Permanent Disquiet

Psychoanalysis and the Transitional Subject

Michel De M'Uzan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367193669
• eBook ISBN: 9780429514050
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Permanent Disquiet: Psychoanalysis and the Transitional Subject comprises the first English language translation of some of Michel Émile de M'Uzan's key writings, alongside an invaluable glossary by Murielle Gagnebin of M'Uzan's work. Together, they give a thorough overview of his key thinking.

The first part of the book sees de M'Uzan exploring the compatibility between creativity (particularly creative writing) and psychoanalytic practice and includes an exchange with Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. The second part focuses on M'Uzan's key psychoanalytic concept – "permanent disquiet". Freud stated that the purpose of psychoanalysis was to transform neurotic suffering into common unhappiness. De M'Uzan built on this idea in his career and examined what it means for the clinical process for the analyst to step back, not to try and force happiness onto the patient, but instead to accept and allow them to find for themselves their own state of 'permanent disquiet'. Drawing on Freud and Winnicott and including an invaluable glossary of de M'Uzan's own psychoanalytic terms, this book brings de M'Uzan's powerful theory to the anglophone psychoanalytic world for the first time.

Permanent Disquiet: Psychoanalysis and the Transitional Subject will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists globally who are interested in French psychoanalytic thought.

Part I

Artists and their hell

Chapter 1

Interview with J.-B. Pontalis (fragments) (1977)¹

The central theme of this exchange of views raises several questions related to the transition from analytic practice to theoretical writing (that of the écrivant, as Roland Barthes² would have said), and, furthermore, highlights the problems of compatibility between the profession of the psychoanalyst and that of the writer. In the pages preceding these extracts, J.-B. Pontalis calls into question the general view of a priority of what is experienced over what is thought and of what is thought (le pensé) over what is written (l’écrit). For him, the movement of analysis is one that goes, on the contrary, from “words to the flesh”. The writing of the analyst would no longer be seen, then, “as a defence against analytic experience; it would become almost an integral part of it”. This relationship, which he considers to be very intimate, is lived out, however, in a state of “relative competition” and “relative incompatibility”. In my view, however, although the authentic writer has nothing to fear from lying on the couch, the rivalry between the writing of fiction which is the true purpose of the writer and analytic practice seems to me to be a radical obstacle.

MICHEL ÉMILE DE M’UZAN The writer, and the artist in general, has nothing to fear from analysis, the experience of which is in no way sterilising, contrary to the prejudice that you have just mentioned. I have been able to observe this myself more than once, like many other analysts. Freud, the very first analyst, asserted in a letter that when the impulse to create is stronger than the inner resistances, analysis can only increase, not diminish the creative faculties. This concurs, moreover, with my experience. Artists – whatever form their apprehension may take – often come to analysis when they feel blocked in their work. We know that this is only an argument that allows them to take the initial step, just as the desire for analytic training covers the deep motivations of the future analyst. It remains true, however, that it is to be hoped that analysis removes the inhibitions of the artist and, generally speaking, this is what happens.

J.-B. PONTALIS My experience confirms yours. But as these inhibitions cannot be considered as a symptom isolated from the mind as a whole, this is a sign that literature and psychoanalysis are not mutually exclusive. Unless you consider, that is, and this is another proposition that is often put forward, that analyses of writers do not go as “far” as others, leaving, by common agreement, a remainder?

M. − It is very difficult to give you an answer to that. However, I would venture to say that I do not see what, in practical terms, prevents the analysis of a writer from being taken as far as any other. We could certainly discuss this from a theoretical angle, but in practice, in the reality of analytic treatments, I cannot see what could prevent this. Not only can a writer consult an analyst for personal difficulties as much as for difficulties related to work, but we can sometimes observe the emergence of a desire to write in the course of an analysis in someone who previously had never thought of doing so, for his or her project was quite different.

P. − That does not, however, make a writer.

M. − When I speak of the emergence of a desire to write – of a need to write – I am thinking of one that leads to an authentic realisation and that may be recognised by others. I have followed analysands who previously had no experience of personal literary activity, in whom the analysis freed up creative capacities in this domain, capacities that were expressed subsequently in a continuous and efficient manner – and not episodically or in a purely defensive mode. This will not come as a surprise to the analyst who is used to seeing new forms of creativity develop in their patients in one domain or another. Let me repeat: I cannot see any radical incompatibility between the fact of pursuing one’s analysis as far as possible and the fact of writing – or of painting – etc. If there is any incompatibility – since this is the issue we are discussing – it is not between personal analysis and writing, but between the practice of analysis as an analyst and a genuine activity as a writer. It seems to me that there are deep reasons for this. I would not claim to be able to enumerate them, and even less to be able to elucidate them. For the time being, I would just like to mention one of them. Forgive me for being schematic, but in doing so I will perhaps be clearer. Whatever may be said about it, the movement of analysis is, in certain respects, reductive. Indeed, this is precisely one of the criticisms that is often made of analysis – a criticism that has some validity, no doubt, and I am exposing myself to it – since analysts hardly ever fail to defend themselves against this accusation. They are wrong in doing so, for the notion of a reductive movement is essential, innovative and even inspired in that it invites us to look towards the “bottom” (le “bas”) and to cease to make the overly sublime “top” (le “haut”) – even cultural – the primary agent of “creative activities”. The movement of analysis goes from the complex to the elementary, to the vulgar; in a certain way, it simplifies. Through interpretation,* analysis renders the meaning of abundant and complex manifest contents, revealing the simple and raw latent meaning in a secondarised formulation that employs direct language. This is certainly a very ordinary idea, but one that has its place because it defines a directly opposite movement to that of the creative process, at any rate in the literary domain we are discussing. Let me add that I am thinking precisely of the writing of fiction, whether a story or a poem, which I distinguish clearly from criticism.

…

I am setting aside the category of writings that is called, I think, “moved” criticism, where the aesthetic dimension is particularly present, and whose power depends on its noticeable rootedness in a nocturnal, and perhaps wild, universe. Critical writings, in the strict sense of the term, seem for their part to be oriented initially by a desire for demonstration, a line of argumentation whose logic might be found in very different domains. Admittedly, it is sometimes the case that one is both a critic and a writer of fiction. But this is not the common run of things.

P. − All the same for Baudelaire, Henry James and Proust, just to mention a few authors, literature, you would not disagree, I think, was their passion, their life… . But let us return to the opposition that you insist on between practising analysis and the activity of a writer.

M. − My point is that the driving forces behind each of them are exactly converse. In a piece of fictional writing, we are not going in the direction of decoding but, on the contrary, in the direction of a proliferation of what is manifest, where the language used seems to be marked by a sort of formal regression in which the figures become increasingly symbolic before constituting a series of masks. Basically, writing consists in saying while not saying, in saying something other than what one thinks one is saying, in lying without knowing it in order to reveal some ignored truth. The writer is constantly showing and hiding, and the succession of masks that he constructs give his writing the striking character that discursive language does not possess.

P. − I agree with what you say about the writer: he says without saying, he conceals as much as he shows, etc… . Confusing interpretation with decoding would perhaps be true for those Kleinians who carry their dictionary around with them in their heads. But when the analyst refuses this easy option, when he does not treat interpretation as simultaneous translation, when he does not consider himself as the holder of a set of keys that will open all doors – and, in my view, close them – what happens? The analyst is then not only led to listen to the latent content of the statements and silences of his patient, but also to be receptive to his own latent contents, to what the analysand induces in him. You yourself have shown how this highly singular communication between the patient and the analyst occurs. I am thinking in particular of your text on the “paradoxical countertransference”. This way of seeing things has even been reproached for being too risky, too subjective. …

M. − That’s true.

P. − There is, then, a trajectory operating in analysis that is not very different from that which motivates the writer. For the writer is not only in search of what he is unaware of, of the unknown in himself; he also seeks to generate a similar movement in the reader. The reader, like the author, is only interested in what is “manifest”, at least during the time of reading, which ultimately is the only one that matters. It is only secondarily, by stepping back, that he will fall back on his own code and become a critic-interpreter. But, as I said at the outset, reading, for me, is not interpreting; it is more a question of regressing with everything positive that that involves.

M. − You have just introduced a further element, or rather an additional character: the reader. I was considering one character only, namely, the analyst who is pursuing side by side his activities as a practitioner and as a writer. The opposition that I have made between the two functions is admittedly a bit too clear cut because the analyst may have a “literary” ear for the discourse of his patient – which, to my mind, is not pejorative – linked to this very particular countertransference, the essence of which is very close to that which nurtures the inspiration of the writer or the dreamer. The two universes are thus not fundamentally heterogeneous; I think I have explained myself sufficiently on this point elsewhere ( de M’Uzan, 1977). I would add that it is certainly not a matter of chance if analysts have taken so much interest in literature. They felt they were directly concerned. No, what I have in mind is, on the one hand, the movement of the action that orients both activities, its direction, and, on the other, the specific characteristics of the psychic economy of the analyst and of the writer. Irrespective of the relative uncertainty or indefiniteness of the frontiers between the subject and his objects – and you know how much I am attached to this idea – the analyst is essentially oriented, polarised, and sometimes even invaded, by the discourse of another person. Being able to allow himself to be pervaded by this extraneous discourse is indeed one of the qualities that the analyst should possess. The movement that sustains the writer goes in exactly the opposite direction. Basically, the writer turns towards himself while inducing – sometimes artificially – a real regression. The work he does subsequently on the ideational contents arising from this regression occurs according to specific laws, in particular those of written language. You will tell me that the analyst also regresses during the session, with his patient, something with which I am, of course, in complete agreement. But we do not know, first of all, to whom the “partial ideational contents” mobilised by this regression belong and, furthermore, they are dealt with quite differently. The requirements of their formation, of their potential verbalisation, are also original; they do not have the same cultural reference points, at least not exactly, quite apart from the fact that they have others. Furthermore, the laws that govern their formulation, their grammar,* as it were, are in the service of a clarification, of an elucidation. When all things are said and done, I make a clear distinction between the work carried out in relation to the discourse of another person and that which pertains to the figures emerging from an inner proliferation of activity.

The other aspect of this opposition between the analyst and the writer that I am trying to circumscribe – even excessively, as a tactic – has to do with the economy of the two activities. For me, the writer is someone whose first and primordial task is writing. It is writing that gives a decisive direction to his days and which constitutes his essential investment. Any other activity – however much time he devotes objectively to writing, but generally speaking it is a great deal – is experienced as secondary or accessory; in certain respects it is devalued, or even, in extreme situations, scorned. The writer, as we know, is quick to complain when these tasks – life, in short, “take” up his time, time with which he will perhaps do nothing. This is how, in part, the very particular status of his narcissism is expressed, and the meaning of his life defined. Something Arthur Adamov³ said to me one day comes to mind here: “When one writes, it’s terrifying; when one doesn’t write, it’s horrific”.

…

What I have in mind is the depth, the seriousness of the commitment, the importance that the writer ascribes to his non-literary activities. Even more than the time he devotes objectively to writing, what counts is what, qualitatively speaking, he puts of himself both into his writing and into his other occupations. This being so, it remains true overall, “musings” included – and we know how important they are – that the qualitative distribution of interests tends to follow this movement. There are not many of whom it could be said that their life is that of a writer, since they devote most of themselves to some other task.

P. – Someone who writes a book, doesn’t that exist for you?

M. – Indeed. One book, even if it is sublime, does not make a writer. This book will perhaps have its place in literary history – although when it is a one-off, its fate is very uncertain. In this precise case, can we say that the author of this book was still a writer when his footsteps took him elsewhere, that he was living in another universe? Think of the case of Rimbaud.

P. – And you, for your part, do not forget “The Princess of Cleves.” …⁴ That said, let us try to clarify what differentiates our respective points of view. I agree with you in recognising that one cannot, at one and the same time, be an analyst and a writer, and in accepting the fact that one cannot, at the end of one’s day of doing analysis, find in oneself the inner resources necessary for nourishing the work of a writer. One is not “in the right condition”. But that is simply observing a fact, namely, the question of psychic economy at a given time, which doesn’t take us very far.

M. – Absolutely, yes.

P. – You will accept that it is not only the possibility of writing that is then excluded. The analyst is also often not very available for other commitments that would mobilize him deeply; indeed, his loved ones sometimes reproach him for this… . Without wishing to fall further into the pathos of “the analyst’s being”, let us recognise that analytic asceticism cuts us off somewhat – like the writer, in your understanding of the word, moreover – from the outside world. We are not always easy to live with. …

M. – Let’s say that, in other circumstances, there is nothing to stop an analyst who no longer practices for one reason or another, or very little, from writing or taking up writing again. It is a question, in fact, of psychic economy: when an analyst’s interest and energy have been mobilised by patients, by others, he is no longer available for himself. But alongside this question of psychic economy, and linked with it, there is this movement of the analytic work of which I was speaking earlier, which develops in a direction that is exactly opposite to that of writing. This I continue to maintain, even if you corrected, quite rightly, my somewhat schematic formulations, for while the analyst and the writer have the same basic material in common, they have a different way of dealing with it. Do you believe that, from one moment to another, one can “turn the switch” and adopt an entirely different mode of functioning? The analyst may take pleasure, somewhat perversely, in immerging himself in a stream of bizarre images without knowing any longer whether they concern him or his patient, while the language of the protagonists, at certain moments, makes use of uncontrolled archaic means. The analyst may then think he is a poet, and even be capable of making puns! But this only lasts for a short time. It may certainly be a fruitful phase, but it cannot last because it is necessary to extricate oneself from this humus before getting bogged down in it, and to return, whether one likes it or not, to lucidity.

T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series editor’s foreword
• Preface
• Foreword
• Part I Artists and their hell
• Part II On the frontiers
• Part III Glossary of the main notions: Elaborated by the author
• References
• Index