A paramount lesson from Benvenuto’s writing is that the teaching of analytic theory need not be dispensed via the educative model and very often must be transmitted in the manner of the analytic act itself: via transference. I am speaking here of the two times of the psychoanalytic act: ‘the induction to the transference and its dissolution in the fall of the subject supposed to know’ (Oyer, 2015). Benvenuto is neither Master nor keeper of a tradition: he speaks from nowhere. This was forcefully brought home to me in a very brief parenthetical aside he made in his discussion of masochism: ‘Perversions, however, are neither Cartesian nor linear, they are baroque (so much so that I wonder if an analyst who does not appreciate the baroque and its dizzying brilliance can truly understand them)’ (Benvenuto 2016: 62). I was brought up short. What did I know of the Baroque? The question launched me into a months long investigation of the visible and invisible, trompe-l’oeil, anamorphosis, perspectivism, chiaroscuro, and the fold. This passion seemed to fall away in a flash as I imagined Benvenuto in Baroque Rome surrounded by the light and shadow of Santi Luca e Martina and Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza. I began to question what kind of analyst I might become, here in New York, inspired by Benvenuto’s Baroque but with my own truth of hip hop, punk rock, and the downtown composers. I thought of my ownmost ancient geographies, the terroir of my idiom, my making and unmaking by this land without memory. While going beyond Wikipedia might be an indication of the beckoning of transference (something agalmatic), this collapse and thrust into something beyond mere identification is a requisite for a passage to the act of authorization.
References
Benvenuto, S. (2016). What are perversions?: Sexuality, ethics, psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.
Benvenuto, S. (2017). Answers and commentaries IPTAR “What Are Perversions?” event. European Journal of Psychoanalysis. Retrieved from: http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/sergio-benvenuto-answers-and-commentaries/
Benvenuto, S. & Oyer, M. (in press). The meeting of voids: A dialogue with Sergio Benvenuto on his book What Are Perversions?: Sexuality, ethics, psychoanalysis. Das Unbehagen, 2.
Freud, S. (1912). Recommendations to physicians practicing psycho-analysis. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 12, pp. 109- 120). London: Hogarth Press.
Lacan, J. (2015). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, book VIII: Transference. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Oyer, M. (2015). Hysteria and the psychoanalytic act. European Journal of Psychoanalysis. Retrieved from: http://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/hysteria-and-the-psychoanalytic-act/