The Letter, Issue 1, Summer 1994, Pages 95 - 102
Analytical Discourse and Scientific Discourse:
A Difference in Responsibility.
Rik Loose
The Discourse of Analysis
According to Oscar Wilde, "education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught".[1] What is worth knowing has a special place in the discourse of analysis and it is something that is difficult to transmit. In psychoanalysis, knowledge, [2] , is related to truth; it occupies the place of truth in its discourse and it is the only knowledge with which it is concerned.
This is knowledge that speaks the truth, but only manages to do this partially. Truth here is not-all; it is constituted as an effect of language and it ex-ists within it. This truth always more or less escapes us when we try to grasp it. It will only allow itself to be encircled by myth and fiction. These myths and fictions are what constitute knowledge in psychoanalysis, namely, the Oedipus complex, Totem and Taboo, Narcissus, and so on; by means of which the Real of the impossible sexual relationship and questions of what man, woman, death and birth are for the human subject, can be approached. These myths and fictions are at the place of truth and are kept there. They are what the subject supposes the analyst to know, but they are also what the analyst presupposes as knowledge in the subject.