with regard to his studies, which he took as a
sign that he will fail and the anxiety became long-term and unbearable. If
he failed, he would completely fall to pieces and he would not be able to
see any way of continuing his life and having any future. Simon says he is
'obsessive' in everything he does; everything is a task to be completed to
perfection. This includes his university degrees, the sexual act and his
social encounters. Even going to the pub with friends is treated by him as
an occasion where he has to entertain others and he always panics before
and during it. Simon links this to his mother. She is a practical woman
who arranges her life in terms of tasks she successfully completes. Simon
recounted having recently been with his mother to a wedding. Although
they had not seen one another for a while, she completely ignored him
throughout the event. He felt hurt but understood that this is the way his
mother is; the purpose of going to a wedding is to socialise, and spending
time talking to her son would be inappropriate to the occasion. She
always treated him like a hamster, feeding him, looking after him, being
concerned about his health and expecting him to perform. She is
sometimes pleased with his performance, but never granted him any
'internal worth'. Even now she inquires about his health and is concerned
about his well-being, but she will not engage with him around his
thoughts, problems and relationships. On the other hand performance in

173
terms of acquiring University degrees derives from Simon's paternal side
of the family, in which he identifies with his father as failure.
In this respect we can understand the articulation of Simon's fear
about his lack of a future as a fear that he will lose his looks and ability to
perform through growing older. His appearance and performance sustain
him, operate as props of his sense of self. Losing them would be
devastating. At some point Simon said he feels like a porn-star, living
with a constant anxiety that at some point he will lose his hard-on.
Behind his appearance and his going about his daily tasks in a
hamster-like way, Simon says, there is nothing. He is a screen upon which
he projected the images he wanted to be and he exists via his
achievements. Behind this there is numbness and panic. He does not
even use the personal pronoun to designate this state. He says he does his
work, talks to people, goes about his daily tasks, but it is like he is pre-
programmed, like it is someone else doing them. Behind there is a scared
child curling up in a corner, saying 'don't hurt me'. Behind the 'circus
animal' that he has turned himself into and the 'hamster', whose value is
measured by how well it performs, there is a 'dinosaur', an extinct species,
the blind repetition of the drive with the corresponding evacuation of
subjectivity.8

The analytic work

Diagnosis

The issue of diagnosis has been difficult to resolve in Simon's case.

In the first months Simon's declared 'bisexuality', his questioning around
what it means to be a man or a woman and his putting on a display
through the manipulation of his appearance were seen to be pointing
towards hysteria. Later, when the details of Simon's sexuality were
produced and issues of being the object of the Other's puissance

8
For the fading of the subject in the drive see P. Skriabine. 'Drive and Fantasy' in JCFAR.
1997, 8&9. pp. 28-44.

174
predominated, I considered a differential diagnosis between perversion
and psychosis, while waiting for more material to be produced which
would favour one diagnosis over against the other. Here I will consider
the elements of the case that could be seen as indicators of a psychotic
structure, but I will argue for a diagnosis of perversion. I will consider
Simon's diagnosis through discussing both his relation to puissance and
the object a and his relation to language and the law. 9
If neurosis is a protest against the sacrifice of puissance, psychosis is
characterised by an excess of puissance and perversion by an 'attempt to
prop u p the law so that limits to puissance can be set'.10 In both psychosis
and perversion the subject is in the place of the object of the Other's
puissance (a <> O), a position which Simon finds himself in. In psychosis,
however, the subject is prey to the devouring puissance of an unbarred
Other, is overwhelmed by the occasional influx of unstructured,
unmediated puissance. In perversion, on the other hand, the subject is
active in orchestrating the position of the object as a way of putting limits
to the Other's puissance. The perverse subject is the object qua instrument
of the Other's puissance}1 Simon is not lacking in puissance, indeed it is his
unashamed acknowledgement of his implication in puissance that would
set him apart from neurotic subjects. In the later phase of the work Simon
more and more readily talks about his orchestration and enjoyment of
what is effectively superegoic puissance. It could be argued that Simon's
perverse practices are forms of sinthome, successful attempts at
supplementing a foreclosed name-of-the-father through employing
symbolic and imaginary means to bind puissance.12 Guilt, however,
indicates that an Oedipal structure, however rudimentary, is in place, and

9
See D. Nobus. 'Psychoanalysis and Clinical Diagnostics1 in JCFAR. 1997, 8 & 9. pp. 45-65.
10
B. Fink. op. cit. p.165.
11
D. Nobus. Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis. London, Routledge,
2000.
12
R. Grigg. 'From the Mechanism of Psychosis to the Universal Condition of the Symptom: On
Foreclosure1 in D. Nobus (Ed.) Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London, Rebus
Press, 1998. p p 48-74.

175
points to the direction of disavowal rather than foreclosure. 13 Simon
masterfully brings superegoic puissance to the service of perverse sexual
enjoyment. His history, from being beaten by his father and teachers, to
being abused by sexual partners, prostitution, drugs and physical
violence, is a succession o£ modes of attaining puissance, each regulated by
different yet firm laws. His strategy is to bring the law, not the paternal
law but a law (we could say one law at a time), to bear on puissance.14 In
this respect his masquerade and perverse practices seem not to stand in
for the name-of-the-father (psychosis) but rather to operate in the
periphery of the law of the father as a means of its denial, challenge or
substitution (perversion).
Simon's strategies of sustaining a semblance of a self through
appearance and performance could also be understood as indications of
either a psychotic or a perverse structure. They could be seen as
supplementation strategies, parts of a delusional metaphor whose
function is to provide subjective consistency. Alternatively they could
operate as strategies of masquerade, of Simon turning himself to a
precious object to be offered to the Other's puissance. His reliance on
performing can be interpreted this way. Alternatively, his 'obsessively'
getting university degrees could be a sign of monnayage of a foreclosed
name-of-the-father.15 The modification of Simon's body seems to go well
beyond the imaginary, the body image. It could have the function of
creating a body where the body fails through marking the body in the real,
especially through tattooing. This would point to psychosis. But it could
also be the case that through bodily decorations Simon turns his body to a
beautiful Phallus, offered to be abused, to be consumed by the other, a
perverse strategy. 16 I am in favour of the latter, as it seems to me that

13
For the distinction see J.A. Miller.'An Introduction to Lacan's Clinical Perspectives' in
Reading Seminars I and II. New York, State University of New York Press, 1996. pp. 241-
247.
14
See J. Dor. The Clinical Lacan. Northvale, N.J., Jason Aronson, 1997.
15
See F.H. Freda. & D. Yemal. ]Forclusion, monnayage et suppleance du Nom-du-Pere' in
Clinique differentielle des psychoses. Paris, Navarin, 1988. pp.148-153.
16
For the body see C. Soler. op. cit. pp. 6-38.

176
Simon's core strategy is to install himself in the place of the Other's object
through the Other's ideals.
A similar dilemma poses itself with regard to Simon's transsexual
wish and his sexual fantasies of public castration. Transsexualism has
been linked to psychosis, 17 1 8 1 9 seen as an indication of a psychotic push-
to-the-Woman, being the Woman that men lack. This hypothesis could be
supported by Simon's sense of being a 'primitive monster', if it is
interpreted to refer to a state beyond sexuation, beyond the distinction
between the sexes. Moreover, the wounding of the body through
tattooing can be understood as castration in the real. However, Simon
seems to stage being a woman rather than incarnate the Woman, which
points to perversion rather than psychosis. In this respect the castration
fantasy can be seen as staging an attempt to enforce the incompletely
installed name-of-the-father, whereby the symbolic castration which
should have accompanied the Oedipus complex is enacted through
imaginary means. There are grounds to suspect that castration, 'being
forced to be a woman', is the scenario Simon repeatedly enacts in his
sexual encounters. Since the paternal law was incompletely installed,
Simon makes the Other pronounce the law. It is worth reiterating here
that perversion is not a return to a polymorphously perverse infantile
sexuality; it is rather a highly complex structure, which is affected by the
Other and which constitutes a strategy towards castration.20 Perversion,
thus, is approached from the point of view of the Oedipus complex. 21

17
F. Gorog. 'Clinical Vignette: A Case of Transsexualism' in R. Feldstein, B. Fink & M.
Jaanus (Eds.) Reading Seminars I and II. New York, State University of New York Press,
1996. pp.283-286.
18
R. Lefort. [Sujet de Vinconscient et suject de la psychose' in Clinique differentielle des
psychoses. Paris, Navarin, 1998. pp.383-399.
19
M. Safouan. 'Contribution to the Psychoanalysis of Transsexualism' in S. Schneiderman
(Ed.) Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan. New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1980. pp. 195-212.
20
B. Fink. op. cit.
21
J. Lacan. Le seminaire, livre IV: La relation d'objet. (1956-7). Paris, Seuil, 1994.

177
 In perversion the subject attempts to side-step or re-write the law of
the father through the collusion with and help of the mother. There are
indications in Simon's case of the mother's religious law being operative to
the point of replacing the law of the father. When taking the fantasies of
being physically abused by God into account, it could even be argued that
the Oedipal triangle of mother/father/child has been replaced for Simon
by religious-mother/punishing-God/masochistic-child, in a perverse
twisting of the mother's law. However, these claims approach the area of
speculation. Simon rarely talks about his mother and has never said
anything about the relation between his mother and his father.
Consequently, there is a conspicuous lack of the kind of material that
would elucidate the origin of the perverse structure.
Lacan's thesis is that in masochism, contrary to the apparent
abandonment oi the subject to the enjoyment of the sexual partner, it is the
masochistic subject who orchestrates the encounter in an attempt to make
the other pronounce the law and who fills the other with anxiety. 22 The
masochistic game is a strategy of putting limits to puissance through
inventing a law. Simon seems to have spent his life in search of laws that
would justify, yet limit puissance. He appears to have moderated his
practices in the past few years. He says he now does not provoke fights -
although he knows he would still enjoy the physical pain of being beaten -
but if provoked he does not back down. He only practises now in a
relationship, in which they will only do to one another what the other asks
them to do to them. He likes his partner being bossy and abusive, but
knows that if it got out of hand he is physically stronger than her and he
could stop her. Simon spoke of a male friend with whom there is mutual
attraction and who is very strong and can be very violent. He said he
would not have a sexual relation with him, even though he had done with
similar men in the past, because he could end up being very seriously
damaged. Simon enjoys being subject to the other's whim and he also
enjoys pain - but within limits. The limits only appear to be imposed by

J. Lacan. Seminar X: Angoisse. (1962-3). Unpublished seminar.

178
the other; at the end of the day it is Simon who decides on them. This is a
further indication of a perverse structure.
Despite his complaints about his 'depression', Simon tolerates quite
well and even induces his subjection to the fluctuation of jouissance at the
level of being. What he cannot tolerate and will do anything to avoid is
non-being, lack, being faced with the enigma of the Other's desire. Being
the Other's object is a more comfortable position for him to raising the
question of his place in the Other's desire.23 The question 'what does the
Other want from me' has always already been answered by Simon. His
grandmother longs for a girl, his father for an obedient son and his mother
for a normal child-hamster. The anxiety around failing to attain the
position of the precious object is preferable to raising questions about
what they really want, about their lack, about the inconsistency of their
desire. Simon's others are others who demand but do not desire. On his
side he 'desperately tries to please them', to plug up their lack, to be their
little imaginary phallus. This, of course, is and always has been doomed
to failure. 'Whatever you do you lose', Simon said once while describing
his attempts to 'please' his parents and grandparents as a child. As a
result he became rebellious, he would do the opposite of what his parents
wanted, in his words 'if he could not please them he would challenge
them' and take his mother's disappointment and his father's beatings in
return. 24 To the question 'what am I for the Other?1 Simon's answer is T am
a limp phallus - but I enjoy it'. If he cannot get symbolic recognition of his
'internal worth', he can at least get enjoyment out of being a porn-star
always on the brink of failure. Since he is not recognised as a legitimate
member of his paternal line, he can at least tattoo the family insignia on
his body. In this respect Simon seems to have acceded to alienation in and
through language. The drive is mapped by the Other's demand, his body
is marked by the signifier, his jouissance is regulated by signifying

23 See B. Fink op. cit.

24
For the function of defiance and transgression in perversion see J. Dor. The Clinical
Lacan. Northvale, N.J., Jason Aronson, 1997.

179
networks of his family history. Separation, however, through the
encounter with the Other's desire does not seem to have taken place. 25

Transference

Analysis with perverse subjects is held to be difficult because the

perverse subject locates himself in the place of the analyst's object, making
it impossible for the analyst to manoeuvre to a position of the analysand's
object-cause of desire. 26 The psychotic subject is also the object of the
Other's puissance. However, for the psychotic subject the analyst operates
as an unbarred Other, the object of the analysand's love and puissance in a
discrete erotomania. 27 The strategy of the perverse subject, on the other
hand, especially in the case of masochism, is to produce division, to raise
anxiety in the analyst as other as well as to make the analyst pronounce
the law. 28 Moreover, the perverse subject is clear about their mode of
puissance, there is no questioning or dissatisfaction regarding the sexual
relation, which makes the function of the subject-supposed-to-know
unavailable for the analyst. Perverts treat the analyst not as a supposed
subject of knowledge but as a supposed subject of enjoyment; they
themselves bear the knowledge of the pathways to enjoyment and attempt
to make the analyst an ally with regard to enjoyment. 29
In the beginning of the work Simon wanted me to lift his
depression. Although he knew I was a 'therapist', he insisted in the first
stages in considering the alternative of drug treatment, seeking a solution
at the level of his body. It took him a few months to settle with the idea
that there is a 'psychological' basis to his 'depression'. In the first stages of

25
For alienation and separation see B. Fink. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and
Jouissance. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1995.
26
J.A. Miller. ' On Perversion' in Reading Seminars I and II. New York, State University of
New York Press, 1996. pp. 306-320.
27
G. Morel. ' The Son as the Object a of the Father' in JCFAR. 1998,10 & 11. pp. 124-135.
28
J.A.Miller. (1996) op. cit.
29
D. Nobus. Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis. London, Routledge,
2000.

180
the work I was positioned as the Other of demand, according to his mode
of constructing his important others. He had fantasies that I would reject
him and stop working with him if he did not perform for me in the sense
of 'getting better' and he apologised profusely every time he reported
being 'depressed'. He also took it upon himself to entertain me through
humorous comments on his condition. He wanted to manoeuvre himself
to the position of a good analysand, an object that would satisfy me. At
the same time I seem to have operated as a superegoic Other for him. He
felt he had to justify himself and his actions to me and he would spend a
lot of time in self-accusations. This gradually shifted and I think I have
come to increasingly occupy the position of the subject-supposed-to-know,
as Simon addresses more consistently Oedipal issues and explores the
trajectories of his signifying history.
This is not to say, however, that Simon has abandoned his position
as my object; far from it. Apart from positioning himself as the object that
would satisfy me at the level of performance, the aspect of appearance
comes into transference in two.different strands, both of which have an
exhibitionistic flavour. Simon takes his coat a n d / o r jumper off w h e n he
comes into the consulting room in every session with me waiting for him
to finish in order to start the session. I assume that, as far he is consciously
aware, he does not want to reveal his tattoos to other people in the waiting
room.. He does want, however, to reveal his tattoos to me and possibly
wants me to look at him during his ritualistic undressing. The reverse
ritualistic dressing takes place at the end of the session, before he leaves
the room. In this process he displays his body as Phallus to me, and at
times, especially in the summer when more of his body is revealed, I have
to make an effort not to look at his tattoos in order to listen to what he
says. He also goes to the toilet every time he comes for a session, to the
point of me having to wait for him to come out in order to call him into
the consulting room. On a few occasions he asked whether he can go to
the toilet mid-way through the session, at which point I ended the session.
Moreover, on some occasions he repeatedly touches his trouser zip, as if
he is uncomfortable, during the session. These are strategies of drawing
attention to his penis and I am wondering whether his frequent visits to

181
the toilet have any symbolic or actual link to masturbation. Both strands
intensify in sessions when Simon talks about his sexuality. In this respect
Nobus1 statement that perverts 'seem to derive enjoyment from
embarrassing, shocking or exciting the analyst'30 rings true. The same
holds for Andre's formulation with respect to a similar exhibitionist
flavour of Simon's discourse:

Perversion is traceable as such within the transference...Hearing

the pervert speak, it is impossible not to experience an
impression of indecency; one always feels a bit violated by the
pervert's discourse...There is a perverse way of pronouncing the
fantasy...[Perverts have] a tendency to display their fantasies,
often by means of a provocation.31

Miller argues that analysis provides for the analysand a new arrangement
of puissance, a form of substitute satisfaction.32 This, of course, is a means
to re-arranging the field of puissance for the analysand beyond and after
analysis. Both of Simon's strategies of displaying himself as phallus and
referring to his penis can be seen in the light of this comment as substitute
forms of satisfaction, derived through Simon's attempt to become the
object of my puissance and to raise anxiety in me. Both strategies, I think,
have a perverse quality to them.

Direction of treatment

If the case presented here is a case of perversion, the main question

to be addressed is why Simon is in analysis, since 'true perverts are
30
D. Nobus. op. cit. p.46.
31
S. Andre. ' Transfer et interpretation dans un cas de perversion' in Actes de Vecole de la cause
freudienne. 1984, 6, pp.15-19. Quoted in D. Nobus. Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice
of Psychoanalysis. London, Routledge, 2000. p.46.
32
J. A. Miller. ' The Seminar of Barcelona' in Psychoanalytical Notebooks. 1998,1. pp. 11-66.

182
defined in some sense by not being analysable or by the very fact that they
very seldom enter analysis'.33 Fink comments that perverse subjects will
rarely enter analysis, unless treatment is imposed on them, and if they do,
their purpose will be to fool the analyst.34 Simon was made to see a
psychotherapist much earlier as a compulsory part of his drug
detoxification treatment. He told me that he 'managed to fool the
therapist' then, by talking about his depression and his drug addiction but
not his sexuality. He tried the same technique at the beginning of the
analysis and it took a few months into the work for his sexuality to be
discussed. This was responsible for the diagnosis of hysteria in the
beginning of the work.
A lack of puissance, a dissatisfaction with his sexuality was
certainly not Simon's reason to seek analysis. His presenting complaint
was and still remains his 'depression'. Simon does not question his mode
of puissance and now he is even more clear about it than before, or at least
he is more willing to acknowledge it. He increasingly owns his symptom.
He says before he was 'in denial'. He always obtained sexual gratification
in the same way, but until recently he thought he was experimenting and
he could change it, like changing clothes. He says he has to acknowledge
that this is what he is - he is bisexual, he is a masochist and transvestite -
and bear it, deal with it.
Fink comments that in analysis perverse subjects do not lose their
certainty about their mode of gratification, but will hopefully come to
question its origin.35 This is exactly the case with Simon. He has
consistently in the past year traced the origin of his perverse practices in
terms of his subjective and family history. He has acknowledged the
pervasiveness of puissance in his life and explored the strategies by which
he induces and regulates it. Moreover, with regard to the interrelation
between the signifier and puissance, he is addressing the way his strategies

33
J. A. Miller. [An Introduction to Lacan's Clinical Perspectives' in Reading Seminars I and II.
New York, State University of New York Press, 1996. p.244.
34
B. Fink. op. cit.
3
s ibid.

183
with respect to puissance link across signifying networks; for example, he
is exploring the way guilt - clinically speaking, the superegoic puissance of
being abused - has been the regulating principle of his sexuality, love life
and work.
This exploration has produced significant shifts in the past year.
With regard to Simon's 'depression1, the fluctuation of puissance, through
the analytic work the periods of anxiety are getting progressively shorter
and numbness tends to predominate with brief periods of 'feeling ok'.
While Simon does not find this completely satisfactory, he says he prefers
being numb to panicking and treats this change as an improvement.
There has also been a shift with regard to the content and severity of the
three fears, which, as argued earlier, provide the signifying substance for
the fluctuation of puissance. In terms of severity, Simon gets less
overwhelmed by them and can adopt a more critical position towards
them. In terms of content, all three fears have mutated into different
forms. The fear of failing his university course has been transformed into
a concern that his degree will not be very good. The paralysing effect of
the early form of this anxiety, which drove Simon's work to a halt and led
him to analysis, has correspondingly been transformed into an impetus for
harder work. Simon's realisation that he will complete his course had a
direct impact on the mutation of the second fear, around his lack oi future.
Simon can now contemplate a future beyond being a student and is
discussing possible work prospects. Simon's fear around his lack of a
future has also been disentangled from his mother's demand to be
'normal' and reduced to its signifying core of anxiety organised around
the potential failure of his appearance and performance strategies.
A significant shift has also taken place with regard to the third fear,
concerning Simon's love life. Simon's dilemma has been between an
abusive relationship which sustains his sexual puissance and locates him
in his favourite position of being the woman's servant, but which is
otherwise unsatisfactory, and an 'equal' yet non-sexual relationship based
on 'understanding'. In the beginning of the work Simon complained about
Susan's constant criticisms of him, but took their validity for granted, as
his 'idolisation and fetishisation of women' precluded any possibility of a

184
critical response. Through the work Simon came to understand Susan's
behaviour towards him as 'emotionally abusive', which enabled a link
across signifying networks, in this case between Simon's mode of sexual
gratification and the emotional side of his relation. In other words Simon
realised that Susan's abusive behaviour towards him is part and parcel of
'being abused' as his preferred mode of enjoyment. This had a number of
consequences. Firstly, it enabled Simon to acknowledge the masochistic
enjoyment he gets out of being put down and criticised by his partner.
Secondly, it allowed him to adopt a more critical stance towards Susan's
criticisms, question their validity and work out the forms of abuse he
enjoys from those that cause him too much distress. Finally, he gradually
shifted from a dilemma between the two relationships to the possibility of
breaking up with both and considering other possibilities for the future.
In sum, the exploration of Simon's signifying pathways and strategies of
puissance through the analytic work has already resulted in significant
improvements in the areas of love and work as well as the development of
more effective modes of managing puissance.
Simon entered analysis in a complete subjection to the Other's
demand, caught up in a struggle to either realise it or defy it. In the
beginning of the work the Other was undifferentiated and the Other's
demand was articulated either in abstract terms (for example, 'I should be
normal') or in general terms (for example, 'people' having expectations of
him). Through tracing the signifying network of Simon's history, this
undifferentiated demand has been broken down to the demands of his
important early others, making the inconsistency of his others' demands as
well as the impossibility of fulfilling them gradually more apparent. This
has resulted in a relative loosening of the grip of the Other's demand and
might even lead to the emergence of the Other's desire as a new
dimension for Simon.
Simon, according to Miller's formulation of the reasons perverse
subjects seek analysis, is 'not satisfied with his satisfaction'. 36 He is not

36 J.A. Miller (1996) op. cit. p.310.

185
lacking in puissance, but it is 'not the right kind'; 37 too much 'depression'
and superegoic hammering, too little sexual enjoyment. The treatment
does not aim to change Simon's mode of sexual gratification. It rather
aims to re-arrange the configuration of real, imaginary and symbolic co-
ordinates to 'reduce the price of suffering that has to be paid in order to
accede to drive satisfaction'. 38 Simon is figuring out that this is the case, or
as he puts it 'that there is something in it for him'. That is why he keeps
coming to talk about what he has been enacting throughout his life, to
trace the paths of his sexuality, to bind puissance with the signifier, so that
more sustainable and less costly modes of puissance become available to
him.

Address for correspondence: Psychology Department

City College
21, Proxenou Koromila Street
54622 Thessaloniki
Greece

email: E.Georgaca@city.academic.gr

37
ibid, p. 309.
38
J.A. Miller. 'The Seminar of Barcelona' in Psyctoanalyttcal Notebooks. 1998, 1, p. 52.

186
 THE CASE OF THE 'FALLING MAN':
AN EXAMINATION OF THE FUNCTION OF DEMAND IN ANALYTIC
PRACTICE

Carol Owens

You know that what we are trying to do here, namely in the

difficulties, in the impasses, in the contradictions which are the fabric
of your-practice- it is the most elementary supposition of our work
that you should be aware of it - is to try to bring you back always
to the point where these impasses and difficulties can also
show themselves to you with their full significance...}

One is aware here of the terrible temptation that must face the analyst
to respond, however little, to demand.2

Since I have been struck in my own practice with the difficulties of

dealing with demand in its various guises, and since this management of
demand and its function within the analysis strikes me as being a core
element of Lacanian analysis, I wish, in this paper, to go some way toward a
technical and clinical exegesis of the difficulties and problems which the
concept of demand poses in an analytic treatment. 3 Meriting a mere page of

1
J. Lacan. The Formations of the Unconscious. Seminar V, 1957-1958. Trans. C. Gallagher
(Unpublished), session 15, p.l. (emphasis added).
2
J. Lacan. Vie Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power. (1958). In Ecrits. (1966).
Trans. A.Sheridan, London, Routledge, (1977) 1999, p.276.
3
This paper is a modified version of C. Owens, 'Being in Demand': An Examination of tlie
Function of Demand in Analytic Practice. (Unpublished M.Sc. Thesis), School of Psychotherapy,
St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin. 2002.

133
entry in Evans' Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis4, Evans inscribes the
concept of demand as originating from the 1956-7 seminar, and gently orders
its progression through Seminar V and the Direction of the Treatment paper
culminating in a short gloss on Seminar VIII. While Nobus, 5 in his
commentary on Lacanian practice does much greater justice to the concept,
weaving it in and out of his broad discussion on Lacan's 'return to Freud'
project, still, I feel that the concept is underplayed in terms of what I believe
to be its crucial place in the clinical practice of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is
true that Lacan himself does not privilege demand as one of the fundamental
concepts of psychoanalysis, yet throughout Seminar XI demand is discoursed
in relation to desire, in relation to the transference, and ultimately
foregrounded in his concluding notes to the seminar where he reproduces the
'internal eight' schema, and makes the crucial point that in the transference
demand is separated from the drive only to be brought back by the analyst's
desire. 6 So, the appropriate handling of demand is always the responsibility
of the analyst and this locates it as a fundamental technique of analysis.
From the moment the analysand speaks, and even well before that, a
transference is poised to take place, and that transference necessarily involves
demand. Therefore, attention to the circuit which demand navigates in the
function of speech is crucial and that is something which Lacan attends to
before the seminar of 1956-7. In particular, in Seminar F and The Function and
Field of Speech and Language? he emphasizes the concept of demand and its

4
D. Evans. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London, Routledge, 1996.
5
D. Nobus. Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis. Routledge, London. 2000.
6
J. Lacan. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Seminar XI, 1964. Ed. Jacques
Alain-Miller. Trans. A. Sheridan. Penguin Books, (1979) 1994, p.273.
7
J. Lacan. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 1. Freud's Papers on Technique. 1953-1954. Ed.
Jacques Alain-Miller. Trans. J. Forester. London, Norton, (1975) 1991.
8
J. Lacan. The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, 1953. In, Ecrits: A
Selection, 1966. Trans. A. Sheridan. Routledge, London. (1977) 1999.

134
appropriate management as one of the techniques of the art of dialogue that
constitutes analysis. Lacan says that 'it is in relation to the function of speech
that the different mainsprings of analysis are to be distinguished from each
other, and take on their meaning, their exact position'.9
This paper seeks then, to mobilize an examination of the 'exact
position' which the Lacanian concept of 'demand' as a 'mainspring' of
analysis inscribes in an analytic treatment. Accustomed as we are to studying
the failed cases of Freud for their treasures, it would appear, however, that
current practice admits little or no failure. Within the context of a 'failed case'
of my own, I will attempt to trace its lines of failure in terms of the function of
demand within that analysis. The case is argued to have failed on account of
my mismanagement of the client's demand(s). In what follows then, a
theoretical and clinical exegesis of demand is sketched out within the context
of the case in order to outline the difficulties involved in the management of
demand in analytic practice.

Background to the Case

It was Dermot's 10 partner who passed my name and telephone number

to him. She knew that I was working with clients in the area and asked if she
could give him my details. She described him as depressed, easily confused,
and not very talkative, but as someone whom she felt could benefit from
some form of psychotherapy. I suggested that she give him my details and
leave it up to him to get in touch. Dermot rang me one Monday evening and
during that telephone conversation he told me that he was very depressed
and that his partner Maureen 11 thought he should come to see me. He told

9 cf. J. Lacan. (1953-1954), op.cit, p. 261.

10
1 am using the pseudonym 'Dermot' to refer to my client throughout this account.
11
1 shall use the pseudonym 'Maureen' when speaking of the client's partner.

135
me that he had been on anti-depressants for the past year and that he had
suffered a number of bereavements that had left him very sad. His speech
was slurred and unclear at times and I found his accent difficult to
understand such that I had to ask him to repeat some of his words. We
arranged a time to meet and I began to explain in detail how he would find
my office. The details I gave were exactly those that I would give to any
prospective client but Dermot had difficulty following my explanations and
directions and I had difficulty in determining whether or not he had
successfully worked out how to find me. We had arranged to meet in two
weeks time. During those two weeks he rang me twice to check the time we
had arranged and to clarify again how to find me. On another occasion he
left a message on my answering machine that I again found difficult to
understand and had to ring him back in order to clarify what he had wanted
to communicate. In addition, Maureen rang me and was concerned that he
might not show up for the appointment; more specifically she was worried
that I might think badly of her if he failed to show up. I explained to
Maureen as kindly as I could that it was entirely between myself and Dermot
if he chose to come and that I would neither think well nor badly of her if he
chose otherwise.

The 'Preliminary Sessions'

I mention this range of communications taking place between myself

and the client prior to the first actual meeting with him because it is in
hindsight that I feel that these telephone calls acted as 'preliminary sessions'
with the client. That is, the client's demand was already being instated in
these early communications and I was not aware of this at the time. In fact, I
am convinced, because of what subsequently happened, that my 'helpful
responses' to these early demands led to the formation of Dermot's
identifications of me with his eldest daughter, and his mother. Whilst I noted

136
the extremity of his apparent confusion, I didn't operate with respect to his
demands from the position of a transference. Furthermore, insofar as these
preliminary communications acted as preliminary sessions in which he
instated his demand, I fell into the trap of the function of speech qua
mundane communication. It is probably worth noting here that while
Dermot was one of my earlier clients since beginning analytic work, what
was already pronounced for me were his overwhelming demands of me,
prior to the 'treatment1. That is, from the very outset, there was something
radically different in what was being asked of me, than that which I had (in
my albeit limited experience) thus far encountered.
That the transference could already be active from the moment Dermot
appealed to me if not before, although meaningful at the level of theoretical
knowledge, was not therefore pertinent in my responses to these early
demands. Indeed, as I sought to eliminate uncertainty vis-a-vis the time and
place of our first 'meeting', by organizing our discourse along a conscious ego-
ego trajectory, it is arguable that I allowed the possibility of the client's desire
to stagnate even before we actually met. As Lacan says in Seminar X,12
anxiety has a relationship with certainty. That which causes desire also
causes anxiety and sets the drives in circulation. Stopping up the possibility
of uncertainty, therefore, meddles with the client's desire. Recall what Lacan
argues in his paper on The Direction of the Treatment: the satisfaction of
demand hides the object of desire from the subject, that is, desire vanishes as
the demand addressed to the Other is responded to as if this demand only
signified need. 13 This response by the Other/analyst ignores the unconscious
phantasy implied in the client's demand since it fails to recognize that all the

12
J. Lacan. Anxiety, Seminar X, 1962-1963. Trans. C. Gallagher (unpublished). Session 13, p.5.
13
J. Lacan, (1958) The Direction of the Treatment op. cit. p. 272.

137
demands, which are articulated in an analysis, are merely transferences
intended to maintain desire. 14

Insofar as this ego-ego trajectory had been activated, and reinforced with every
subsequent telephone conversation, when the time came to introduce the
rules of the treatment, it could be argued that as Dermot had already been
interacting with me for some time prior to my introduction of the rules of the
treatment, he already had good cause to consider that he was somehow
special, and that as I already had been making allowances for him in view of
pandering to his positioning as confused, and needing extra special help just
in getting to see me, I would go on making allowances for him throughout.
In terms of these early communications, something indeed had become
already crystallized: his position as helpless, my position as helpful. The very
kind of crystallization that Lacan systematically warns us against throughout
Seminar 7, was afforded by my being insufficiently aware on the one hand of
the functions of speech in an analysis, and insufficiently capable of curtailing
the extent of my early responses to his demands on the other hand.
In Seminar I it is around the misconceived operation of the ego that
Lacan directs much attention in his critique of analytic practice. Ego
psychology and other non-analytic informed psychotherapies, in their radical
elevation of the ego in Freud's work as the pivotal concept around, and from
which the individual suffers, miss the point, which for Lacan is quite simply
that while the ego is that through which the speech of the subject is mediated,
the subject speaks from elsewhere. Hence, interventions which stick to the
emanations of the ego weld themselves to the register of speech within which
the ego has come to be constructed, that is, that of the imaginary order.
Now, it isn't simply a case of imaginary = bad, symbolic = good, since
both orders are involved in the speaking subject,15rather it is the

14
ibid. p. 271.

138
responsibility of the analyst to hear and to understand the functions of speech
as it is articulated within these two orders. It is this 'response-ability1 of the
analyst's, which on the one hand qua intervention sanctions, the implicit rule
involved in speech, that is, that there is no speech without a reply,16 and
which on the other hand consists in the understanding that his intervention
has the symbolic function of the recognition or abolition of the analysand as
subject 17
The dual-body treatment, which Lacan so caustically condemns,
pretends that speech is articulated by one individual and heard by another
who replies to that speech, and that somehow, by being listened to, the
individual 18 gets cured. The demand inherent in speech, therefore, that there
is or should be a reply gets misappropriated by the therapist whose
interventions operate entirely within the imaginary register of speech
conventionalized and crystallized as communication. The ego as a concept,
which is widely misunderstood, is absolutely caught up then with the
Lacariian understanding of the function of speech. To misunderstand the
function of speech in analysis is to misunderstand the function of the ego,
and necessarily to misunderstand the concept of demand. It is only by
introducing the forced labour of free association that the subject moves away
from the strictures of polite speech and communication. In this way the
demand, which in speech is that it should be replied to, becomes elevated to
its true function in analysis, of being the porthole to the desire of the subject.
For 'analysis is not the reconstitution of the narcissistic image' to which it is so

15
cf. J. Lacan. (1953) The Function and Field, op. cit. p.79: 'analysis consists in playing in all the
many staves of the score that speech constitutes in the registers of language and on which
depends the overdetermination of the symptom'.
16
ibid. p. 40.
17
ibid. p. 87.
18
1 use the term deliberately here to connote the received concept of the undivided rational
essential self of which Lacan is so critical in his work.

139
often reduced, but that precisely is the consequence of the 'collaboration of
two egos1.19 Indeed, to the extent that the analytic experience allows the
subject to 'realign himself within the symbolic determinations which make
him a subject with a history',20 Lacan insists that that experience is defined on
another plane than that of the imaginary, that is, that of the symbolic, and he
maintains that analysts are, or should be, practitioners of the symbolic.21
By speaking, the subject demands that his speech is replied to, that is
the convention of speech and this convention is well conditioned by the
imaginary fixations and identifications which support the development of the
ego. The subject speaks in order to be recognized on this imaginary level.22
But another plane, that of the symbolic, this other dimension in which the
subject is constituted even 'before he comes into this world', 23 also articulates
itself in the demand to be recognized by the other.
It is this symbolic demand, which manifests itself in the transference
that Lacan will say mediates the subject's history back to early infancy.24

19
J. Lacan. op. cit, 1953-1954, pp. 271-272.
20
ibid. p. 197.
21
J. Lacan. (1953) The Function and Field, op. cit. p. 72.
22
We can see this on one level in the repeated utterings of the analysand which seek the
complicity of the analyst as counterpart, as an-other, in the 'do you know what I mean?', the
'you know?', and the 'you know what I am talking about?'. The subject is compelled to seek
at every twist and turn of his speech a response from the analyst which demonstrates
sufficiently that indeed this other hears, and understands as if she/he were another, in fact as
if he were another exactly like him.
23
op.cit. p. 68.
24
cf. J. Lacan. The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power. (1958). In, Ecrits: A
Selection. (1966). Trans. A. Sheridan. Routledge. London. (1977) 1999, p. 254, where he says:
'Through the mediation of the demand, the whole past opens up right down to infancy. The
subject has never done anything other than demand, he could not have survived
otherwise...', cf. Also: J. Lacan. op.cit, 1957-1958, sessions 23, p. 10; 24, p. 4; 27, p. 6 and
session 28, p.3 where, for example, he says. '... this retroactive covering which opens out to
the subject once he simply articulates his word, namely insofar as the word gives rise to all

140
What constitutes the subject as subject is his question, and as analysts we
must know for whom and through whom the subject poses this question.
This is what is involved in knowing how to reply to the subject's demands in
an analysis. For if we know for whom and through whom the demand is
articulated, we have a greater chance of understanding the desire which is
there 'to be recognised' and about the object to whom this desire is
addressed. 25 In the case of Dermot, even now, with a great deal more
experience in analytic work, it is difficult to imagine what would have been
an effective intervention in these early times of the treatment, so as to limit
the extent, and consequences of the extended ego-ego communication. One
thing though seems quite clear: the repeated demands, which Dermot made
of me during the short treatment, were facilitated by my response to the
demands that took place prior to the treatment. Much of what Lacan has to
say about the functions of speech in an analysis make sense within the four
walls of the consulting room; however, they make less sense if, from the
client's point of view, the treatment has already commenced even before he
has come face-to-face with the analyst. This gives rise to two areas of
problematisation in the management of demand.
First of all, this commonplace situation where there may be a number
of 'chats' prior to the treatment proper, is problematic due to the inherence of
the demand in speech on two levels as I have outlined above: on the
imaginary plane of identifications with the counterpart, the small other of
Lacanian theory, and within the symbolic register evocative of a third term,
the Other, of whom the subject poses the question of his very status as
subject. These two orders of speech overlap however, insofar as speech in the
imaginary concerns the Other of the unconscious, of the language of the

the background and all the history back as far as its origin, of this demand in which the
whole life of speaking man is inserted'.
25
J. Lacan. (1953) The Function and Field, op. cit. p.89.

141
subject's desire, via the signifier. The analyst's responses to the very earliest
of demands can miss, therefore, the pertinence of the signifier within which
the symbolic function of the demand is articulated. Missing the signifier of
the demand, implicates the analyst in these early responses to the demand,
within a circuit of satisfaction. Lacan says most forcefully, that demand relies
upon a non-satisfaction, a frustration, 26 such that it is to the extent that a
demand is unsatisfied that is will repeat itself.
Secondly, Lacan says of the beginning of analysis, that the analytic
relation is a pact set up on diverse levels, which are very confused. The
preliminary sessions of an analysis exist to establish the pact and the rules
along which it will operate. My point here, is to suggest that what counts as
preliminary sessions for us, or as the prehminary session, is, or may be, in fact
already post facto for the analysand. From the very first moment he addresses
us (usually on the telephone), a transference may already be in place, and our
speech, whatever that may consist of, already affects the subject since it is
uttered in the transference.

A Need by Any Other Name

That Dermot presented himself as 'needy' from the very first time we
spoke is not in itself unusual in terms of how a client will begin to speak to an
analyst/therapist. A need insofar as it is addressed to an Other is already
insinuated in the direction of desire. As need attempts expression, it has to be
spoken, and becomes insubstantially articulated as demand. Moreover, as
Lacan points out, the subject knows what he is dealing with in the mind of

26
cf. J. Lacan. (1957-1958). op.cit., session 10, p. 3, where Lacan speaks of the primordial
symbolization of this mother who 'comes and goes', who is called for when she is not there
and who, as such, is pushed away again when she is there, so that she can be called back.

142
the Other' and disguises his demand according to the code of the Other. 27 In
his discussion of the 'salmon mayonnaise' joke, Lacan makes this point very
clearly, and furthermore, mobilizes an understanding of how the need has to
be disguised in order for the subject of need and the subject who will accede
to the demand to perform ingenuously accordingly. The subject, that is,
demands something that he sometimes needs in the name of something else
that he sometimes also needs, as a pretext for the demand. The Other to
whom this need disguised as demand is addressed, can act beneficially in the
direction of this demand whilst ignoring what might be at stake for the
subject. As Lacan ironically admits, if you are responding to the demand that
the poor make of you to be clothed, why not clothe the poor at Christian
Dior?2S It is insofar as what presents itself in desire is, according to Lacan,
something, which is borrowed from need, 29 that our desires are constructed
from the 'raw material' of our needs. This desire is the result of the
subtraction of the need from the unconditional demand (for love),30 the result
of their splitting. Desire presents itself as 'something', which in this

27
What Lacan elucidates in the 'graph of desire', which he discusses throughout Seminar V,
consists in elaborating upon the two functions of speech, insofar as a truth of the subject
emerges at the point where these functions of speech intersect first, that which Lacan calls the
code, the Other (as companion of language), and second, that which Lacan calls the message,
or meaning. The trajectory of being then, speaks its way through the code of (what may be
said, heard and understood by) the Other, and because of its retroactive movement through
the signifying chain and its constituting effects in terms of the code, a meaning is born. If
there is any truth, Lacan says, this is where it will be enunciated, but, insofar as speech also
employs mundane discourse whose job it is partly to reassure us that we are indeed better
than cinimals, it will be a speech which 'drones', which 'says nothing'. Insofar as there is any
truth which is spoken, it is entirely in relation to how what is spoken is codified by the Other.
cf. J. Lacan. (1957-1958) op.cit, sessions 1, p.8; 2, p.18; 6, p.15.
28
ibid, session 5, p.6.
29
ibid, session 21, p.12.
30
J. Lacan. The Signification of the Phallus, 1958, In Ecrits, 1966. Trans. A. Sheridan. Routledge.
London. (1977) 1999, p.287.

143
unconditional demand points to a reduction of need. This is the original
condition of what Lacan calls the symbolic dialectic of demand, since the
primordial reduction of need experienced as the by-product of the symbolic
demand for love, formulates the conditionality of the subject's unconscious
desire (to be the desire of the Other).
It is precisely here then, in the possibility of the manifold disguised
demand that the analyst faces difficulty: what seems a simple request for
clarification is already an appeal to the Other, sensitized to the Other's
response as marking out a future trajectory of 'supply1.31 That the Other
responds straightforwardly to an appeal for 'directions' is already to insinuate
the transference along the lines of a primordial mythical satisfaction
organized in the identification with the mother's desire.
In his paper entitled The Signification of the Phallus (delivered in 1958 in
Munich), 32 Lacan argues that demand bears on 'something other than the
satisfactions it calls for'. Originally manifested in the primordial relation to
the mother, demand constitutes the Other as possessing the privilege of
satisfying needs. Insofar as the mother has the power to deprive the subject
of this satisfaction by her signifying presence-absence, the subject's demand
becomes elevated to the radical form in which it remains: neither as a means
for absolute satisfaction of needs, nor as a straightforward conscious
expression of lack, but rather, as something radically impossible which by its
nature requires to be opposed in order to be sustained. This radical
impossibility of demand is constituted for Lacan in its primitive reference to
the 'complete success, or the first success, or the mythical success, or the

31
cf. J. Lacan. (1958) The Direction of the Treatment op. cit. p. 254; where he says ironically: 'In
short, I have succeeded in doing what in the field of ordinary commerce one would dearly
like to be able to do with ease: with supply I have created demand.'
32
J. Lacan. (1958) The Signification of the Phallus, op. cit. p. 286.

144
archaic, primordial form of the excess of the signifier.33 Since demand is first
articulated within the primordial relation to the mother, signified according
to her comings and goings,34 it constitutes the mother/Other as being the One
(and only) who can satisfy needs. The satisfaction of needs, and the
experience of pleasure that this need-satisfaction gives rise to, is understood
as a proof of love. Therefore, demand is elevated to a symbolic function
which achieves more than mere need-satisfaction; indeed, on this, Lacan says
that the satisfaction of need appears only as the lure in which the demand for
love is crushed. 35 So the subject goes on demanding and remains all the more
deprived, according to Lacan, to the extent to which the need articulated in
the demand is satisfied. As analysts this has a real bearing on the way that
we respond to the subject's demands: responding to a demand as the mere
articulation of need allows the Other (mother, analyst, etc) to interpret those
'needs' and the best way to address them, thereby running the risk of stuffing
the subject with the 'choking pap' of their (our) love.36 Moreover, this wild
analytic attempt to interpret needs qua response to demand, sanctions, ratifies
not the subject's relationship to an object, but the analyst's own belief that he
truly is the 'subject who knows' along what plane of identification the subject
is moving in order to place himself in optimal relationship with this object of
desire.37

33
J. Lacan. (1957-1958) op. cit. session 5, p. 8. cf. also J. Lacan. Family Complexes in the
Formation of the Individual, 1938. Trans. C. Gallagher (Unpublished), p. 13, where Lacan
comments about the 'maternal imago' containing in its formula 'the nostalgias of humanity:
the metaphysical mirage of universal harmony; the mystical abyss of affective fusion; the
social Utopia of totalitarian dependency...'.
34
J. Lacan. (1957-1958) op. cit. session 9, pp. 14-15, where he says that what is signified by the
maternal signifier is the phallus, the signifier par excellence of imaginary frustration.
35
J. Lacan. (1958). The Direction of the Treatment, op. cit. p. 263.
36
ibid. pp. 263-264.
37
J. Lacan. (1957-1958), op.cit. session 23, p.3; where he says 'In fact the desire of the hysteric
is essentially and as such not the desire of an object, but the desire of a desire...', and cf. also

145
 Furthermore, we have to understand that as the need gets expressed in
language 'it passes through the defiles of the signifier', as such it becomes
transformed, modified, altered. So, while the primordial satisfaction of need
is experienced as an essential pleasure, the primordial reference of demand is
about inscribing the structuring action of the signifier established with
respect to need, and desire, in an 'essential alteration', and this alteration is
constituted by the entry of desire into the demand. 38 The original,
presupposed, successful demand, therefore, constitutes the foundation of the
first exercise of the signifier in the expression of desire.39 No matter how
disorganized the small child's use of the signifier, for Lacan, insofar as she
directs her appeal (demands in the name of desire for repeated need
satisfaction) to the Other, and insofar as the mOther receives, and sanctions
the appeal, a double moment occurs in which, the demand directed to the
Other is given 'meaning', and the Other qua radical locus of what may be
produced as meaning-full, are simultaneously constituted. The meaning
which demand obtains qua signifier lends itself therefore to the exercise of the
signifier and pleasure, which is afforded by the prolonging of this exercise.
So, when Lacan argues that the use of demand is underpinned by its
reference to the complete, first, mythical, archaic, or primordial form of the
exercise of the signifier, it is to foreground demand as the function of speech,
which transforms need into desire in a movement from the imaginary register
to that of the symbolic.40 As such we can begin to understand that any
subsequent response to demand which operates entirely within the

J. Lacan. (1953-1954), op. cit. p.184, where he argues that if Freud had not put his own ego
into play with Dora with the aim of remodeling her ego, he would not have wrecked the
analysis.
38
J. Lacan. (1957-1958), op.cit, session 15, p.l.
39
ibid, session 5, p.7.
40
ibid. p.9.

146
imaginary register of divining 'what a person wants' when they ask for
something, does something which achieves a kind of reduction of the subject.
The passage from demand to desire, however, should not be
understood as absolute, that is, that in some way desire replaces demand. It
is rather that desire is inherent in the demand, and because the line of
demand which relates the subject to the signifier, also activates the imaginary
plane upon which he will operate thereafter in an attempt to recapitulate
something which has fallen away upon accession to the symbolic order. 41
Desire is unconscious. The demand which veils desire, is also unconscious. 42
The desire of the subject insofar as it is submitted to the law of the desire of
the Other, and is modeled by the conditions of the demand, is structuring in
the extreme. For, at the culmination of the Oedipus complex the signifiers of
primordial demand-exchange are repressed but not forgotten; that which
sublimates desire to be the desire of the Other finds via substitution the range
of signifiers which like 'insignia' will brand, mark the subject insofar as he has
acceded to the position of desiring subject.43 Therefore, it is to the extent that
the primitive character of demand can (re)appear in the present of the
analysand, formulated as demands made of the analyst that we must mark its
function.

41
cf. Freud's 'refolding of the object' which he introduces in the third essay of his Three Essays
on the Theory of Sexuality, S.E. VII, p.222.
42
cf. Lacan's warnings regarding the handling of the hysteric's demand: she does not know
that she cannot be satisfied in the demand, but the analyst should know it. J. Lacan. (1957-
1958) op.cit, session 18, p.12.
^ibid. Here, he makes frequent reference to the 'ego-ideal' as the modulator of the imaginary
relationship of the child and the mother, the disappointments inherent in the imaginary
frustration leading to the 'beyond of the demand' which he situates qua sublimation as bound
up with the symbolic claim for the insignia of masculinity, cf. for example, session 16, p.9.
Also noteworthy is what Lacan refers to as 'the transformation of demand' which he calls the
ego ideal in session 19, p.14.

147
 In what happens before Dermot actually met me for the first time as
well as in the brief duration of the treatment, we can observe this steadfast
mobilization of demand in its myriad guises.
The time of Dermot's first session had come. He rang me on my
mobile from his mobile to say that he had arrived in the village but could not
figure out where I was. He had stopped in his car facing the wrong direction
entirely, at the end of a busy main street. In the end I said I would go down
to the street and I described my physical appearance so that he would see me
waiting at the edge of the street outside my office. Finally he approached.
All this time we were communicating on our mobiles. He pulled over at the
side of the road and proceeded to launch into a detailed and laborious
explanation of how he had become lost. At this point he was actually causing
a traffic jam so I suggested where he could park his car and I waited for him
at the door. Already ten minutes into our session time the 'demander 1 had
arrived.

The Demander at the Door (The case of the Falling Man):

Four Sessions and a Phone call

As I accompanied Dermot u p the stairs to my office he started to speak

about his fear of falling. Having fallen twice before and ended up in hospital
both times, he explained how worried he was about climbing stairs. Indeed
he clutched desperately to the banisters and proceeded very slowly and
cautiously upwards, all the time breathing laboriously. By the time we got to
my office he was wheezing and asked if I could give him a glass of water. I
went at once to find a glass of water and I was in fact very concerned that he
might pass o u t After some time he recovered and immediately began to
speak. He said that there were three things that were bothering him: a
dispute over some land that he had inherited from his father had developed
between himself and the rest of the family; his relationship with Maureen

148
was troubled and he wished to put that right; and an itch which traveled all
around his body caused him much consternation and discomfort, which he
described as rendering him speechless. About his relationship with Maureen
he said that he thought he 'might have to give her up' and that it would kill
him if he had to do so. He spoke of his lingering depression, which he linked,
to three bereavements.
His wife to whom he had been married for thirty-three years had died
in the early 1990's, and his younger brother and his mother, both of who had
lived with him under his care for some years, both died in the same year, four
years later. Dermot was almost sixty years old when he came to see me.
This account of his filled most of the remaining time left of his session.
I outlined the manner in which we would work stressing the rule of free
association, and the prehminary sessions that would allow both of us to
decide if we would work together in trie longer term. He smiled at me and
said that he felt happy about this as he felt that I was the last possible avenue
available to him that could help him, and that he was pleased with the person
he had met. Thinking he was introducing further material I repeated these
last words 'the person you have met?' to which he responded: you.
During the week between the first session and the second session,
Dermot rang me to check the time of the session (we had arranged to meet at
the same time on the same evening of each week). Again, I clarified. Again, I
responded to the demand to eliminate uncertainty. Again, I did not respond
from an analytic position sensitive to the transference. The second session
proceeded akin to the first with the slow climbing of the stairs. When we
arrived in my little office, Dermot sat on the couch and after about five
minutes or so, asked me if I could do him a little favour: from where he sat he
was blinded by the sun and asked me if I would mind moving my chair to the
opposite side of the room so that he was not facing the window. I hesitated
as I began to notice the accumulation of demands but could not deny him this
'favour' especially as he was mopping his eyes that were streaming with the

149
effort of looking at me framed against the sunlit window. I hesitated, but I
gave in again. I could not deny the logic of his appeal on the one hand, nor
could I find any analytical response to object to his appeal, on the other hand.
There was something overwhelming in his appeal, which struck me as
unconditional. Lacan speaks about this 'unconditionality' late in Seminar V,
when he charts the desire of the obsessional. He says that there is something
intolerable in the way the obsessional demands. 44 He says, 'it is not a
demand like the others, in other words that it has the character of absolute
condition which is what I designated for you as being that of desire'.45
Regrettably, I had not come across this extremely astute observation of
Lacan's at the time when Dermot was coming to me, perhaps the whole of
Seminar V should be required reading for anybody before undertaking analytic
work!
What transpired, however, was that as in the first session once I had
responded to this explicit demand (the drink of water, the movement of my
chair) he began to speak. He explained his fear of falling commensurate with
his worry that his youngest and eldest daughters were becoming estranged
from him. At this point he speculated that I would probably be around the
same age as his eldest daughter. The first time he fell, he had been brought to
hospital and received a lot of care, support and loving attention from all of
his six children. The second time he fell (almost a year later) on his way out
of his doctor's surgery, stumbling over the doorstep, he had again been
admitted to hospital. This time because he had lost consciousness, when he
came to in the hospital, he was alone. When his family came to see him, he
felt that they were less sympathetic and that even the hospital staff was less

44
J. Lacan. (1957-1958), op.cit, session 22, pp. 14-15. In fact he speaks of the child who will
become obsessional: 'there are certain children among others, who demand little boxes, from
whom their parents find this demand for the little box to be properly speaking an intolerable
demand, and it is intolerable'
45
ibid. p.15.

150
caring. He explained that now he was worried that he would fall again and
that nobody would know again, and perhaps they again would be less caring.
As a result he found that he had to walk really slowly and carefully, studying
the surface of the ground in order to avoid tripping up. He felt especially
that his youngest and eldest daughters were becoming impatient with him
and were not as loving toward him as before.
He prefaced the third session with a concern that he had following
what he had said about Maureen during the first session. He was worried
that he had spoken badly of her. He had said that she was checking up on
him, making sure he went to the sessions, and wanting to know what went
on in the sessions. He went on to say that she was constantly wanting to go
to bed with him, a demand which he refused, and that she used bad language
which he found distasteful compared to his wife who had never uttered a
'foul1 word in all the time they were married.
He felt that Maureen needed help and medication more that he. Sex,
in Dermot's terms, was for marriage; it was sacred and precious. He said that
he felt sad and lonely and that he missed his parents. He began to cry.
Weeping and sobbing he spoke of his parents' happy marriage, his blissful
childhood (one of eight children) where anything could be spoken of, and
every child was equally close to both mother and father, who
unquestioningly saw to their every requirement.
He devoted the fourth session to three issues. He spoke about the
dispute between himself and his siblings (especially his eldest living brother),
which had developed over the land, which his father had bequeathed to him.
He explained that his father had done this because both parents and a
younger brother had been living with him. His father had instructed that
Dermot was at some point to redistribute the land equally between himself
and his other siblings. This Dermot had never done and this was what had
started the dispute. Dermot saw the land as his reward and entitlement for
caring for his mother and brother until their deaths. He spoke of enjoying

151
caring for them. He then went on to speak about his mother. His mother fell
on Christmas Eve the year before she died and broke her pelvis. She spent a
good deal of time in hospital and in May, back home with Dermot, she spoke
of never seeing Lilac in blossom again. Dermot cried and said that his mother
was too good. She never complained, she never asked for anything, she
constantly prayed. He continued to speak of his eldest living brother's
attempt to plot against him to get back the land, a plot that had begun when
Dermot's second fall had landed him in hospital. A plot, in other words,
which had begun, when Dermot was alone and unconscious.
On the evening of our fifth session, Dermot rang to say that he had
fallen again (that is, for the third time) and that he was calling me from
hospital and couldn't make the session. I thanked him for calling and said
that I hoped to see him next week if he were well enough. I asked him to ring
me next week to let me know if he couldn't make it and I reminded him that
although he would have to pay for the missed session we would find an
alternative time to make up the missed session.
Dermot rang the following week to say that he didn't wish to continue
the treatment. Rather irately, he commented that in any case, if he were to
continue missing sessions, he would end up having to pay me huge sums of
money for nothing. I never saw him again, and I did not receive payment for
the missed session.

The 'Law1 of Supply and Demand

Dermot's case suggests the analysis of demand in three separate yet

interwoven moments, each one commensurate with a fall, which reveals the
metonymic movement of desire in the ways that Lacan suggests, as bound up
with the primordial signifier of the 'law of the mother'. 46 There is no subject,

46
J. Lacan. (1957-1958) op. at, session 10, p.10.

152
Lacan says, if there is no signifier to ground him. In what follows, we shall
examine the signifier of the fall in Dermot1 s case as being the signifier of the
law of the mother. However, as the 'law of the mother' is merely the impure
mediation of the law of the Father in Lacan, it is the latter that 'authorizes and
founds the whole system of the signifier'.47 Moreover, as the signifier of the
fall in Dermot's case is bound up with an identification with the object of
desire of his dead mother, it opposes itself to the lack which is commensurate
with the symbolic act of castration which is, in Lacanian theory, an act carried
out by a real agent (the father, or something which replaces him, which holds
his place), bearing upon an imaginary object.48 The signifier of the fall
therefore, may be understood as a phobic solution to the taking on board of
Dermot's interpretation of the moment of his symbolic castration.
Earlier on, I mentioned Lacan's observation that the primitive
character of demand can reappear in the present of the analysand formulated
as demands made of the analyst. What is of interest to us then, is the return
to the present of those signifiers, which in the demand articulate pre-Oedipal
and Oedipal exchanges. 49 Lacan makes frequent reference in the last few
sessions of Seminar V to this regression to the use of 'certain signifying
systems' or signifiers which retroactively conjure up the condition of the
demand which the subject has deployed from earliest childhood.50 He says:

What is in question, are signifiers. What we call the oral phase,

the anal phase, is the fashion in which the subject articulates his

47
ibid, session 26, p.7.
48
ibid, session 9, p.12 and cf. also session 26, p.8.
49
see: ibid, session 12, p.7, for Lacan's commentary on baby Anna Freud's dream of 'cherries,
strawberries, raspberries, flan' to indicate the return of those signifiers which represent not
what was needed, but what was prohibited, and so what is expressed in the demand is not a
mere satisfaction of the (hunger) need, but something which exceeds need.
50
ibid, sessions 23, p.10; 24, p.4; 27, p.6, and 28, p.3.

153
 demand by the appearance in his discourse, here in the largest
sense, in all the ways in which his neurosis makes itself present
before us, of signifiers which have been formed at one or other
stage of his development, which were the signifiers which were
of service to him either in the more recent, or in the oldest
phases for articulating his demand. 51

Let us now explore the signifier of the fall in Dermot's case, in terms of
the return of the signifier of identification with the object of his mother's
desire, and in terms of his phobic solution to taking on board the law of the
father. The 'fall' qua signifier is then a 'full word', which Lacan says is
pronounced with all the subject's being, and which in the demand, is raised to
the function of a signifier that affords neurotic jouissance.52

The First Fall

Dermot's demands of me prior to and during the first couple of

sessions make sense in terms of his experiences following his first fall. He
was treated with sympathy and care. By positioning himself as someone
easily confused and needing direction, he attempts to elicit a response from
me as someone who should care about and help him. Indeed his
identification of me as being like his eldest daughter (on the basis of the
similarity of our age) is an explicit attempt to situate me as being like his

51
ibid, session 27, p.5.
52
This way in which the signifier becomes drenched and saturated with jouissance often
reveals itself to us when we speak of a client in professional communications such that we
(unconsciously and consciously) 'label' the client with the signifier as I have done in this case.
Mannoni speaks of this (in reply to Leclaire's observations) in J. Lacan. Crucial Problems for
Psychoanalysis, Seminar XII, 1964-1965. Trans. C. Gallagher (unpublished), session 14, pp. 8-13,
when referring to clients with pseudonyms.

154
daughter after the first fall, sympathetic and caring. By responding to his
demands for clarification, for directions, for a glass of water, to move my
chair etc, I recapitulated the satisfaction phantasied in the primordial relation
to his mother. She indeed never asked for anything of anyone, never
explicitly demanded from a position of her own desire, and 'unquestioningly'
saw to his every need. She was too good, and at the end of our first meeting,
Dermot was very pleased with me.

The Second Fall

By the time he had fallen again though, it was other people's demands
which came to the fore: the dead father's law which instructed him to pass on
the land was disobeyed leading to a dispute between himself and his eldest
living brother (now personifying the law of the father) whose own demand to
redistribute the land recapitulates the dead father's command as well as the
refusal to engage with it.
The brother's demand is that Dermot should pay up in other words,
since he owes a debt to the rest of the family. This debt is indeed a symbolic
debt. As Lacan says, if the subject traverses the second moment of the
Oedipus complex it is to assume the title deeds to the right to have the
phallus. Dermot acquires the title deeds by circumnavigating the terms of the
contract. The house and the land is still theoretically his father's.
His ownership is temporary, so he is like a little boy playing with
himself, pretending to be the Daddy. However, to be the Daddy, to really be
the Daddy, he has to give up the phantasy implicit in his identification with
the imaginary object of his mother's desire. What must it have been like,
never to be asked to do anything for this omnipotent mother, never to have
been tested and found deficient? Perhaps she was so good that she never
allowed him to experience the doubt so necessary to the emergence of his
own desire. Now, at the same time, Maureen is demanding sex of him,

155
something that for Dermot is consigned to the marriage contract and non-
negotiable. He has no wish to marry Maureen and no desire to have sex with
her; instead, he is put upon by her demands. Again, it is within the terms of a
contract that the Other's demands are refused.

The Third Fall

Indeed, it is within the terms of the analytic contract that my own

demands as Other are refused. He, quite simply, 'can't pay, won't pay'.53
Although positioned by him as someone v/ho cares (akin to his eldest
daughter after his first fall, akin to his mother who always saw to his needs), I
behave after all, like his father, like his brother, and like Maureen, in
demanding that he should pay. What emerges moreover in the melancholic
description of the mother who fell so fatally and his narration of her as
someone who never demanded anything of anyone, who was too good, is
that 'good people fall'. Good people wTho don't owe anything to anybody
because they have never demanded anything of anyone are destined to fall.
The signifier of the fall, therefore, has become a metonymical reference
to the desire of the mother, a person who was too good to be true in Dermot's
account. At the same time, it provides a phobic solution to the demands
made by Others that he should pay up. If he concentrates on the oscillation
of falling/not falling, he can defer his own desire by refusing the law of his
dead father. As it signifies, falling is utterly on the side of the mother. Even
as Dermot is caught up in his careful scansion of the ground so as not to fall,
it is an acting-out insofar as his three falls are sketched out in terms of what
happens afterwards. An acting-out for Lacan, infers the repetition of a
signifier (along the axis of demand) in order that the Other may hear the

The reference here is to the title of a play by Dario Fo.

156
demand, and respond to the implicit desire. Via identification with the
signifier of the mother whose fall led to her ultimate demise, Dermot is still
positioned with respect to the profound ambiguity of his mother's desire:
never asking anything of anyone, satisfying everyone else's needs, she dies
anyway along with her desire, as it were, keeping it to herself.
Dermot's radical refusal of his own desire manifest in his unease
regarding the law as it presents itself in a myriad of contracts with the
signifying system of the Other mark out the domain of a phobic solution: via
the imaginary identification with the signifier of his mother, he manages to
defer indefinitely a decision-making which would propel him into the realm
of someone who desires. As long as he concerns himself with his falls, he
demands from the position of someone who actually doesn't demand of
Others but rather expects that they will respond straightforwardly to the
signifier as he has always done with his mother. Consequently, demands
made of him to observe symbolic contracts recapitulate the law of the father,
which for now at least, push him further into the phobic solution which he
has carved out for himself as the 'falling man'.
What I wanted to do here was to illustrate the complexities, which
attend the mobilization of demand, even in a 'treatment' of such brief
duration as the case I speak about here. That we, as analysts, just follow on
from the subject's demand by allowing the emergence of the signifiers within
which it is bound up, is not only problematic (in terms of the analyst's
response throughout) but as we have seen from this case, consequential in
terms of the duration of the treatment. Dermot's case is an example of a
failed analytic treatment, since I responded to his early demands, from a
position ignorant of the transference, as if these demands merely pertained to
need-satisfaction. Consequently, I unwittingly allowed an identification to
take place which positioned me alongside the mother as satisfying and
undemanding. It is clear, that the analyst must take up the analytic position
before any communication with the client and maintain that position in order

157
to work with the client's demand. Unfortunately, by the time that Dermot
became aware of my Other-ness he had already succumbed to the lure of the
phantasy commensurate with need-satisfacticn. My later imposition of the
contractual arrangement between us had the effect of severing his
identification of me with the mother and transferring it immediately to the
dead father. This was to mark the end of the treatment, as I could no longer
be relied upon to offer pleasure. Recall Dermot's words at the end of the first
session: he was pleased with me. But it was a pleasure conditional upon the
prolonged exercise of the signifier that I curtailed when I (as Other)
demanded that he should pay for that pleasure. Effectively, my
recapitulation of the contract in my request that he should pay for the missed
session was received by Dermot as a symbolic intervention, and for the first
time, he was struck by my position as Other which for Dermot was the
prohibiting locus of the word of the dead father. Moreover, as I instated a
'conditionality' upon his demands, the unconditional aspect of his desire was
touched. Indeed, what we can observe is the truth, which Lacan says is
enunciated at the point where the message returns from the locus of the
Other. The truth, for Dermot became enunciated in his objection around
being the one who pays up.

Concluding Thoughts

As Jesus fell for a third time, fell under the weight of the wood,
fell through tiredness and hunger, fell through weakness from
torture and mockery, fell through fear of the agony he had yet

158
 to endure, he knew that he must rise and be about his Father's
business.54

If you fall I will catch you, I'll be waiting, time after time.. ,55

What I wanted to do in this work was to examine the exact position

which the function of demand mobilized in an analysis - in terms of what was
articulated by a subject and how that demand was (mis)handled by myself as
the analyst - reveals about the problematic management of demand in a
psychoanalytic treatment. The whole trajectory of speech reveals the nature
of demand in two movements: qua that which addresses the other to reply,
and qua that which addresses the Other to answer the question of the subject's
desire. Lacan's project, devoted to the elevation of analysis as a technique of
speech with all that that entails as we have seen above, insinuates the
response to demand as the response-ability of the analyst who is sensitized to
the proper functions of speech. This is the point at which we must begin, as
analysts, to have any bearing on what is articulated in the demand, and to
whom the demand is addressed. In addition, we have seen how the line of
demand is that which starts out from the need and culminates in the desire,
which is hollowed out in the demand. The formulation of the signifier arising
from the articulation of demand enunciates something of the truth of the
subject. The retrospective examination of the signifier of the 'fall' in the case I
have chosen in order to highlight the difficulties attending upon the
complexities of the concept of demand, suggests the breakdown of the
analysis as my failure to respond appropriately to the demand in three ways:

54
Quotation taken from 'Ninth station of the cross', a text compiled by Dominic Barrington and
Paul Kennington. St. Chad's College, University of Durham. Passiontide, 1996. (emphasis
added),
55
Line from the song entitled 'Time after Time', written and recorded by Cindi Lauper, '12
Deadly Cins and then some' album. Sony music, Rhythm C, Rellla music co. 1994.

159
 Firstly, by missing the transference, which was in operation from the
moment Dermot first contacted me (if not before), I continued to respond to
his demand as the reduction of need, and once having set up this line of
exchange I was incapable of moving the transference in the direction of any
symbolic intervention.
Secondly and commensurately, since the treatment had begun when I
first responded to Dermot's demand for exorbitant details, and had already
consisted of several telephone conversations, by the time Dermot actually
saw me for the first time, my attempt to systematize the treatment according
to the rules of analysis was already ineffectual, since by then Dermot had
imaginarily identified me as someone who would support a 'falling man1.56
Thirdly, through my own practical inexperience and insufficient
knowledge of theory, I missed the pertinence of the signifier in the demand.
In other words, Dermot's oscillation of falling/not falling corresponded to his
dialectical shifting between his demand and his desire respectively. As he
falls he does not ask for much, other than a helping hand, as he doesn't fall he
has to come to terms with who he is as desiring subject (and like Jesus at the
ninth station of the cross, go about his Father's business). Insofar as I
interjected after his third fall with what I believe to be of the order of a
symbolic intervention, that is, I did not respond in the way I had done so up
until that point, rather, I recalled the terms of our contract, and as such,
something shifted for Dermot in terms of whom he was addressing in his
demand, and what that unconsciously probed in terms of his desire.

56
cf. J. Lacan. (1957-1958), op. cit, session 22, p.16, where he says: '..the obsessional from time
to time, taking his courage in his hands, sets himself to try to break through the barrier of his
demand, namely to head off to find the object of his desire, first of all he does not find it
easily, but there are many things all the same, because he has already had the practice, there
are many things which can serve as a support for it...'.

160
 Much more could still be said of this case, and of the requirements of
the analyst in the management of demand, 57 however, I hope that I have gone
some way toward exploring the function that demand mobilizes in an
analysis, and the manifold difficulties which attend that function. If it is true
that we learn from our mistakes, it is my hope that at the very least, I shall
have learned something from this failed case of mine about 'what it is that we
do when we do Lacanian analysis1.58

Address for correspondence: 3, Elmzvood Court

Swords
Co. Dublin
Ireland

email: cowens@connect.ie

57
See for example, the discussion of demand in J. Lacan, (1964-1965), op. cit.
58
This should be taken as part of an attempt to respond to the question that Lacan poses in
Seminar I: 'What do we do when we do analysis?'.

161
 THE LIES, THE WISH AND THE WARDROBE:
HOMOPHOBIA, HOMOSEXUALITY
AND THE CLOSET ON THE COUCH

Ray O'Neill

Ana Z-ysing Homosexuality

The first time I went to see a therapist, a psychiatrist, at twenty

years of age I was told to pray to cure myself of my homosexual affliction,
though it had not been an issue presented in that our one and only
session. Granted this was ten years ago and homosexuality was illegal in
Ireland, but through my trainings from counsellor to psychoanalyst the
issues and instruction around homosexuality have always presented a
blind spot. Not merely the over simplified and cliched generalisations
reducing male homosexuality to anal sex, but more significantly the
ignorance around our ignorance. No matter how politically correct the
times and people may have become, having a gay friend or neighbour or
even a gay client, never makes you an authority.
A little bit of knowledge is always a dangerous thing, especially
when projected from one human subject to another. The central value
and strength of psychoanalysis has always been that it recognises each
human subject as individual and in theory avoids generalisations. Only
the client can know what is wrong with him, can know what will 'cure1
him, and ultimately knows whether or not he wants to be cured. The
analyst is more a witness than a healer or specialist, witnessing the
analysand's speech, his narrative and by his very presence in the
transference, his 'with-ness' facilitating deeper awareness within the
analysand's own psyche.
However, the countertransference from the analyst can too often
contain 'the sum total of the prejudices, passions and difficulties of the

187
analyst, or even of his insufficient information at any given moment of the
dialectical process.' 1 And thus instead of listening, we are interpreting;
instead of witnessing, we are judging, instead of being, we are attempting
to minister to, to cure, to resolve.
Ten years on from my God-praying psychiatrist, we are still anal-
ysing homosexuals rather than working analytically with them, projecting
our own anxieties, prejudices and ignorance onto them, rather than
listening to them. Rather than bearing witness, we pass judgements,
consciously and unconsciously. And rather than holding witness for
them, we separate ourselves from them, finding comfort and security at a
profoundly unstable ego level in our difference to them.
Though Freud recognised 'all human beings are capable of making
a homosexual object-choice and have in fact made one in their
unconscious' 2 this has long been either ignored or covered over, with
psychoanalytic theorists more interested in why individuals should
become homosexual, rather than Freud's far more interesting question as
to w h y the majority of individuals don't. But as subjects and as analysts
w e have always been far more interested in the questions we can answer
over those we would rather not. The main argument of this first paper is
that there is no homosexuality, there are homosexualities. And thus
analysis should concern itself more with addressing homophobia rather
than homosexuality. I write this paper as a psychoanalyst to fellow
psychoanalysts, with the intention of provoking questions, thought; and
unconsciously a little anxiety.
This anxiety, however it may manifest, is evidence of the
importance this paper has for analytic work, especially with homosexually
identified clients. Analysts may be well intentioned, but one cannot help
wondering just how much they have explored their own sexualities, and
questioned their own sexual object choices, in the way an analysand

1
J. Lacan. Intervention on Transference, in: In Dora's Case. Bernheimer and Kahane, eds.
Columbia University Press, New York, 1990, p.102.
2
S. Freud. (1905) Three Essays On Sexuality. S.E. VII, p.144.

188
should, and in the way most analysts expect and, indeed, demand that
their homosexual clients do. As Lacan again says:

I believe, however, that transference always has this same

meaning of indicating the moments where the analyst goes
astray, and equally takes his or her bearings, this same value
of calling us back to the order of our role - that of a positive
nonacting with a view to the orthodramatisation of the
subjectivity of the patient. 3

So, the client must always prioritise over any theory.

Let this paper be a guide to working with homosexually identified
clients, with the added advantage of being written by someone who
knows the closet, its epistemology, its function, and its limitations all too
well. There may be more than just Narnia behind that wardrobe door.

Freud, Psychoanalysis and Homosexuality

Freud's discovery of the unconscious was nothing less than a

revolution. For just as Copernicus displaced man as centre of the
universe, and Darwin seceded man from the centre of creation, so Freud's
unearthing of the unconscious removed the final arrogance that humans
were even masters in their own homes. What Freud exposed was our
split subjectivity, our fundamental self-alienation; a re-exploration at a
most fundamental level of the question of what it means to be a human
subject.
However, to presume this great discoverer is the absolute
cartographer of the unconscious, is to forget that though Columbus
'discovered' America, he believed he had reached India. Freud
undoubtedly opened a door on the human mind around which modern
psychology, philosophy and thought, fundamentally restructured itself,
but how much did he walk through that door, or explore the closet
3
J. Lacan. op. cit. p.103.

189
within? Much 'Freud-bashing' exposes the prejudice within this closet of
sexuality, that any idea of perversion or pathology always assumes an
ideal of health or 'normalcy'. However, Freud continually distinguished
between 'perversion' and 'inversion', his chosen term for homosexuality.
Freud was absolutely clear in his intention not to segregate or stigmatise
homosexuality further:

I am of the firm conviction that homosexuals must not be

treated as sick people, for a perverse orientation is far from
being a sickness. Homosexual persons are not sick.4

And though for the best part of a century homosexuals were

excluded from a psychoanalytic training, Freud argued against such
barring to Ernest Jones:

Your query concerning prospective membership of

homosexuals has been considered by us and we disagree
with you. In effect we cannot exclude such persons without
sufficient reasons, as we cannot agree with their legal
prosecution. We feel that a decision in such cases should
depend upon a thorough examination of the other qualities
of the candidate. 5

But perhaps the clearest evidence of Freud's open mindedness is his

famous letter to the American mother seeking treatment and a cure for her
homosexual son:

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am

most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term
yourself in your information about him. May I question
you, why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no
4
Brief. Die Zeit (Vienna), October 27,1903.
5
Letter to Jones. Body Politic (Toronto, Canada), May 1977, p.9.

190
 advantage but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no
degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; w e consider
it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by a
certain arrest of sexual development. It is a great injustice to
persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too. 6

Certainly criticism can be aimed at the implications of homosexuality

being outlined as 'a certain arrest of sexual development', but Freud's
letter draws attention not only to the silent anxiety around homosexuality,
her inability to name the love that dares not speak its name, but states that
homosexuality is far from a vice or degradation and that any prejudice
against it is unjust. He continues:

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can

abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality
take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot
promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we
succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual
tendencies which are present in every homosexual.
Analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full
efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets
changed. 7

Freud, Psychoanalysis and Homophobia

In this letter Freud hits on the key role analysis offers homosexual
clients, not a cure, nor the arrogance of a solution, but the offer of
resolution. He recognises the problem isn't in homosexuality, but in its
significance, in how it is perceived in society. The issue is one of
homophobia not of homosexuality. Freud recognised that most
homosexuals appear for treatment because of 'external motives such as

6
Letter. Published in American Journal of Psychiatry 107 (1951): 786.
7
ibid.

191
social disadvantages, and danger attaching to his choice of object.'8 Indeed,
I would strongly argue, that the wish not to be cured is a very real
motivation for treatment for the homosexual client.
In many ways if homosexuality really was the problem, as a
perversion, for example, then we would not see lesbian and gay clients in
the clinic in as great a number and as frequently as we do, since 'perverts
who can obtain satisfaction do not often have occasion to come for
analysis.' 9 Perhaps this paper should rephrase the infamous questions of
Lacan and ask: Does The Homosexual Exist? And: What Does A Homosexual
Want?
Indeed these two questions would make an excellent starting point
for any analysis with a homosexually identified client, exploring both the
construction of their identity, and the nature of their desire. It is not, and
never should be, the business of psychoanalysis to solve the problem of
homosexuality. However, it is u p to psychoanalysis to explore the issues
of homophobia and fixation. H o w and why one becomes exclusively
homosexual is a perfectly valid question but only when counterbalanced
with Freud's own observation that;

From the point of view of psychoanalysis the exclusive

sexual interest felt by men for women is also a problem that
needs elucidating and is not a self-evident fact.10

But how many analysts have explored this fact in their own training
analysis? Failure to explore this question by analysts both in the clinic and
in academic scientific writing is perhaps the most blatant demonstration of
a homophobia that threatens to both implode analysis as a clinical
practice, and explode analysis as a philosophical and scientific discourse.

8
S. Freud. (1920) The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman. S.E. XVIII,
p.151.
9
S. Freud. (1919) A Child Is Being Beaten. S.E. XVII, p.197.
10
S. Freud. (1905). S.E. VII, p.146.

192
 Such unexplored psychical territory remains an unconscious black
hole in which an analysis can founder if the analyst has not managed their
own countertransference, 'the sum total of the prejudices, passions and
difficulties of the analyst.' 11 If the analyst cannot or does not own their
own prejudices, biases, anxieties or desires then these will inevitably
become part of their own conscious and unconscious countertransference
when working with clients, and thus affect, interrupt, if not stall the
analytic work.

Ubiquitous Homosexuality: Here, There and Everyqueer

In exploring Freud's psychoanalytic theories on homosexuality two

things must be borne in mind. Firstly, Freud's concept of homosexuality
is unambiguously universalising, as it is universally present in psychic
development, therefore must form a necessary part of any analysis,
especially a training analysis, whether the analysand appears or presents
themselves as gay or straight. Secondly, as Freud outlines at least four
different theories on the psychic evolution of homosexuality, this would
indeed suggest there are homosexualities rather than a specific
categorisation of homosexuality, something modern society and analysts
can too easily forget. There are as many ways to be homosexual as there
are to be heterosexual. Such is the power of our polymorphous perversity
that just as in psychoanalysis no two subjects are the same, similarly it
must be borne in analysts' minds that no two subjects' sexualities are
identical, however similar their manifest behaviours or symptoms may be,
seem, or indeed may be labelled.
This has always been the strength and power of psychoanalysis
over psychology, medicine, sociology or other generalising sciences, in
that it alone recognises the individuality of the subject, that no two
subjects can be or are the same. Therefore, when theorising or working
clinically with homosexually identified clients, it must always be up to
that client himself to explain, to understand, to enunciate just what his
11
J. Lacan. (1990). op. cit. p.102.

193
form of homosexuality means, is, and signifies to him without the
intrusion of the analyst's own countertransference, whether that be in the
form of prejudice or support, of tolerance or homophobia, or whatever
form the 'homosexual object choice (analysts) have in fact made in their
unconscious' 12 may manifest itself within the transference contained in the
clinical picture.
No work of Freud's deals exclusively with homosexuality per se.
Contributions to the theory of homosexuality are scattered throughout his
writings, informing all six of his famed case histories, though frequently
these are the results of a discussion of another psychoanalytic topic.
There are at least four different theories on homosexuality
espoused throughout Freud's writings, which would support the
argument for there being homosexualities rather than a singular
homosexual identity, a unitary phenomenon. Freud recognises the issue
of homosexuality as more complex and complicated than any one single
relationship in his writings on Leonardo da Vinci:

What is for practical reasons called homosexuality may arise

from a whole variety of psychosexual inhibitory processes;
the particular process we have singled out is perhaps only
one among many, and is perhaps related to only one type of
'homosexuality'. We must also admit that the number of
cases of our homosexual type in which it is possible to point
to the determinants which we require far exceeds the
number of those where the deduced effect actually takes
place; so that we too cannot reject the part played by
unknown constitutional factors, to which the whole of
homosexuality is usually traced. 13

This is quite typical of Freud in his writings on homosexuality,

though acknowledging there may be different types of homosexuality, this
12
S. Freud. (1905). S.E. VE, p.145.
13
S. Freud. (1910). Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of Childhood. S.E. XI, p.101.

194
will not prevent an unearthing of a unitary, uniform theory on the 'whole
of homosexuality'. As if behind Freud's openness to polymorphous
perversity and fundamental psychic bisexuality, he still tries to find a
unitary theory on homosexuality, as if in the unconscious one size could
fit all. His project is at some level undermined through his obsession with
finding the one and only true Holy Grail of why boys like boys, in an
unconscious world where the psychic preconditions for such shifts and
formations are themselves constantly in a state of flux, denying the
existence of this one true gay.
Again, his 1922 paper Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia
and Homosexuality recognises that;

We have, however, never regarded this analysis of the origin

of homosexuality as complete, and I can now point to a new
mechanism leading to homosexual object-choice [but Freud
still] cannot say how large a part it plays in the formation of
the extreme, manifest and exclusive type of homosexuality. 14

It is as if these theories on homosexuality are only cul-de-sacs on

his true quest for absolute explanation. But such absolute determinism
for the root cause of homosexuality is doomed to challenge, counter-
argument and dismissal, as the legacy of genetic biology has shown. We
are dealing with human subjects, not a mere human species.
Undoubtedly Freud's theories on homosexuality share common
denominators and concepts, but they still remain quite confusing and
contradictory, left as they are somewhat tentative and open-ended, but
only as long as the reader or analyst is following them to unearth a
definitive Freudian theory of homosexuality, a unitary explanation for
those questions as to the existence, the subjectivity and the desires of the
homosexual.

14
S. Freud. (1922). Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality. S.E.
XVIII, p.231.

195
Freud's First Theory: Boys Who Fear Their Mummies Too Much

Freud's first theory on homosexuality is derived from the Oedipus

complex as outlined in his case history of Little Hans and his later writings
on Leonardo da Vinci. Excessive tenderness towards the young boy from
the erotically binding mother leads him to overestimate his penis. Caught
in a narcissistic dyad with her, he assumes she is genitally equipped as he
is. However, as the child begins to sense his separateness from the
mother and simultaneously apprehends a castration threat as punishment
for his own erotic strivings for her, he discovers she does not in fact have a
penis like his own, and is both horrified and disgusted. The beloved
mother now becomes an object of loathing to him, traumatically fearing
that he too may share a similar fate. The thought of the penis-less mother
is from then on intolerable to him as it automatically produces an
overpowering castration anxiety. He, therefore, severs the erotic bond
with the now despised mother and, henceforth, chooses a compromise
figure as his sexual object.
For Freud fetishism is a compromise formation that 'remains a
token of triumph over the threat of castration and a protection against it.'15
But more significantly Freud argues fetishism 'saves the fetishist from
becoming homosexual, by endowing women with the characteristic that
makes them tolerable as sexual objects.'16 The implication by correlation
here is that, since both fetishism and the form of male homosexuality
described by this theory are responses to the discovery that the mother has
no penis, homosexuals are men who seek 'a woman with a penis', or a boy
with a feminine appearance. 17 Both are driven by the same anxiety, but the
mechanisms they use to assuage that anxiety are different.
Under this theory male homosexuality cannot be considered
primarily as the love of men for other men, but rather as the acceptance of
these sexual objects when faced with the anxiety of castrated female

is S. Freud. Fetishism. (1927) S.E. XXI, p.154.

16
ibid.
17
K. Lewes, Psychoanalysis and Male Homosexuality. Aronson, New Jersey, 1995, p.24.

196
genitals. This certainly questions whether homosexual men primarily
desire men, or whether they instead settle for men as compromise object-
choices driven by fear of women and extreme castration anxiety.
Suddenly the issue of a homosexual lifestyle seems less of a choice and
more of a compulsion, a pathology functioning not only at the initial crisis
of the Oedipus complex, but as it is never really resolved, it is repressed
into the unconscious where it endlessly seeks confirmation through
repetition every time a homosexual object choice is made or a heterosexual
one is rejected. Fags are condemned to be queer.
At this same time, the boy now enters the phallic stage of the
Oedipus complex with its promise of triadic, true object-relatedness,
leaving the anal stage of late narcissism behind him, where unmediated
object relations are primarily based on need-gratification. Here,
confronted by castration anxiety, boys who will be heterosexual in their
object choice in later life are impelled by this trauma into further object-
relatedness. However, for homosexual boys it seems the shock is so great
that they are forced to relinquish their tenuous achievement of mediated
object-relations in the phallic stage and retreat back into the anal stage,
narcissism, and the more primitive need-gratifying object-relations.
Freud never fully understands or explains w h y some boys should go one
way and others another, and in an attempt to avoid leaning on biological
determinism, he explores the concept of narcissism.

We have discovered clearly in people whose libidinal

development has suffered some disturbance, such as
perverts and homosexuals, that in their later choice of love
objects they have taken as a model not their mother but their
own selves. They are plainly seeking themselves as love
object.18

18
S. Freud. (1914) On Narcissism, An Introduction. S.E. XIV, p.88.

197
Therefore for the homosexual any and all future sexual relations would
seem to be indirect strategies for loving himself.

In the course of their development from autoeroticism to

object love, they have remained fixated at a point between
the two - a point which is closer to autoeroticism. 19

These latter observations on Freud's first theory handily explain both the
narcissistic eroticism of similarity in homosexuality as well as the much
touted and feared anal eroticism, although it does seem a little too neat,
dismissive and over-simplifying, to reduce male homosexuality down to
its cliches of anal sex, and autoeroticism. To perceive homosexual
relationships in this light, in this day and age, shows not only the
ignorance of equating homosexuality with anal-sex or vice-versa, but more
worryingly it demonstrates the analyst as being stuck at an imaginary,
superficial level, in which he may miss, ignore, or fail to see the symbolic
unconscious workings within the homosexual's choice of object partner.

Freud's Second Theory: Boys Who Love Their Mummies Too Much

However, Freud presents a second theory where the mother is

central as model for all future sexual relations of the homosexual, though
this too is narcissistic at some level. These homosexuals seek in their
object choice not only genital equipment like their own, but a resemblance
to the self once loved by the mother. In this narcissism his love object
may be like him as he is now, as he once was, as he would like to be, or it
may resemble someone who was once part of him.20
This second theory is distinct from but not incompatible with the
first. Here again, the boy who is to become homosexual enjoys a
particularly long relation with the mother, leading again to an excessive
overvaluation of his penis. But here the boy refuses to renounce his
19
S. Freud. (1909) Analysis of a Phobia in a Five Year Old Boy. S.E. X, p.109.
20
S. Freud. (1914) op. cit. S.E. XIV, p.84.

198
relation with her, his first love object, partly because of the mother's over-
solicitude. The boy while relinquishing this bond in reality preserves it
unconsciously, and now identifies with his mother, selecting future love
objects through which he can re-experience the erotic bond that once
united him to his mother. Thus, narcissistically, he is able to continue
loving his mother in himself, and yet simultaneously he himself can be
loved.
The more significant change has taken place in the ego, which has
been remade into the image of the mother; the former love object has been
preserved in unconscious fantasy at the expense of the distortion of the
ego through a process of introjection.

The narcissistic identification with the object then becomes a

substitute for the erotic-cathexis, the result of which is that in
spite of the conflict with the loved person the love-relation
need not be given up...the ego wants to incorporate this
object into itself.21

This strategy again borders on the pathological, as Freud sees a similarity

within this strategy of introjection with what is at work in excessive grief
and mourning.
Reading these first two theories it seems that they are running
contradictory to each other, the first being an unconscious renouncement
of the bond with the mother as the boy forecloses women to alleviate his
anxiety at their castration, while in the second he disavows women to
unconsciously preserve the bond with the mother and to remain faithful to
her. However, both theories seem to suggest a consequent and
subsequent remaking of the ego along the lines of a sexual character that is
biologically inappropriate. In these theories Freud implies a certain
sexual confusion to the subject's core sexual identity: 'it remoulds the ego
in one of its important features - in its sexual character.' 22 Therefore, the

21 S. Freud. (1917) Mourning and Melancholia. S.E. XIV, p.249.

22 S. F r e u d . (1921) Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. S.E. XVIII, p.108-9.

199
insinuation is that such an homosexual is not fully psychically male, as he
has not been propelled by castration anxiety into a new identification with
the father where his male identity would remain solidly male, and so
remaining 'confused' in his failure to 'abandon his mother, but identifying
with her; he transforms himself into her.' 23 This echoes just a little too
simply the Hitchcockian theories of sexuality evidenced in Norman Bates'
transformation into his mother in Psycho. Or echoes a little too much the
modern gay proverb: 'If you have met a gay man, you've met his
mother', 24 when undoubtedly this could indeed be argued about Irish or
Jewish men and their mothers, ... and so, Freud Bless You if you are a Gay
Irish Jew.

Freud's Third Theory: Boys Will Be Boys - Or If Not - Girls

The third theory of homosexuality explored by Freud is perhaps the

only one that opens up the theory of bisexuality in the human subject in
relation to the Oedipus complex and subsequent sexual identities. The
theory is outlined in The Ego and the Id and A Child is Being Beaten, and
clinically utilised in the case of the Wolf Man. In many ways this theory
is more universal and may indeed inform analysts more and better in their
management of transference, especially with clients who may not
themselves be homosexually identified or labelled.
Freud's belief on bisexuality as a cornerstone of sexual identity and
sexuality is espoused in his Three Essays:

I have regarded it as the decisive factor, and without taking

bisexuality into account I think it would scarcely be possible
to arrive at an understanding of the sexual manifestations
that are actually to be observed in man and women. 25

23
ibid, p.108.
24
Tim Dean. Homosexuality and the Problem of Otherness, in: Homosexuality and
Psychoanalysis, Dean and Lane eds, Chicago, 2001, p.122.
25
S. Freud. (1905). S.E. VII, p.220.

200
And even earlier in a letter to Fliess Freud remarks:

Bisexuality! I am sure you are right about it. And I am

accustoming myself to regarding every sexual act as an event
between four individuals. 26

Freud sees bisexuality as informing not only ...

... the relative strengths of the masculine and feminine

sexual dispositions (but) is what determines whether the
outcome of the Oedipus situation shall be in identification
with the father or with the mother. 27
[but more importantly] Closer study usually discloses the
more complete Oedipus complex, which is twofold, positive
and negative, and is due to the bisexuality richly present in
children. 28

In other words, a boy does not merely have an ambivalent attitude

towards his father and a libidinal object-choice to his mother, but at the
same time he also displays an affectionate stance to his father and a
corresponding jealousy and hostility towards his mother. As Freud
argues:

It is this complicating element introduced by bisexuality that

makes it so difficult to obtain a clear view of the facts in
connection with the earliest object-choices and
identifications, and still more difficult to describe them
intelligibly.29

26
S. Freud. The Origins of Psychoanalysis. London & New York, 1954.
27
S. Freud. (1923) The Ego and the Id. S.E. XIX, p.33.
28 ibid.
2
9 ibid.

201
For Freud, the negative Oedipus complex is a variation but necessary
component of the general Oedipus complex, resulting from the particular
proportion of activity and passivity, masculinity and femininity, in any
individual. This 'negative' or 'inverted' Oedipus complex, filled as it is
with paradoxes and contradictions, undoubtedly muddies the waters for
both analysts and analysand, nowhere more obviously than in the no-
mans' land minefield of transference. In the Case of Dora, it was Freud's
failure to manage this transference that led to the breakdown of the
analysis. So caught in his pushing of his own unconscious object-choice
of her father and Herr K., and projecting them onto Dora as her love
objects, he failed to observe at the time 'the strongest unconscious current
in her mental life'30 identification with her father and her homosexual
object-choice of Frau K. It was only through 'the longer interval of time
that separates me from the end of this analysis' 31 that Freud was finally
able to realise the level of unconscious homosexual object-choice at work
within the transference
Yet when it comes to the case of the Wolf Man, Freud's openness to
such concepts allows him to excavate this hidden layer of psychosexual
development that had been superseded but yet which remained alive in
the unconscious. In this case, the Wolf Man's earlier identification with
the father was undone when an older sister seduced him. The boy's
libidinal position, already tending to a rather narcissistic masculinity, then
shifted from a masculine 'active' phallic character towards Nanya and his
sister into a feminine 'passive' anal one with his father as his object choice,
where previously the father had served as the Wolf Man's core for a
masculine identification. Rather than be like the father, the boy now
chose to be loved by him, demonstrating a willingness to surrender his
masculine identity in order to be loved narcissistically by a man.
However, this feminine identification was repudiated by the
anxiety he felt at viewing what were to him the mutilated genitals of his
mother, as exposed and explored in his dream of the wolves and his
30
S. Freud. (1905) An Analysis of A Case of Hysteria. S.E. VII, p.120.
31
ibid, p.162

202
memories of the primal scene. Thus, paradoxically, castration anxiety
which had led to homosexuality in the first theory, now led to the Wolf
Man's recovery of masculine identity and heterosexual object choice as 'the
passive attitude towards his father, succumbed to repression, and fear of
his father appeared in its place in the shape of the wolf phobia.'32
For the Wolf Man it was as if he were being told that the
consequences of choosing your father as your object-choice are that you
must allow yourself to be castrated like your mother, something that he
could not and would not allow. 'He discovered the vagina and the
biological significance of masculine and feminine. He understood now
that active was the same as masculine, while passive was the same as
feminine.'33 The Wolf Man was willing to surrender the love of the father
in order to preserve his masculine identity, his penis, his phallus.34
The Wolf Man's case clearly shows that any psychic preconditions
for such shifts in sexual identity and sexuality are themselves in a state of
flux. Also, and more importantly, the case shows that not only does the
predisposition to either a masculine or feminine libidinal position vary
from individual to individual, but also more significantly it varies within
the individual himself. Throughout this case, Freud viewed the passive
and active mode, the homosexual and heterosexual, as existing side by
side. In his 1908 essay Hysterical Phantasies and Their Relation to Bisexuality
he saw bisexual wishes in hysterical fantasies as being similar to the Wolf
Man's unconsciously passive homosexual and masochistic wishes, which
were then superseded by active heterosexual ones. Such contrasting and
seemingly contradicting fantasies 'give expression, according as the
subject's attitude is feminine or masculine, to his wish for sexual
intercourse with his father or with his mother'.35 What Freud seems to be
arguing is that as a result of these fundamental bisexual libidos, all

3 2 S. F r e u d . (1918) The History of An Infantile Neurosis. S.E. XVII, p.46.

33 ibid. p.47.
34
AU of which opens huge questions around the relationship between phallic sexuality
and homosexuality, questions that for the moment I leave unanswered.
35 Freud (1918) op. cit. p.102.

203
psychic development is in constant alterity and just how it manifests itself
for and within the human subject is always u p for grabs. What is most
significant about the case history of the Wolf Man is that the ubiquity of
these theories of sexual identity, masculinity and femininity, and their
related concepts of activity and passivity, anticipates with great acuity the
much vexed, but unexplored subject of bisexuality.
Although, admittedly, it has been accorded its place as a
cornerstone of psychic development, the complete Oedipus complex and
sexual identity, bisexuality is much unexplored insofar as, as a lifestyle, a
signifier of sexual identity, it remains relatively uncharted territory in
psychoanalytic thinking and writings, even though Freud recognised its
place and position towards the end of his career in Analysis Terminable and
Interminable:

It is well known that at all periods there have been, as there

still are, people who can take as their sexual objects members
of their own sex as well as of the opposite one, without the
one trend interfering with the other. We call such people
bisexuals and we accept their existence without feeling much
surprise without it.36

But how many analysts can 'accept their existence without feeling much
surprise1, or judgement, or indeed anxiety, if not envy?

Freud's Fourth Theory: I Love To Hate You

Freud's fourth theory of homosexuality and last major contribution

to the subject was discussed only once in the essay Some Neurotic
Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality. It differs significantly
from the other theories as it involves neither identification with the
mother nor a fear of female genitals caused by castration anxiety, nor does
it involve a narcissistic object choice. It begins with an intense love for the
36
S. Freud. (1937). Analysis Terminable and Interminable. S.E. XXIII, p. 23.

204
mother, which in this case leads to jealousy of 'great intensity' towards
rivals, brothers and the father that mobilises hostility and death wishes
towards them. But these 'impulses yielded to repression and underwent
transformation' into 'the first homosexual love objects'.37 Freud sees such
'reaction formations' as a defence mechanism that is the inverse of the
process by which passive homosexual love is transformed into
persecutory or delusional paranoia. In this latter case, as explored in the
case of Schreber, the unbearable homosexual impulse, 'I love him', is
transformed by negation into 'I hate him', and then rationalised through
projection into 'He hates me', so that paranoia keeps the subject from
becoming homosexual.
The shift from heterosexual to homosexual object choice occurs
earlier in this fourth theory than it does in any of the others. And as it
does not require relinquishing the mother as the prototypical sexual
object, maintaining the boy's pre-oedipal symbiotic attachment to her, he
can enter the Oedipal stage with a vengeance. And significantly, as there
is no castration anxiety around female genitals, the possibility of
heterosexual feeling as well as behaviour is not excluded. This form of
homosexuality need not be exclusive, as a later heterosexual object choice
based on a normally transformed bond to the mother is still quite possible,
and so with this theory Freud opens u p the closet door that little bit wider.
Freud also argues this fourth theory of homosexuality accounts for
the 'special development of their social instinctual impulses and by their
devotion to the community.' 38 This argument of 'social feeling as a
sublimation of homosexual attitudes towards objects'39 opens u p and
implicates all homosocial groupings and activities, as well as all
homoerotic pleasure derived from sport, the media and the arts,
homologating that these homonyms homosexuality, homosociality and
homoeroticism have perhaps a far stronger homogenous and homologous

37
S. Freud. (1922). Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality. S.E.
XVIII, p.231.
38 ibid, p.232.
39 ibid, p.232.

205
homomorphic nature than either analyst or analysand may wish to face.
In other words, aren't there a lot of homos in the clinical picture?

Bi the Bi: The Homophobic Love of Hating Homosexuals

As Freud himself argues in this last essay 'We have, however, never
regarded this analysis of the origin of homosexuality as complete.' 40 And
indeed perhaps this analysis of the origin of homosexuality is itself a
misnomer, in that it firstly presumes there is a singular origin, and
secondly that homosexuality itself must originate from the subject's
'originally bisexual physical disposition' 41 , our 'freedom to range equally
over male and female objects'42, that constitutes such a core to our primary
polymorphous perversity.
This question of bisexuality was a central issue returned to by
Freud in one of his final writings Analysis Terminable and Interminable.
Freud recognises that every human subject is bisexual in the sense that his
libido is distributed, either in a manifest or a latent fashion, over objects of
both sexes. But what gives him pause for thought is that, although where
it is manifest the two inclinations can just get along together without
clashing, where they are latent, which is far more common, 'they are in a
state of irreconcilable conflict'.43 Freud recognises that 'a man's
heterosexuality will not put up with any homosexuality' and in saying this
hits the core psychology behind homophobia in all its forms. 'There is no
greater danger for a man's heterosexual function than its being disturbed
by his latent homosexuality.' 44 And this is what happens in homophobia,
the latent homosexuality of the subject is provoked and the reaction is one
of projected hatred, aggressivity, if net manifest violence. Freud cannot
understand why this should occur and wonders why the two rival trends

40
ibid, p.231.
4i S. Freud. (1905). S.E. VII, p.141.
42
ibid, p.145.
43
S. Freud. (1937). S.E. XXIII, op. cit. p.244.
44
ibid.

206
within bisexuality 'do not always divide u p the available quota of libido
between them according to their relative strength, since they are able to d o
so in a number of cases'.45 But ultimately he is ...

... forced to the conclusion that the tendency to a conflict is

something special, something which is newly added to the
situation, irrespective of the quantity of libido. An
independently emerging tendency to conflict of this sort can
scarcely be attributed to anything but the intervention of a n
element of free-aggressiveness.46

The problem is not homosexuality but social attitudes toward it. It is

homophobia rather than homosexuality that makes people 'sick',
something Freud recognises in his case history of the Female Homosexual.
If we accept that everybody has made a homosexual object choice in their
own unconscious, if we accept our own primary polymorphous perversity
and original bisexual disposition, if we accept that shifts in sexual identity
and sexuality are themselves constantly in a state of flux, certainly in our
psychic maturation and development, then it is homophobia, the irrational
fear of same-sex desire, including one's o w n same-sex desire, that
generates this internal strife and thus neuroses. From this perspective,
the work of psychoanalysts would be to analyse homophobia rather than
perpetuating it by treating homosexuality as a problem.

Psychoanalysis and Homosexuality: The Couch and The Closet

When we discuss homophobia, it is too often argued and presented

as an external problem, lying entirely with and in social attitudes toward
homosexuality. If this were simply the case, then we would need nothing
else than a solid social critique of homophobia and thus develop a
programme for social change. Unfortunately, Freud's universalising of

4
5 ibid.
46 ibid.

207
unconscious homosexual object-choice leads us in a different direction.
That homophobia is more than just tinged with anxiety and paranoia,
brings the mirror back inwards on the psyches of those that present
themselves manifestly or latently as homophobic. Analysts must be
careful not to repeat rejections by family, society or loved ones when
working with homosexually identified clients, and be wary of the
unconscious impulse to reverse an analysand's sexual orientation in line
with what they find more normal or palatable filled with what they
imagine or believe to be the usual satisfactions. Similarly, and most
importantly, analysts must be vigilant of projecting their own homosexual
impulses onto the analysand and any subsequent punishment of them in
him.
Undoubtedly in these politically correct times few analysts are
going to hold their hands up to admitting homophobic thoughts and
prejudices, especially in the light of the last argument of this homophobia
being a manifestation of their own latent homosexuality. But all of us
have prejudices, and the greatest prejudice is that of the person who
believes or argues that he has none. This is why a thorough training, in
which to unearth and explore, elucidate and enunciate the stumbling
blocks on which a future practising clinic may stumble analysis, is so
necessary. Freud may have argued that fundamentally all sexualities are
equal, but psychoanalysis and society, unfortunately, propagate the notion
that some sexualities are more equal than others.
It is only when the encounter with homosexuality is actual,
combining the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real that we can truly face our
own homophobia. No setting is more appropriate for anyone to handle
and manage this encounter than the analytic setting, the clinic, the couch,
but only in the position of the analysand. As Tim Dean and Christopher
Lane argue in their introduction to Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis:

One of the greatest paradoxes in the history of

psychoanalysis is that psychoanalytic institutions have
developed in directions antithetical to psychoanalytic

208
 concepts. Lesbian, Gay and queer people have felt the
impact of clinical institutions with their normalising
moralism and discriminatory practices more readily than we
have encountered psychoanalytic ideas that offer firm
grounding for nonheterosexist accounts of erotic desire. 47

One of the problems with the manner in which psychoanalysis addresses

homosexuality is its recognition of it as an identity, a solid signification
when surely through taking the unconscious into account Freudian
psychoanalysis recasts ego identities, including those of homosexuals, as
illusory. If Freud has established anything it is that the displacements of
unconscious desire instigate mechanisms that undermine the e^o and call
into question any secure sense of sexual selfhood. In Lacanian terms this
divorcing of sexuality from identity formations is made clear through his
theory on the Mirror Stage where the ego is created and only comes into
being through a profound meconnaissance or misrecognition and is based
on a fundamental perceptual error. To approach clients presenting
homosexual thoughts, inclinations or behaviours with the assumption that
they are gay or lesbian or homosexual is to remain stuck in an imaginary
ego to ego confrontation within the clinic which cannot provide a reliable
basis for any politics, philosophy or clinical practice concerned with sexual
desire.
Ironically it is this tradition within psychoanalytic thought, with its
exposure of the emptiness of ego-identified politics or subjects, that offers
homosexually identified analy sands their strongest potential ally. The
resistance of the unconscious to all norms makes the psychoanalytic
concept very helpful not only to queer theorists, but to anyone who
challenges the binary construction and opposition of sexuality as either
homosexual or heterosexual. This age-old opposition is perhaps the most
obvious manifestation of the defence against the ambiguous

47
T. Dean. op. cit. p.122.

209
polymorphous fluid sexuality that informs all our lives, desires and
symptoms.
In determining what is pathological, one always leans, consciously
or unconsciously on cultural judgments of morality and aesthetics. For
Freud, the connection between homosexuality and psychopathology was
always an uneasy one, and although it can be so read since he inevitably
speaks of it as an atavism, in which the child gets stuck - fixated - at some
primitive stage of psychic evolution, he was very keen to argue its
universality, that all of our sexualities are atavistic at some level.

The conclusion now presents itself to us that there is indeed

something innate lying behind the perversions but that it is
something innate in everyone.48 (Freud's own emphasis).

Indeed when it comes to pathology it seems much clearer that Freud

conceived of homosexuality as the opposite of sickness. Homosexual
urges become pathogenic only when repressed, Freud argues. This is
evidenced by Schreber's memoirs, his paranoia caused by repressed
homosexual desire. In both the cases of the Wolf Man and Schreber their
repression of their desire to be sodomised by the father is the fundamental
source of their illness. In Psychoanalysis any behaviour that is propelled
not by desire, pleasure, or the need for discharge but by anxiety is by
definition pathological. Which again only serves to raise the contentious
issue of the analytic 'cure' or 'treatment' of the homosexual, when this
treatment is coming from a place of anxiety. The pathology in an analysis
with a homosexually identified client is far too often on the side of the
analyst's own unrecognised homophobia, rather than anything to do with
the analysand's own homosexuality.
Homosexuality is entirely beyond the range not only of analytic
therapy, but any therapy whatsoever insofar as the motivation for this
therapy comes from the anxious need to cure, treat, or control. However,

48
S. Freud. (1905) S.E. VII, p. 171.

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our own homophobia and its related unconscious homosexual object-
choices are within our treatment and must be within our own analyses if
we are to truly operate as analysts.
The consequences of such failure are clear. In America the
Freudian theory of homosexuality ceased to be a matter of the history of
ideas and became instead through the twentieth century a matter of the
history of prejudice. No one led this homophobic battle more than the
psychoanalyst Charles Socarides, arguing that:

[homosexual relations generate only] destructive, mutual

defeat, exploitation of the partner and the self, oral-sadistic
incorporation, aggressive onslaughts, attempts to alleviate
anxiety and a pseudo-solution to the aggressive and libidinal
urges which dominate and torment the individual. 49

While Socarides may not be representative of present psychoanalytic

thinking, he is institutionally powerful in the United States and he actively
campaigns on behalf of the possibility of curing homosexuality through
psychoanalytic means.
However, it is certainly worth noting that his son, Richard
Socarides, is not only a gay man himself but also an activist in the
homosexual political cause who served as Bill Clinton's principal liaison to
the gay community. You've just got to love that return of the repressed.

Address for correspondence: Trinity Access Programme

Goldsmith Hall
Trinity College
Dublin 2

e-mail: bovary@ntlworld.ie

49
C. Socarides. The Overt Homosexual. New York. Grune and Strarton, 1968, p.8.

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