THE LETTER 37 Summer 2006, pages 8-17

What is the neutrality of the analyst?

If not exactly this, the subversion

of sense, that is a kind of aspiration,

not towards the real, but by the real

Jacques Lacan

Mors aut honorabilis vita

James Joyce

On the one hundredth anniversary of Bloomsday I gave in Melbourne the reasons for, as well as my thoughts on, my debt to Joyce. Following on from that, in the land of Ire, and in Dublin, his city, I wonder if we can miss the irony that it is only over Joyce’s dead body that we are today here as analysts.

Joyce’s works were designed to create aspiring Theseuses who, contrary to the myth, will remain in the Joycean labyrinth under the spell of his enigmas. My wager instead will be elsewhere. I will examine the Joyce effect that psychoanalysis has suffered as a result of his writings. …