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Signifier, Object, and the Transference

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Signifier, Object, and the Transference Signifier, object, and the transference Citation of the final chapter: Grigg, R 2014, Signifier, object, and the transference. In Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie and Bracher, Mark (ed), Lacan and the subject of language, Taylor and Francis, Abingdon, Eng., pp.100-115. This is the accepted manuscript of a chapter published by Routledge in Lacan and the subject of language in 2014, available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315851518 ©2014, Taylor & Francis Downloaded from DRO: http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30069494 DRO Deakin Research Online, Deakin University’s Research Repository Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B 3 Signifier, Object, and the Transference I would like to talk about the function of both the signifier and the object in psychoanalytic treatment (la cure) and think that the best way to introduce this topic is to center my remarks on the transference. Freud describes the transference variously as suggestion, repetition, resistance, love, and, finally, as all of the above. He did however reject the term “suggestion” very early on, preferring to speak of “transference.” He did this for two reasons: first, whatever the force behind hypnosis, Freud wanted to distinguish it from the forces at work in psychoanalysis; second and more importantly, the catch-all phrase, “suggestion,” appealed to as explanation of all phenomena of influence, including not just psychoanalysis but hypnosis as well, was far too vague a term and served no real explanatory power. Moreover, we know that the suggestibility of the hypnotized patient, or at least the efficacity of the suggestion, depends upon the existence of a strong transference of the subject to the hypnotist. The term “transference,” “Übertragung,” first appears in Freud’s work in The Interpretation of Dreams, though Strachey translates it as “transcript.”1 Freud describes how dreams are constructed out of the day's residues, that is, the insignificant and trivial memories that remain from the day preceding the dream itself. A botanical monograph glimpsed in the window of a bookshop the day before becomes a dream about Freud’s successes and failures, including his near discovery of the medicinal powers of cocaine. The dream strips these memories of their original meaning and reinvests them with new meaning. This is “transference,” the transference of sense or meaning, in accordance with unconscious desire which thus disguises itself in otherwise innocent representations. Desire expresses itself through the medium of those representations which are acceptable by virtue of their very banality, seizing forms that have little value in themselves and that function in the dream separated from their initial meaning. The function like words, letters, or signifiers. The first appearance of the transference in Freud is therefore bound up with the general process of the formations of the unconscious—not only dreams but also slips of the tongue and pen, the forgetting of names, and bungled actions, as well as symptoms. Freud later gives “transference” a more narrow meaning, applying it to a phenomenon that he first ebcoems aware of within the analytic discourse, whereby desire becomes attached to something quite specific, the person of the analyst. But the connection with the early use in The Interpretation of Dreams is not merely verbal, for desire attaches not so much to the person as to the signifier of the analyst. The signifier of the analyst is a position within the analytic 1 discourse occupied by the analyst as person, but with which he should neither be identified nor, as we shall see, identify himself. There are further grounds for drawing this distinction between the analyst as person, in flesh and blood, and the analyst as signifier, as place within the transference relation. For one thing, if as Freud says the transference bears all the hallmarks of being in love we need to ask why it occurs more or less automatically, when falling in love requires that the object of one’s love possess such precise characteristics, that are so specific to each person. Lacan puts it this way in his first Seminar, on Freud’s papers on technique: How can a transference be so easily generated in neurotics, when they are so fettered when it comes to love? The production of a transference has an absolutely universal character, truly automatic, whereas the demands of love are, on the contrary, as everyone knows, so specific.2 We can now point out one general feature of the transference: the transference is the point at which the analyst as signifier becomes the object of the analysand's desire. There are two observations I would like to draw to your attention at this point. The first, which I take from Jacques-Alain Miller, is that the analyst is internal to the unconscious, not external to it. This is an observation we ultimately need to appeal to to explain a number of readily observable phenomena. It explains, for instance, the fact that the analysand frequently dreams for the analyst, or, as Freud observed, “the symptoms join in the conversation.” The analyst's implication in the unconscious means that there is no vantage point outside the transference, accessible to the analyst, from which it would be possible to objectively observe the analysand. The analyst is called into question just as much as the analysand. As in most of these things, Freud gives the clearest illustration of this in his own case studies; we can learn as much about Freud from the case studies as from The Interpretation of Dreams. What these observations on the transference point to is an acknowledgment that there is a place in the subject's “inner world” that the analyst comes to occupy. Most and probably all psychoanalytic theories recognize this, for in acknowledging that the transference is the driving force of an analysis, there is an implicit recognition that the analyst's position is a formation of the unconscious. The differences of opinion on this subject tend to be over what this place is that the analyst comes, or should come, to occupy. 2 The second point is this. Freud had discovered that formations of the unconscious could be deciphered and that symptoms could sometimes be lifted by this deciphering. But the transference came as a surprise, and an uncomfortable one at that. It came as a surprise to discover that the analyst appears to hold a special interest for the analysand, to occupy his thoughts, and perhaps even become his love object. In its early days the psychoanalytic method could have been regarded as applied hermeneutics, since symptoms were shown to have a hidden meaning which when deciphered and conveyed to the subject would cause a symptom to disappear. This was the truly golden age of psychoanalysis, when a walk with Professor Freud in the garden after lunch was enough to conjure away a troublesome symptom. The age soon passed, as we know, and Freud was led to the analysis of the resistance, that is, of the subject's refusal to admit the hidden meaning of his symptom. This difficulty in getting the analysand to acknowledge the meaning, sometimes even the existence, of symptoms also led to the belief that a force has to be overcome before symptoms could be removed. It was as if the unconscious had made itself less accessible to analysis, to the point where the various modifications in technique Freud introduced were made necessary by an evolution in the nature of the unconscious itself. There is something charmingly innocent nowadays in many of the symptoms described in the early Studies on Hysteria and a guilelessness in their interpretation-for instance, the hysteric's shortness of breath as a symptom associated with overhearing the mounting excitement of a couple making love. Now, in following up Freud's discovery that because the transference, far from making the analysand a willing collaborator in the task of deciphering his own text, is actually a form of resistance, the post-Freudians came to the conclusion, in one way or another, that what mattered above all was to regard analysis as an interpersonal relationship, an intersubjectivity that was only incidentally, and not essentially, mediated by language. This is, I believe, the fundamental point shared by those techniques that aim at analyzing the resistance, at the development of empathy, or at the countertransference. Lacan, on the other hand, is widely regarded as holding the exact opposite of this view, namely that it is language, or the signifier, that is paramount in analysis. One can see why Lacan has been read, in the English-speaking world particularly, as promoting the function of the signifier in psychoanalysis-not least because for a long time Lacan himself emphasized this very aspect. There is however something else Lacan emphasizes equally strongly, even more strongly in his later work, namely the object. And we need to discuss both aspects. To return to the point I was making before, which was that Freud introduced modifications in technique because of an evolution in the nature of the 3 unconscious, it can be argued that both the unconscious and symptoms have a history. This is difficult to reconcile with the claim that the unconscious is an instinctual reservoir, but quite simple to understand if it is essentially linguistic in nature. Further, it can be argued that the unconscious is essentially a discourse, and not merely structured like a language, and that with changes in the nature of this discourse, the nature of interpretation itself was also forced to undergo modifications. Now, symptoms undergo not only historical change, but when an analysand enters analysis, their symptoms will all take on a new meaning. Freud observed this phenomenon under the name of transference-meaning, Übertragungsbedeutung.
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