Freud’s masterpiece consisted in creating a setting that produces specific effects independently of the metapsychology of the analyst. Some pupils of mine tell me they don’t understand why their patients keep coming back to see them for months or years or why they have visible improvements. “Yet I didn’t do anything special,” they say. It’s just that they were able to not destroy the transference. They let the setting do the work.
The psychoanalyst Giovanni Zapparoli said that if we leave someone under a street lamp for two days, something is bound to happen… The same goes for analysis. The analogy between standing still under a street lamp and the analytic setting is that in both cases subjects have no distractions: sooner or later they will have to question themselves on their desire. It is the non-action of both the analyst and the analysand, the invitation to a free use of words, which will allow some unconscious to emerge in any case. A similar apparatus – with no couch or street lamp – is also used by non-analysts, and it works. What many analysts mistake for their own clinical genius, is actually the genius of the setting.
Πηγή: Απόσπασμα από το άρθρο 12 Questions about Psychoanalysis: Answers by Sergio Benvenuto
Εικόνα: Clément Rémond