Abstract

FERRAO, Laertes Moura. The psychoanalytic impasse. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2016, vol.50, n.1, pp. 93-113. ISSN 0486-641X.

The author presented this paper to the panel discussion about the same subject at the 10th Latin American Congress of Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, in its origin, is related to medicine - to a medical perspective which, even without always being mentioned, is recognized in the ideas of illness, pathology, prognostic, results, and treatment. That medical perspective is also imbued with ideas of healing (or cure), which are based on both the pleasure principle and the sensory experience. Analysands feed omnipotent fantasies of getting rid of psychic sufferings; they long for a state of wellness or they idealize to achieve qualities - which are more typical of deities - through psychoanalysis. These desires may be entertained by the analysands and by the analysts’ omnipotent part. Therefore, psychoanalysis would correspond to a true process of religious purification. The desires of healing or the desires of a moral ideal - which are entertained in this way - imbue the psychoanalytic practice, the psychoanalytic theory, and the theory of the psychoanalytic technique. These desires determine characteristic behaviors which may be known when we more freely watch our way of being in the psychoanalytic practice. This paper shows the author’s approach about how these distortions in technique and theory may be recognized in several stages of the history of psychoanalysis. Regarding transference, the author writes: "The conception of understanding the psychoanalytic relationship in terms of the theory of transference - or in terms of the unconscious relation to the primitive goals - may be substituted by the conception of attempting to know, through psychoanalytic observation and in statu nascendi, the origin, the characteristics of forming the internal picture of the analyst, which the analysand has built by operating the undeveloped elements of his personality in the course of the psychoanalytic experience, and also by the conception of attempting to know his way of relating or engaging with others, his way of thinking and learning from this experience, and his way of deducing the factors that are at stake in this process." After commenting on Freud’s, K. Abraham’s, M. Klein’s, and J. Riviere’s works about this subject, the author infers that psychoanalytic impasse is a concept which is inspired by desires of healing or moral ideal. These desires are closely related to a medical or religious perspective of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic impasse is a concept which has been established and accepted by the psychoanalysts who share this vertex. Finally, the author writes about his still current attempt of working with a specific discipline in order to put away desires, memories, and comprehension, and according to the psychoanalytic vertex. The author illustrates his ideas with clinical vignettes.

Keywords : cure; healing; pleasure; sensory experience; fantasy; transference.

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