As described above, the structural third – the third of the symbolic and the Other precedes and structures dyadic relationships, including the analytic pair. Some of its tangible effects include:
- Authorities and the laws that authorise them
- Elements of the treatment situation beyond the treatment dyad, including the psychoanalytic community and other practitioners
- Aspects of the patient’s history and life, third-parties and family system, representing what is beyond the analytic dyad and establishing a context for understanding repetition
- Norms of objectivity, evidence and discourse that govern inferences, judgments and meaning making.
What is suggested here is that the classical v. relational debate and the one versus two body/individual/mind debate regarding knowledge and participation in the analytic relationship miss the central point. What is pivotal is whether the various analytic positions described recognise and engage with structural thirdness so as to facilitate developmental thirdness. It will be argued here that analytic work is not an epistemological project based on a dyadic relationship. Rather, it is a project based on a triadic relationship and an ethical project in the service of emerging thirdness and through that the articulation of desire. Neutrality and abstinence, far from being empty concepts, concern the positioning of knowledge and desire in the analytic discourse so as to facilitate developmental thirdness and that articulation of desire. The ethic referred to here is a specifically psychoanalytic ethic which relates action to desire. This is to be distinguished from the ethics of traditional moral philosophy, ideals, notions of goodness, or professional codes of ethics. For further, see Lacan’s Seminar VII.
The relational school, as described by Greenberg, offers motivation for treatment by way of the gratification of relational needs in the context of the analytic relationship. Lacanians warn that this can represent a move further into imaginary relating and away from the symbolic and thirdness. Greenberg’s moments of ‘excess’ are conceptualised here as an effect of the analyst being required to occupy simultaneously two incompatible discursive positions. This conflictual requirement occurs when on the one hand, gratification and suggestion within the imaginary register have been positioned as in the service of the analysis, but on the other, so has elaboration within the symbolic register. This ‘excess’ can be seen as a hysterical symptom – a protest – an effect of the analyst being placed in an impossible position.
Lacanian discourse theory offers an elegant and explicit way to theorise the various respective positions in discourse of the Divided Subject, Unconscious Truth, Values, Knowledge and Desire, and their effects within social processes of governing, educating, desiring/protesting and analysing/revolutionising. Here, the use of discourse theory is concerned with the implications of the analytic relationship being positioned in different discourses – particularly regarding the respective positions of the analyst vis-à-vis Knowledge and Desire. Neutrality and abstinence are often described in terms of behavioural standards or limitations imposed by professional ethics and morality. However, they are actually a call for the analyst to take up, and decline, certain positions during analytic work in relation to Knowledge (neutrality) and Desire (abstinence), rather than seeking to bar either as inherently misguided suggestion or gratification. Neutrality provides for a stance where the analyst avoids becoming an Agent or Producer of Knowledge in respect of the analysand. Abstinence provides for a stance where the analyst avoids the positioning of Objet Petit a (cause of desire) in the position of unconscious Truth or, in effect, avoids seeking to identify (or disidentify) with the analysand’s current positioning of Objet Petit a and stepping further into imaginary relating with them. Objet Petit a is a complex term with various and evolving definitions in Lacan’s work. The Objet Petit a is an imaginary object, a fantasy object and the cause of the neurotic’s desire. It doesn’t represent an individual in the analysand’s life or an introjection, but rather represents a lack and the compensatory positioning of that lack and desire. That positioning may be in the place of a specific individual, but it is not comprised by that individual, and the positioning of the Objet Petit a in the place of the analyst is an important element in beginning the treatment. In terms of the Four Discourses, the Objet Petit a is that part of the subject’s being that is simultaneously left out of and produced by the identity established for the subject in the S1-S2 articulation. Objet Petit a allows us to contemplate the nature of jouissance and the significance of the signifier for the speaking being.