Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This paper proposes that clinical psychoanalysis requires distinctions for its practice that tend to be blurred by a less than careful importation of contemporary philosophical concepts. One such distinction is that between narration and the event narrated; another, that between meaning seen as absolutely relative and meaning understood as hierarchical. The first distinction identifies present experience as formed by a narrative strategy arrived at in the past. The second distinction allows pathology to be described as arrests or limitations in the ability to construe meaning. This perspective has implications for a number of current debates, among them those concerning the roles of interpretation and reconstruction. A clinical illustration involving the reconstruction of a disavowed perception and relying on the aforementioned distinctions is presented.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Atlas, J. (1988). The case of Paul de Man. New York Times Magazine, August 25.

Brooks, P. , (1979). Fictions of the Wolfman. Diacritics, 9: 1: 72–83.

Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. ed. (1964). La sexualite feminine: recherches psychanalytiques nouvells. Paris: Payot.

Culler, J. (1975). Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Poetics and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.

Culler, J. (1981). The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.

Culler, J. (1982). On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.

De Man, P. (1969). The rhetoric of temporality. In Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Univ. Minnesota Press, 1983, pp. 187–228.

De Man, P. (1988). The Wartime Journalism of Paul De Man. Lincoln: Univ. Nebraska Press.

Genette, G. , (1972). Figures III. Paris: Editions du Scuil.

10.

Hartmann, G. , ed. (1978). Psychoanalysis and the Question of the Text. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.

11.

Hoffer, A. (1993). Is love in the analytic relationship “real”? Psychoanal. Inq., 13: 343–356.

12.

Kofman, S. (1980). L'enigme de la femme: la femme dans les textes de Freud. Paris: Flammarion.

13.

Lehman, D. , (1992a). Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man. New York: Poseidon.

14.

Lehman, D. , (1992b). Paul de Man: the plot thickens. New York Times. May 24, section 7, p. 1.

15.

Loewald, H. , (1949). Ego and reality. In Papers on Psychoanalysis. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1980, pp. 3–20.

16.

Mitchell S. (1993). Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books.

17.

Propp, V. (1928). Morphology of the Folktale, trans. L. Scott . 2nd ed. Ausdn: Univ. Texas Press, 1969.

18.

Reed, G. (1993). On the value of explicit reconstruction. Psychoanal. Q., 62: 52–73.

19.

Reed, G. (1994). Transference Neurosis and Psychoanalytic Experience: Perspectives on Contemporary Clinical Practice. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

20.

Renik, O. (1993). Analytic interaction: conceptualizing technique in the light of the analystapos;s irreducible subjectivity. Psychoanal. Q., 4: 553–571.

21.

Schafer, R. (1980). Narration in the psychoanalytic dialogue. In Essential Papers on Literature and Psychoanalysis, ed. E. Berman . New York: New York Univ. Press, 1993, pp. 341–368.

22.

Schafer, R. (1982). The relevance of the ‘here and now’ interpretation for recon structions. Int. J. Psychoanal, 63: 77–82.

23.

Schafer, R. (1992). Retelling a Life: Narration and Dialogue in Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books.

24.

Scholes, R. (1982). Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

25.

Spence, D. (1982). Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton.

26.

Todorov, T. (1971). Poetique de la Prose. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

27.

Viderman, S. (1970). La Construction de I'Espace Analytique. 2nd ed., Paris: Gallimard, 1980.

28.

Viderman, S. (1977). Le celeste et le sublunaire. Paris: Presses Univ. de France.

Clinical Truth and Contemporary Relativism: Meaning and Narration in the Psychoanalytic Situation

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References