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2007 Institute of Psychoanalysis

From symbolic law to narrative capacity

A paradigm shift in psychoanalysis?1

SUSANN HEENEN-WOLFFFaculty of Psychology, Catholic University of Louvain, 10 place Cardinal Mercier,

B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium [email protected](Final version accepted 17 February 2006)

In the Freudian perspective, the primal phantasies, a reflection of prehistory, obligeus through our phylogenetic heritage and its repetition in the ontogenetic to recognize

the limits of generation and sex, to submit to the symbolic law represented by thefather of the primal horde and to findas is sought in the treatmentones rightplace in the primal scene (Oedipus complex). Clinical experience with patientssuffering from narcissistic disorders soon led certain analysts to propose a paradigmchange, which has brought about important modifications to technique, but also,more recently, modifications at the level of metapsychology. Certain contemporaryanalysts have a conception of the subject focused on processes of interaction andcommunication between thinking apparatuses in the here and now. The author

shows that this current development is taking place in parallel with major trendsin our postmodern era in which communication and negotiation replace formerreligious, mythical, philosophical, moral or political beliefs.

Keywords: symbolic law, classical analytic setting, construction, narration,negotiation

The implicit values of Freudian psychoanalysis

Introduction

According to Freudian psychoanalysis, the aim of treatment is to [lift] the repres-sion and [transform] the unconscious material into conscious (19167, p. 438); tofill up all the gaps in the patients memory (p. 282); to make the advance from the

pleasure principle to the reality principle (1916, p. 312); to guard against the returnto narcissism by situating oneself in relation to the fatherthe Oedipus complex(1913); and to give up illusions and recognize reality (1927).

However, it is clearer today than it was previously, in the light of research intothe sciences themselves, that reality as such does not exist, that it is a function ofthe observer and of the implicit or explicit theory which underlies the observation.So what reality should we recognize? The Freudian perspective has always triedto link the ontogenesis of the individual psyche with the history of the group,and even with the phylogenesis of the species; from this point of view, primalphantasies, as a reflection of our prehistory, oblige usvia the phylogenetic

Int J Psychoanal2007;88:7590

1Translated by Margaret Whitford.


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76 SUSANN HEENEN-WOLFF

heritage and its abbreviated repetition in ontogenesisto recognize the limits ofgeneration and sex, to submit to the symbolic law represented by the father of theprimal horde, and in that way to find an appropriate place in the primal scene.According to Freud (1913), the murder of the father is at the root of mans senseof guilt, without which there is no drive renunciation and no sublimation, and thus

no work of civilization. At all events, from a structural point of view, the humanbeing continues to be subject to the original psychic conflict. In addition, Freuds(1927) formidable diagnosis claims that the drive renunciation imposed on theindividual is made at some cost and, for that reason, increases the hatred of thatsame civilization.

Since Freuds formulation of these hypotheseswhich have never commandeduniversal assent in the analytic communitythe development of psychoanalytictheory and practice has come a long way. The question which I raise in this paper is:are we not witnessing a real paradigm shift in contemporary psychoanalysis, namely:

has not what belonged to the content in metapsychologythe fundamental Freudianhypotheses concerning the human being, particularly the drive organization, alongwith its ontogenetic and phylogenetic historymoved backstage, unobtrusivelygiving way to a focus on processes of interaction and communication betweenthinking apparatuses in the here and now?

A paradigm is defined as the totality of the rules accepted and internalized asnorms by the scientific community which serve to delimit and problematize thefacts that it deems worthy of study. Kuhn (1962) emphasized that there is no suchthing as pure observation, and showed that all scientific observation is underpinnedby a theory. In addition, he pointed out that scientific progress is not cumulative,

but that it has moments of crisis at which the totality of the problems formulatedis reconstructed on a new basis, and at which the procedures for problem solvingare redefined. He termed this paradigm shift or paradigm change. To clarify myhypothesis of a paradigm change, I first explore several of the points of substance ofFreuds hypotheses. Next I refer to certain works which signpost the way towardsthis change of paradigm, although this was not their intention at the outset. Of course,it is only retrospectively that we can follow the logic, a guiding thread which hasbrought us to this epistemological moment of crisis at the heart of contemporarypsychoanalysis.

Primal phantasies and guiltThe Freudian hypotheses

Unlike animals, who live at the level of the beast, human beings are destined tomake their place in a world which they know to have existed before their birth.And, while an animal can change virtually nothing of its instinctual heritage, whichit enacts as an immutable programme, human beings are capable of modifying,refining and, above all, sublimating and symbolizing their behaviour, right from thevery start of life. In man, instead of a predetermined programme, there takes place awork of Kultur: the collective, cultural interpretation of the instinctual, biologicalprogramme. This includes the possibilities of technological advances, either in thepresent or in the more or less near future. I confine myself here to mentioning thegrowing independence of reproduction from human sexuality. Keywords are birth


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77FROM SYMBOLIC LAWTO NARRATIVE CAPACITY

control, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, cloning and artificial wombs(Atlan, 2005).

The question of what is primal, the Ur, preoccupied Freud from many pointsof view. Rejecting the idea of the newborn as a tabula rasa (Rousseau), Freud putsforward the hypothesis of a phylogenetic heritage which would come together in theOedipus complex:

I should like to insist that the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge inthe Oedipus complex. This is in complete agreement with the psychoanalytic finding that thesame complex constitutes the nucleus of all neuroses, so far as our present knowledge goes.(1913, pp. 1567)

In Totem and taboo, Freud explains the universal character of the Oedipuscomplex and, more particularly, the structuring role which it plays in the formationof each individuals personality. He argues that the memory of the primal crimethe

murder of the father by the primal hordeis transmitted by phylogenesis fromgeneration to generation, in the form of a sense of guilt, and reappears in the formof an unconscious oedipal situationhence the castration complexwhich is thecentral organizer of psychic life.

In the phantasy of the primal scene, a complex phantasy which includes theothers, there is an enactment of the conjunction of the biological fact of conceptionand birth with the symbolic fact of filiation; it unites the savage act of coitus andthe existence of a motherchildfather triad (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1968, p. 11,note 23). The phantasy brings together all the representations of the sexual rela-tions between the parents, including the different possible positions of the subjectin multiple three-person scenarios, and in that way acts as a defence against thephantasy of self-generation and incest. The specificity of its construction will giveevidence either of the recognition or of the denial of the difference between thegenerations. The construction of the primal scene forms a more or less explicit partof every analytic process. When the construction has not taken place or is completelyinadequate, we often observe psychotic functioning. There is no doubt that, foranalysts of a Freudian persuasion, the primal scene is the scene which is key to thephantasmatic organization of the subject.

According to Freud, phylogenetic causality is structural; it is organized by the

strata of prehistory laid down in the id. The murder of the primal father, in responseto the castration (or putting to death) which was the punishment for the sons inces-tuous desire, leads to the incest taboo, i.e. to the setting up of the fundamental law.2At the same time, human beings have always sought to obliterate the traces of themurder in order to rid themselves of the sense of guilt. But the difficulty is not in

2We know, of course, that there are other reasons for the incest taboo, for example those proposedby anthropologists. In order to ensure the existence of the group qua group, to replace chance withorganization, it was necessary to regulate the distribution of all the groups goods, including women,within the group. The men were obliged to give mother, sister or daughter to another man. Although this

fundamental rule is a cultural one, it seems to correspond to a universal law. Like Freud, Lvi-Strauss(1963) considers that it represents a move thanks to whichbut above all within whichthe passagefrom nature to culture takes place.


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perpetrating the deed, but in getting rid of the traces (Freud, 1939, p. 43). So we seein man a constant struggle against the law imposed by the father and incorporatedin the totem meal.

Classical psychoanalysis envisagedat least as an idealthat the decline ofthe Oedipus complex would be the endpoint of the small childs development, and

even more the aim of treatment: to recognize the difference between the sexes andthe generations, to accept castration, to identify with the parent of the same sex,and to postpone sexual desires (latency). This recognition would then lead to accessto the symbolic, which goes hand in hand with the renunciation of an all-powerfuldrive satisfaction.

Mans submission to this fundamental law was considered to be at the base ofthe construction of the individual and cultural superego. The cultural superego has,for Freud, an origin similar to that of the individual superego. In the same way thatthe latter results from giving up the oedipal objects and the death wishes against

the same-sex parent, the cultural superego arises from the murder of the primalfather and from the guilt which follows. To obliterate the traces of the murder ofthe father would thus go logically hand in hand with a deterioration/weakening ofthe superego.

Several authors (e.g. Lorenzer, 1973) have pointed out that the primal phantasiesare a Freudian construction. Sara Botella writes,

One possible hypothesis is that Freud located at the origins of humanity what is in fact at theorigins of the drive. The metapsychological value of the murder of the fatherwould not befound either in a reference to phylogenetic history, or in a model of self-preservation or primalinstinctual violence but in the metaphorical power of the term, fuelled by a phantasmatic

activity of early origin which alone can represent the very nature of the instincts [Freud,1919, p. 238] and what is most fundamental to them, lending to certain aspects of the mindtheir daemonic character [p. 238]. The primal parricide would be the verso, whilst primaryidentification with the father is the recto. (2005, p. 723)

For Freud, this murder was a historical, cultural and psychic reality. Parricide is the principal and primal crime of humanity as well as of the individual. It isin any case the main source of the sense of guilt (Freud, 1928, p. 183).

HistoryThe tension between objectivism and constructivism

The question of historical truth was of concern to Freud from the very beginning,in particular with respect to seduction. When he abandoned his neurotica, he finallywrenched away the production of phantasiesalong with the symptomfrom ahistorical source and highlighted the processes of transformation/distortion, conden-sation, displacement, obliteration, reversal into the opposite, etc. which are at workbefore we become conscious of a memory, a dream, a representation or an affect(Kahn, 2004).

In 1896, in a letter to Fliess, Freud refers to the way in which memory traces arerearranged under new conditions, calling this process Umschriftor retranscription(1896, p. 233). This retranscription appears later in the form of the concept of theaprs-coup (Nachtrglichkeitor deferred action) (1918, p. 45, note 1). Via thesepermanent rearrangements, history is created that is not limited to memory alone.


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Later, Freud points to a second mode of interaction between past and present: repeti-tion as a form of memory.

Nonetheless, Freud does not lose sight of the real past, whether that of the analy-sand or that of humanity. Thus, in 1905, he writes that it is important to attend asclosely to the real circumstances of a patients life as to the symptoms (p. 18). In his

text on the Wolf Man, he says that the analyststep by step and basing himself onan aggregate of indicationshas to divine (1918, p. 51) certain details in order forthe infantile scene to be constructed/reconstructed in analysis. We can see then boththe stress on the real, lived historical experience, and also the inevitable recourse toconstruction, which, all the same, is not invention nor is it pure creation.

The aprs-coup constitutes the link between past and present. The raw materialwhich the analysand brings to the sessions refers back to memories that are notdirectly accessible. This material, emerging from free associations, contains frag-ments of memory in the form of dreams and representations which are allusions to

real experiences and to repressed or even split-off affects. Analytic work is not somuch about revealing objective facts belonging to the patients past, as it is aboutunderstanding the reflection and the effect of the past in the present. This approach,which retains its historical orientation, aims to construct a link between thoughtsand emotions of the past and those of the present. The emergence of links betweenpast and present is assisted by the transference, in that the latter remobilizes thedrives, and thus arouses once again the desires that have been repressed, split off orforeclosed.

Such processes are made possible by the protocol of analysis, that is, the settingof the treatment.

Classical psychoanalytic technique

In the establishment of the classical analytic setting, we can see a reflection of theFreudian conception of the subject, based on desire and prohibition in the humanbeing.

The armchaircouch situation, with its unprecedented invitation to say everything,to let ones thoughts and fantasies go where they will, evokes of course a powerfulseduction of an incestuous kind. Balancing that, the classical protocol implicitlyinstalls a symbolic law: according to the classical ideal, the setting is extremely strict;

no elements of play, no permissiveness may be allowed as to the boundaries of thesession, since the latter is as inexorable as the incest taboo in marking the differencebetween inside and outside, between self and other. The unvarying length of the sessionsignifies the submission of both protagonists to a law of which they are neither authornor master, and in that way opens the way to the third party. The analyst who explainsformally the rules of the setting and the necessity for respecting them is repeating afounding paternal prohibition, but in a paradoxical way, as Jean-Luc Donnet so nicelyputs it, since the implicit message is also:

The prohibition signifies that the analytic relation is now incestuous: at one and the same

time, the prohibition authorizes, subject to certain conditions (action and/or symbiotic needsare excluded), and also designates it as potentially guilty (for to speak is sexual and need isalways already desire). (1995, p. 108, my italics)


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In that way the analytic protocol both signifies andforbids incestuous desire,leading to the obligation to pass from the primary to the secondary process, inparticular through verbalization.

Psychoanalytic technique itself can be thought of as a highly civilized formof expression. Whatever the violence of the topics raised and experienced in thetransference, speech alone may refer to them. The most intense affects have to faceexamination with a view to seeking their hidden, unconscious meaning, and so,even in the heat of the session, they retain a virtual quality: the transformationof complex states and processes into language represents a considerable effort ofsymbolization which exists in few other areas, and represents in itself, according toFreud (1923), a work of civilization at the heart of each session.

Trends in contemporary psychoanalysis

The most important post-Freudian contributions to understanding the forcesat work in the dynamics of the session relate to the exploration of the counter-transference. What Freud, to begin with, called simply tact, then the analystscountertransference (Freud, 1910), has become the object of many studies. Theparticipation of the analyst, including his psychic functioning, his emotionaland representational reactions, has come increasingly to attract the metaphysicalinterest of the analytic community, in all analytic cultures except for the Lacanianschool, which has theoretical objections. In particular, in thinking about the kindsof psychic functioning that have come to be called borderline states or border-line cases, leading psychoanalysts have considered countertransference responses

to be a potentially valuable tool in analytic work. All these theoretical advancesconcerning the dynamic of the process between analyst and analysand have beenthought of as an expansion vis--vis what was already nascent in Freuds work.

Early disturbances and new theories of the early stages of the subject

When we read the major contributions of contemporary psychoanalysts, we findthat they refer more and more often to clinical encounters with subjects sufferingfrom what is called early or narcissistic disturbance, that is to say, distur-bances in infantile development occurring chronologically before the appearance

of an oedipal configuration organized round the primal phantasies, and thus at atime when the lack of verbal capacity affects the capacity to organize them. In theanalytic situation, many subjects manifest this phenomenon through their incapacityto develop structured representations and thus a true transference neurosis. Ferenczi(1928), later Kohut (1971) and many others have called for a change of paradigm inpsychoanalysis: at the level of analytic technique, diagnosis and the conception ofpsychic structure in general; instead of a structural intrapsychic conflict in the mind,based on innate drive conflict and infantile sexuality, they stress the deficiencies inthe subjects relations with the object, the failure of the object to be a good enoughmirror, and the subjects subsequent trauma.

There is no doubt that we have made enormous progress since Freud in ourunderstanding of the primary motherchild relation and our knowledge of the very


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early infantile phantasies; as a result, we observe in contemporary psychoanalysisan increase in the attention paid to early disturbance, narcissistic, borderlineor even psychotic functioning. This goes hand in hand with a more and morewidespread tendency to put the stress on the relation to the primary object/analyst,emphasizing the importance of the latters containing function, based on the good

enough primary maternal preoccupation (Winnicott, 1958), the -function (Bion,1967) necessary if the transformation of -elements is to come about. These notionsnow belong to our metapsychological toolkit.

When we look at the post-Freudian contributions, we can, in a somewhat sche-matic way, distinguish those relative to the metapsychological content, and thoseoriented towards the formal aspects of thinking and towards the affective stateswhich emerge between analyst and analysand in the session. After Freud, threeauthors in particular, Karl Abraham, Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan, have workedon the subjects phantasmatic contents. Authors like Ferenczi, Winnicott and Bion

have reflected more especially on the conditions and the processes of transformationwhich take place as a result of the relation with the object/analyst.One might ask whether what we are seeing in psychoanalysis is a movement

similar to those which have put their stamp on our era. We call our period post-modern; that is the case everywhere in the world since the beginning of the 1980s.Postmodernity, referred to in sociology, politics, art, architecture, literature andphilosophy, is characterized by the end of emancipatory metanarratives and of theutopian horizons of modernity. Postmodern thought refuses to accept any conceptionof a universal truth, whether it be religious, political or philosophical. Science in apostmodern society gives up its normative ideal of truth and reality in favour of the

predictability of results. Human activity tends to justify itself in terms of the generalparadigm of problem solving. Thus, communication and negotiation occupy theplace formerly held by religious, mythical, philosophical, moral or political precon-ceptions. Critics of postmodern thought argue that its anti-ideological attitude,its preference for the free circulation of ideas, information, goods and identities,constitutes in itself an ideology.

On close inspection, psychoanalysis does not seem to have remained unim-plicated in this major current of our time. Like postmodernity, with its neglect ofcontent-oriented perspectives in favour of a stress on communication in the here

and now, contemporary psychoanalysis tends to shed what some think of as Freudsoddities, while attention is focused on processes such as comprehension, interac-tion, communication between analyst and analysandjust as happens at the levelof society. This tendency is basedamong otherson an idea of parity and justiceappropriate to postmodern democracy.

Let us take for example the eminent psychoanalyst Bion who has put forwardin several of his texts an original theorization of the formation of thoughts and ofthought disorders, that is to say, of the different psychopathologies of thought.In this way, he has developed and transformed the first stages of Freuds theoryof thought [as exemplified in Freuds theory that the origins of phantasy lie inthe hallucinated satisfaction of a desire, or in the theory of the transformation ofthe thing-presentation into a word-presentation, or in Formulations on the two


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principles of mental functioning (1911)]. The emergence of thought supposes theconstitution of an internal psychic apparatus, an apparatus to think thoughts,for which the mothers capacity for reverie is indispensable. Bion submits thetreatment to a process of formalization, ideally to provide a breakdown of thesession in terms of the elements of a grid which allows the analyst to identify

the transformations at work, the distribution of - and -elements, the movesfrom preconception to conception to concept, knowledge (K) being a significantreference point in Bions thought. The grid allows the analyst to listen with agreater freedom from preconceptions; to listen to his patient without memory ordesire, attentive only to what he is hearing and to the process as it unfolds. Whatis noticeable is that references to concepts relative to content, such as phylo-genetic heritage, or even Oedipus complex, are rather scarce. At the same time,Bion speaks, for example, of faithfaith in an ultimate truth or realitytheunknown, unknowable, formless infinite (1970, p. 31). However, this ultimate

reality (p. 88), this thing-in-itself (p. 87), is ultimately unknowable (p. 88).Whereas Freudian psychoanalysis requires the recognition of a precise symboliclaw and, as a result, the structural guilt of the subject, we are now seeing fewer andfewer definitions of the content of knowledge, and Bion is far from being the onlyone. Many post-Freudian and post-Bionian analysts focus above all on the formaland emotional processes which allow, for example, the exercise of the Kfunctionand the establishment of a propitious atmosphere within which an emotionalcommunication may unfold between analyst and analysand.

From a Freudian point of view, one could put the following critical questionto analysts who foreground the value of an emotional communication between

analyst and analysand in a transitional space: how do they evaluate the truthof the affect, since the latter, according to Freud, is also subject to distortion?An accessible and conscious emotion may conceal a quite different unconsciousaffect; when one thinks of the affect only from the point of view of emotionalresponse, one is immediately placing the treatment in the register of affectiveinteraction (Kahn, 2004, p. 64).

New visions of the treatment dynamic

In the epistemological history of psychoanalysis, there is no doubt that the stress

moved very quickly from reconstruction to construction, from Cartesian truth totruth which is only revealed in a communication and is only valid in that context.In the thought of Freud himself, the idea of reality underwent some change in thecourse of his work (Freud, 1937b); it moved more and more towards a constructivistor communicative relativismas has also happened in other social sciences. Freudhimself had explained that an analysand free-associating during a session

remains under the influence of the analytic situation even though he is not directing hismental activities on to a particular subject. We shall be justified in assuming that nothingwilloccur to him that has not some reference to that situation. (1925, pp. 401, my italics)

In the Francophone world, it is impossible in this context not to think of the workof Viderman, who highlights the arbitrary aspect of interpretation and construction,


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and concludes: The ear of the analyst is not an organ of hearing, but of transforma-tion (1982, p. 343).

Within perspectives such as theseand sometimes despite themcan be foundthe origin of a whole current of psychoanalysis which argues for a technique thatinterprets only in the here and now and no longer refers to the past. These analysts

consider that only the interpretation of what is happening in the transference and inthe current relation between analyst and analysand guarantees emotional immediacy.It is even claimed that historical references could be a defence against significantemotions (Kennedy, 2007). From this point of view, the current emotional stateof affairs in the relation between analyst and analysand takes precedence over thequestion of past psychic reality. We can see, then, that the relation between pastand present has changed. It is no longer the past which has an effect on the present;rather it is only the present which is taken into consideration, while the recall of thepast comes only to illustrate the present. In the conception of analysts such as Ferro

(2006), Ogden (2001) and Barale (2005), everything that the analysand might recall,in the session, about his past is a direct expression of the current emotional state ofaffairs between analyst and analysand in the session. In other words, nothing thatis said is outside the transference, or, as one finds it more frequently formulated,outside the relationship.

Ogden is willing to concede that analytic experience occurs at the cusp ofthe past and the present, and involves a past that is being created anew (for bothanalyst and analysand) by means of an experience generated between analyst andanalysand (2004, p. 178). Ferro goes further: everything which comes into orarises out of the session derives from the emotional present of the relation between

analyst and analysand. Let us take for example the following clinical vignette: afemale patient tells him that she

now has a problem: her husband would like to make love from behind, and he says that shewants this too. But the idea terrifies her: she is afraid of ending up torn apart and bleeding atAccident & Emergency.

It occurs to me that last week she felt bad after an interpretation of mine on a subject whichthe patient felt to be taboo and had for a long time avoided. So I tell her that I wonder if her

problem is whether to let herself go in the analysis, in the relationship from behind withme, and whether to do so with trust or in terror in case I tear her apart with what I say. (2006,

p. 43, 45)

Ferro concludes that: Communications in analysis have to do with theanalytic field, and tell of this and nothing else (p. 48, my italics). The nothingof Freud and the nothing else of Ferro can be distinguished in this respect: forFreud, the patient invariably spoke of his shifts in the transference; for Ferro, thepatient speaks invariably of the emotional field constituted both by the analysandandby the analyst.

What a metapsychological and technical distance covered since Freud, whosaysfor example in the narrative of the Wolf Mans analysisthat the emotionallinks indicate the complex relations between past and present! According to theclassical conception, the analytic session is a place in which the analysand repeatsand transfers his own history, his phantasies, his desire and aspects of his internal


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objects on to and into the analytic space, principally the analyst (Freud, 1914).The latter accepts and observes in order to arrive at an interpretation of whatthe analysand is bringing. We see here a vertical relationship, determined by thetransference of the analysand on to the analyst to which the analyst responds withhis countertransference.

In the intersubjectivist currents of contemporary psychoanalysis, this view ofthe session seems to have been modified.

Following the innovations of Ferenczi, then Winnicott and many others, wehave seen the rise of a technique which puts the emphasis on the horizontal, rela-tional aspects of the analysandanalyst interaction: two apparatuses for thinkingand dreaming, in a joint effort, create the analytic third (Ogden, 2004). The sessionis no longer the frame in which to understand the analysands past, the originaryconflictOedipus, primal guiltbut a transitional space (Winnicott) or a field(Baranger) in which emotional and psychic links are woven in order to enable and

facilitate the narration (Ferro, 2006) of internal movements.For these analysts, the classical ideal of analytic protocol loses some of itssignificance. I am reminded of Ferenczis active technique, or what Little (1990)tells us of her analysis with Winnicott: increasing the length of sessions if necessary;physical contactwhy not?; the active avoidance of the negative transference (thevase that she smashed is replaced the following day with an identical one). Theseadjustments have often been justified on the grounds that they take place in the treat-ment of psychotic patients, and that the latter need to regress, and are not operatingin the register of desire. But does a psychotic not also need to transform need intodesire precisely in order to maintain the barrier against incest?

Ferro also demonstrates permissiveness, for example with regard to the lengthof the session or when he entrusts the key to his office to a phobic female patient,viewing the request as motivated by needrather than desire. Ogden even considersthat spelling out the fundamental rule of saying everything is harmful to thesuccessful unfolding of the analytic relationship, and seems to him incompatiblewith the creation of an analytic environment that fosters reverie (2001, p. 141).He asks all his patients to lie on the couch, whatever the frequency of the sessions(p. 141); the distinction between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, traditionallybased on frequency of sessions, is thus erased.

What I would like to highlight is that the analytic frame in itself, in its veryimmutability both for the analyst andfor the analysand, is thought of less and less asan expression ofand confrontation with a symbolic law and primal guilt, and moreas a protective space, allowing new emotional experiences and the development ofthe mental capacities of the analytic couple (Ferro, 2006; Ogden, 2001).

With this in mind as the aim of treatment, it is easy to discard what are oftenconsidered Freuds oddities. Moscovici comments ironically,

We have madeprogress, the previous model is no longer appropriate to new generations ofpractitioners and patients,Freud did not yet know that Or, to put it more simply, we should

treat words as information, exchanges in sessions as communication, analytic procedures asmechanisms ofeducation, the whole thing as a training. The patient will have learnt, as aresult, how to live and think more correctly. (2002, p. 13)


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By the same token, the interpretation as such no longer exists, as Ferro pointsout explicitly, since the patients narrative in the session would only refer to theemotional present of the two participants in the treatment:

by narration I mean a way of being in the session whereby the analyst shares with the

patient in the construction of meaning on a strongly dialogic basis, without particularinterpretative caesuras. It is as if analyst and patient were together constructing a dramawithin which the various plots increase in complexity, intersect and develop, sometimes evenin ways that are unpredictable and unthinkable for the two co-narrators, neither of whomis a strong holder of a preconstituted truth. Within this mode of proceeding, co-narrativetransformation or indeed transformational co-narration takes the place of interpretation.(2006, p. 1)

Ferro theorizes his clinical stance in detail, and is well aware that he is introducing aparadigm change relative to Freuds understanding of analytic treatment.

Is Freudian psychoanalysis a Weltanschauung?

Retrospectively it is possible to see that the concept of primal phantasies does notperhaps form part of a Weltanschauungor world-view, but does all the same dependon certain a priori assumptions which created and structured Freuds key conceptions.Again, retrospectively, we can see that Freud was a moralist. He spoke about howthe subject would ideally function, howrecognizing the limits set by the father,the incest taboohe would renounce his most powerful drive desires and assumehis guilt. Freud envisages a subject who would be responsible for his acts and forhis phantasies, for whom the treatment would construct the primal scene, that is to

say, would interrogate his origins, construct/reconstruct his own history, in order forhim to become more fully the subject of his own life, of his own existence. In thiscontext, I think it is important to emphasize that, in Latin, the termsubjectus denotesthe underlying structure, in the sense of that which issubjected. The subject is thusthe being who is subjected, bound, subject to the given circumstances of life, that is tosay, to whatever culture he is born to. To know myself is to recognize that I dependon some being who is not me, wrote Descartes. Lacan spoke of the big Other.

This view of the human condition can only be seen as such retrospectively, inthe light of the change in the conditions of life of postmodern man. Mentalities are

the forms taken by the compromise between drive and cultural necessity (Kahn,2004, p. 213). This cultural necessity is not immutable. Postmodernity has radicallyaltered the way the cards are dealt: it is characterized by the end of all the grand narra-tives supporting one or other big Other. We can observe new modes of life furtherand further removed from the traditional ones; fundamental notions concerning thedifference of sex or generation are put into question, the possibility that humanbeings might be cloned being only an extreme version of this. Psychoanalysis, inits metapsychological reflection and, subsequently, in its clinical stance, may inprinciple react in two different ways. Either it may insist on the necessity of theconstruction of the primal scene and its consequences: the incest taboo, the Oedipuscomplex and guilt, that is to say, insist on the limits to the subjects desire. Or itmay even integrate in a postmodern manner all that has become possible, even if


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the primal phantasies are thereby challenged, for example, sex change as a resultof surgery, pregnancy after the menopause or surrogate motherhood. In the secondperspective, the issue would be the possibility of being able to narrate the events ina consistent way. Freuds opinion was that method should always take precedenceover the a priori. This attitude constitutes a powerful argument for a psychoanalysis

along the lines of the second perspective. But what would he have said if he hadknown that the symbolic law would not be left untouched?

Thus, Moscovici wonders,

Can the primal scenes of contemporary generations continue to be, in the imaginary, whatthey were before the present century and its wars, in which terrifying victories often havethe taste of defeat? One sometimes has the feeling that, nowadays in psychoanalysis, a lot ofwork is needed if the mainstay of our theories and our practice, the primal scene itself, is torediscover or discoverif I may put it like thatthe taste it used to have. Leaving aside anynostalgia, if that is possible. (2002, p. 217)

Allowing for reservations about the nostalgia for the good old days, I would liketo raise a question which seems to me important: does one want to continue to thinkthat the oedipal question remains the fulcrum of psychoanalysis or not? It seemsto me that the justified and necessary attention focused by numerous analysts onthe deficits of the thinking apparatus, which prevent the subjects access to struc-tured representations, has led to the disappearance of the Freudian conception ofOedipus. If, in the name of expanding the frontiers of what can be psychoanalysed,the complexity of the model is lost, then the very heart of metapsychology is lost(Kahn, 2004, p. 276).

If that is the case, then we should now admit that a paradigm change isincontrovertible.

A psychoanalysis without claim to be a human science

There is no doubt that a psychoanalysis unburdened by claims to be a humanscience, unencumbered by those metapsychological elements that Freud himselfcalled the Witch (1937a, p. 225), would be more defensible, more acceptable. Aswith cognitive therapies, we could simply brandish a therapeutic tool, capable oftreating problems in relationships and thought disorders; it would be a treatment

to which the relation between patient and analyst was intrinsic, and which couldbecome the object of the traditional methods of science; a treatment which wouldbe free of rather obscure speculations about the origins of conflict in human beings.One could even dispense with the concept of the unconscious, and focus primarilyon the functioning of the relation between patient and analyst; I think one couldconfine oneself to speaking of latent and manifest to describe these relationalphenomena. By way of illustration, I refer to new theories of the dream. WhereFreud saw a condensed compromise between drive, prohibited desires, repressedrepresentations and days residue, authors like Ogden and Ferro understand thedream as the direct expression of the emotional state of the therapeutic relationship.

So the analysand, like the analyst, would no longer express, via his dreams, his ownpersonal unconscious, but the analytic third.


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From now on, we would only concern ourselves with what is de facto expressedin the session. The application of the method would have taken precedence overmetapsychological speculation. As Ogden insists unambiguously with reference tohis clinical presentations, it is the experience with the patient [which leads to] thetheory making (and not the other way round) (2004, p. 170). Against whom is he

implicitly arguing? Freud and his Witch metapsychology?

By way of conclusion

Whereas Freud was a moralist when it came to originary guilt, now the aims ofthe treatment are defined in a new way. Ferro, for example, putting the stress onnarrative in analysis, writes,

In my view, this narrative function stems from the synergetic operation of the -function(which creates the emotional pictogrami.e. the image) and the apparatus for thinkingthoughts the ultimate aim of analysis is the stabilized introjection of a narrator of this

kind, in such a way as to permit emotional transformations from to notwithstanding allemotional vicissitudes. (2006, p. 33, my italics)

Nor is Ogden engaged in a struggle with a witch of any kind. It is the newemotional experience of the patient, resulting from the encounter between analystand analysand, which is defined as the goal of treatment:

For instance, experiences in and of the analytic third often generate a quality of intimacybetween patient and analyst that has all the sense of real (Winnicott [1965, p. 184]). Suchexperiences involve feelings of enlivening humor, camaraderie, playfulness, compassion,healthy flirtatiousness, charm, and so on. These experiences in the analytic third may hold

particular importance to the analysis in that they may be the first instances in the patients lifeof such healthy, generative forms of object relatedness. (2004, p. 186, my italics)

One can see in this the idea that good comes out of good. Instead of the gloomyprospect of a subject who cannot avoid drive conflict and who is destined to a lackof satisfaction, we have the vision of a subject who can aspire to a satisfactoryintersubjective experience: Human beings have a need as deep as hunger andthirst to establish intersubjective constructions (Ogden, 2004, p. 193). Desire hasnow become need, the as-if of the transference has become a real relationship; theanalytic situation which Donnet described as incestuous seduction, signifying at the

same time that symbolic law has become the locus of healthy communication.The version of psychoanalysis conceived essentially as a theory of object rela-tions allows it to be understood as micro-sociology. In this way we could studyobjectively how the subject becomes a subject, for example via infant observation,or how he interacts with internal and external objects.

The question which tormented Freudthat of a radical contradiction betweennature and society, between individual and civilizationis thereby evaded. Whatmakes Freudian psychoanalysis a critical science, in the philosophical tradition ofcritical theory, is precisely the conviction that there is an irreducible contradictionbetween human nature and social organization, between drive and relationship, acontradiction which is structurally responsible for the subjects lack of satisfaction,and which means that everyone is virtually an enemy of civilization (Freud, 1927).


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No longer would we have to reflect on the pitiless diagnosis of Freud, whoclaimed that all progress towards the mastery of drives reinforces the hatredof civilization. No longer need we be disturbed by the fact that Freud does notseek the origins of barbarity in the historical circumstances of societies but in theinternal dynamics of each individual. According to Freud, what human beings seek,

as a result of the originary guilt, is the erasure of the traces of the murder of thefather. The hypothesis which he developed particularly in Moses and monotheism(1939) was that tradition and consciencefollowing a process analogous to that ofunconscious psychic processescontinually seek to obliterate the originary murder(phantasy of the murder of the primal father/of the oedipal parent). In line withthe logic of Freuds Witch, one could argue that postmodern man, abandoningreligion, taboo, morality and guilt, has reached the point at which the obliterationof the primal murder is finally accomplished (Kahn, 2004, p. 250) along with that ofmans origins. Something decisive and perhaps serious happens when the question

of the father is consigned to oblivion, and when the link between father, murder andmonotheism is considered to be insignificant. Psychoanalysis will be thrown outwith the bathwater (Moscovici, 2002, p. 114).

Freudian psychoanalysis, perhaps, is in the process of being thrown out, but theparadigm shift that I have tried to demonstrate gives rise to something new.

Translations of summary

Vom symbolischen Gesetz zur Narrationsfhigkeit: ein Paradimenwechsel in der Psychoanalyse? Inder freudianischen Perspektive verpflichten uns die Urphantasien, eine Widerspiegelung der Prhistorie,durch unser phylogenetisches Erbe und seine Wiederholung in der Ontogenese, die Grenzen von Generation

und Sexualitt anzuerkennen, uns dem symbolischen Gesetz zu unterwerfen, das durch den Vater derUrhorde reprsentiert wird, und wie es die Behandlung anstrebt den eigenen, richtigen Platz inder Urszene zu finden (dipuskomplex). Die klinische Erfahrung mit Patienten, die unter narzisstischenStrungen leiden, veranlasste bestimmte Analytiker schon bald, fr einen Paradigmenwechsel zu pldieren,der zu wichtigen technischen Modifizierungen fhrte, in jngerer Zeit aber auch zu Modifizierungen auf derEbene der Metapsychologie. Einige zeitgenssische Analytiker formulieren eine Konzeption des Subjekts,die sich auf Prozesse der Interaktion und Kommunikation zwischen Denkapparaten im Hier und Jetztkonzentriert. Die Autorin zeigt, dass sich diese aktuelle Entwicklung parallel zu wichtigen Tendenzenunserer postmodernen ra vollzieht, in der Kommunikation und Verhandlung frhere religise, mythische,

philosophische, moralische oder politische berzeugungen ersetzen.

De la ley simblica a la capacidad narrativa: un cambio paradigmtico en el psicoanlisis?

Desde la perspectiva freudiana las fantasas primarias, reflejo de la prehistoria, nos obligan, a travs denuestra herencia filogentica y su repeticin en la ontogentica, a reconocer los lmites de la generaciny el sexo, a someternos a la ley simblica representada por el padre de la horda primitiva, y a encontrar

como se busca en el tratamiento- nuestro lugar correcto en la escena primaria (complejo de Edipo). Laexperiencia clnica con pacientes con trastornos narcisistas ha llevado pronto a ciertos analistas a proponerun cambio de paradigma, que ha implicado importantes modificaciones no solo de tcnica, sino tambinms recientemente a nivel metapsicolgico. Ciertos analistas contemporneos tienen una concepcin delsujeto centrado en procesos de interaccin y comunicacin entre aparatos pensantes en el aqu y ahora.El autor muestra como este desarrollo actual se produce paralelamente a importantes tendencias de nuestraera postmoderna en que la comunicacin y la negociacin reemplazan las anteriores creencias religiosas,mticas, filosficas, morales o polticas.

De la loi symbolique la capacit narrative Changement de paradigme en psychanalyse ? Dansloptique freudienne, les fantasmes originaires, reflet de la prhistoire, nous contraignent, travers lhritagephylogntique et sa rptition raccourcie dans lontogense, reconnatre les limites entre gnrations et


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