Just make a note, don’t (try to) create insight

One of the things I’ve been gathering texts on is how an analyst uses or refrains from using their speech in an analytic session. How the analyst might maintain the tenuous discourse of the analyst in the work they do with their analysands.

I found this text, delivered by Jacques-Alain Miller. In the text Miller says,

What’s essential … is not the art of diagnosis, even if this is what the beginner, who wants to know what type of subject he is dealing with, is concerned about. What one attempts to transmit to him is the method permitting his speech to acquire power. It is easily reduced to this — he must learn how to remain silent. Speech bears and holds the patient’s attention only on condition of being rare

The way I read this is that many analysts get very interested in the diagnosis of psychosis or neurosis. They ask am I dealing with an ordinary psychotic, or an extraordinary psychotic? Am I dealing with an obsessive or a hyteric? Based on this diagnostic game the analyst determines how he/she will speak to the analysand.

Miller suggests that what is more important is the ways the analyst allows for his/her speech to become significant to the analysand, regardless of the analysand’s particular diagnostic structure. The text suggests (to me) that the analyst makes his/her speech powerful in so far as they don’t over use their speech.

The analyst speaks rarely, and only when he/she has something to say. The analyst does not engage in “empty speech” that is —words that don’t say anything.

Millar goes on to speak about the analyst’ art of verbal intervention —interpretation. Stating that when an analyst interprets he/she should not enjoy the act of attempting to create insight, rather the analyst should be more “humble” and keep the interpretation within the confines of what the analysand has rendered in their speech by simply making note of what the analysand in interpretation

There is a term which you may not make be, that of jouissance. There, you must desist from any creationist intention, must make yourself humbler. … To interpret, the word here fails, and it would be necessary to substitute another word for it, such as to circumscribe, to note.

What I believe is useful about what Miller says here is how simple it is. Rather than trying to make something happen through interpreting the analysand’s speech, be more humble and just call the analysand’s attention to what they have actually said.

Because I teach students who want to become therapists I’m always on the lookout for things like this, things I can actually tell the student “try this” or “try doing it this way.”