The Letter, Issue 70, pages 29-37
The Helplessness of the Analyst[1]
Jacques Laberge
‘I was thinking no such thing.’ ‘It has nothing to do with it.’ A resounding ‘no’ echoes through the consulting rooms of analysts, for days, weeks, months, and even years on end. Denial forms part of the day-to-day workings of analysis and indicates the position of the ‘I’ and its ‘paranoiac knowledge’. It goes way back. ‘Trapped in… motor impotence and nursling dependence’,[2] the small child finds in the mirror-experience, either with an actual mirror or with any other person, an alienating and illusory compensation for its helplessness. Having read, at the age of 20, the French translation of James Joyce’s Ulysses,[3] considered the most important novel of the twentieth century and indispensable reading for an analyst, Lacan could not fail to be impressed by the great beauty of the images of specular condensation, ‘my two feet… at the end of his legs’,[4] or specular identifications ‘he is I’, ‘lui c’est moi’, written in French in the English text.[5] We need a better evaluation of the influence of Joyce, not only on Lacan’s later writings, but on his earlier ones also.
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