The Analyst and The a
For transference to take place, the analyst must incorporate the a for the analysand: 'analysts who are such only insofar as they are object - the object of the analysand'. For Lacan, 'it is not enough that the analyst should support the function of Tiresias. He must also, as Apollinaire tells us, have breasts' - must represent or incorporate the (missing) object of desire.
Working through the transference thereafter entails moving 'beyond the function of the a': the 'analyst has to...be the support of the separating a,' so as to allow the analysis eventually to be completed. 'If the analyst during the analysis will come to be this object, he will also at the end of analysis not be it. He will submit himself to the fate of any object that stands in for a, and that is to be discarded.'
Read more about this topic: Objet Petit A
Famous quotes containing the word analyst:
“Freudianism is much more nearly a religion than a science, inasmuch as the relation between analyst and patient has a great deal in common with that between priest and communicant at confessional, and such ideas as the Oedipus complex, the superego, the libido, and the id exert an effect upon the converted which is almost identical with what flows to the devout Christian from godhead, trinity, grace, and immortality.”
—Robert Nisbet (b. 1913)