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FROM BEHIND THE COUCH: Uncertainty and Indeterminacy in Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

FROM BEHIND THE COUCH: Uncertainty and Indeterminacy in Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice As both a theory and a practice, psychoanalysis is directed toward self-understanding, yet its premise is that most of mental life is not available to consciousness. Like Socrates perhaps, analyst and patient differ from their fellow citizens in that their self-knowledge and even wisdom stem from knowing and acknowledging how much they do not know. This foundational paradox, that selfknowledge in psychoanalysis is based on the acceptance of not-knowing, has tacitly faced both practitioner and patient since the beginning of psychoanalysis, but it is only in the current intellectual, cultural, and political climate that the paradox is being fully noticed and that its yield of further dilemmas and challenges for psychoanalysts (and patients) is being fully addressed. Like many other analytic practitioners, I have needed to think systematically about my own principles of analytic attitude and analytic activity; unlike most other practitioners, I have begun, as an academic, from a mind used to thinking about theory rather than practice. But the choice of uncertainty and indeterminacy as key words for my subtitle resulted less from my relative newness to the profession (something shy of twenty years) than from conclusions that I, along with some though not The author http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

FROM BEHIND THE COUCH: Uncertainty and Indeterminacy in Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

Common Knowledge , Volume 9 (3) – Oct 1, 2003

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References (52)

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2003 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-9-3-463
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

As both a theory and a practice, psychoanalysis is directed toward self-understanding, yet its premise is that most of mental life is not available to consciousness. Like Socrates perhaps, analyst and patient differ from their fellow citizens in that their self-knowledge and even wisdom stem from knowing and acknowledging how much they do not know. This foundational paradox, that selfknowledge in psychoanalysis is based on the acceptance of not-knowing, has tacitly faced both practitioner and patient since the beginning of psychoanalysis, but it is only in the current intellectual, cultural, and political climate that the paradox is being fully noticed and that its yield of further dilemmas and challenges for psychoanalysts (and patients) is being fully addressed. Like many other analytic practitioners, I have needed to think systematically about my own principles of analytic attitude and analytic activity; unlike most other practitioners, I have begun, as an academic, from a mind used to thinking about theory rather than practice. But the choice of uncertainty and indeterminacy as key words for my subtitle resulted less from my relative newness to the profession (something shy of twenty years) than from conclusions that I, along with some though not The author

Journal

Common KnowledgeDuke University Press

Published: Oct 1, 2003

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