Despite Greenberg’s concerns, following Hoffman’s moment of ‘excess’ in picking up the ‘phone, a different perspective, a moment of thirdness, begins to emerge in the analysand, ripe for exploration. Sadly, the moment is missed, and one is left to conjecture whether this represents Hoffman’s identification with the analysand’s aggrieved and retaliatory father.
What sort of move, involving a failure of neutrality and abstinence, could lead to the sort of ‘excess’ that Greenberg appears to be concerned about? Are moments of ‘excess’ occasions where, although the analyst has retained his position as Agent, there is a shift of the analytic relationship from the Discourse of the Analyst to that of the Hysteric? The relational school’s positioning of the analysand’s motivation on the side of the analyst’s gratification of the analysand’s apparent needs and desires requires the analyst to occupy two different simultaneous positions. As Agent in the Analyst’s Discourse, and Other in the Hysteric’s Discourse – subjected in Hoffman’s case to the demand ‘Valium!’. In the face of this conflictual pressure within the analytic work, the analyst loses his analytic position; his analytic Knowledge has lost its position of Truth in the Discourse of the Analyst. The analyst becomes a conflicted Agent in the Hysteric’s Discourse – a Discourse where the Objet Petit a is situated in the position of the analyst’s unconscious Truth. The analyst’s Desire becomes the unconscious prime mover in the analytic relationship.
When we turn to the diagram of the Discourse of the Analyst with this loss in mind, what is portrayed? With the loss of analytic Knowledge (perhaps the true meaning of Hoffman’s ‘throwing out the book’) to support the analyst’s Desire as analytic Desire, Desire falls ‘under the line’ – out of consciousness – and with one quarter rotation back, the analyst has been hystericised. The conflicted analyst subjects the analysand to the Master Signifier of the moment. S is in the place of Agent – S1 in the place of the Other. In Hoffman’s case, one suspects a Master Signifier in the region of ‘disidentification’. In Hoffman’s vignette he reports the ‘richness of the subsequent conversation’. Maybe so – but then, the Other in the Hysteric’s Discourse is always a producer of Knowledge, as they struggle unsuccessfully to address the lack in the Other. Additionally, in this case, the subsequent dialogue might be an attempt on the part of the analysand to repair the analytic relationship.
In conclusion, not all work that appears personal or informal and seems to contravene the classical behavioural injunctions of abstinence and neutrality fall out of the Discourse of the Analyst. Similarly, not all work that appears to comply with those behavioural injunctions necessarily falls within the Discourse of the Analyst. Behavioural limits are to some degree a marker or a protection, but do not of themselves indicate the location of the analytic pair in relation to the Four Discourses. The Discourse of the Analyst is constituted by the positions and the effects in discourse of the analyst’s Knowledge and Desire. The test isn’t the analyst’s behaviour, but the effect of the analytic relationship – whether the subject can move from giving ground to their desire to articulating it. Abstinence is the analyst’s assumption of that position in Discourse which locates desire as Agent rather than as Other or Truth. Neutrality is the analyst’s assumption of that position in Discourse which locates analytic knowledge as Truth, rather than Agent or Product. What counts as an analytic position and a potentially effective interpretation depends on the analysand’s structure. The importance of the analysand’s structure in the respective triad with the analyst’s Knowledge and Desire is reflected in positioning of the Divided Subject in the place of Other in the Discourse of the Analyst. In clinical terms, the location of S, the structure of the Subject, as Other, highlights the importance of differential diagnosis in framing interventions.