ICLO-NLS

“What is a doctor, a therapist? It is someone who in a way fits Lacan’s definition of the master: someone who wants things to work, to work at the level of the individual he or she is faced with. Historically, many correlations have been established between the optimal functioning of the body and the functioning of political society, and metaphors are swapped between the living body and the social body. That is why, at this point, what is called “the analyst’s desire” is necessary. The definite article in this expression is deceiving, because it is not a question of the desire of every analyst, but the desire of the analyst as such, the desire of this or that analyst, the desire of an actual analyst, the desire of each one of us who practice analysis. This is not compulsory, for the analyst can perfectly well limit him or herself to his or her therapeutic desire, that is, to the doctor’s desire. [...]
We could also say that what is proper to analysis is true beyond the clinic, and this is the sense that can be given to the formula “no clinic without ethics”. It is the analyst’s task, to begin with, to stress his or her wish or desire. What do you want? is the question proper to desire, and when we say “no clinic without ethics”, this question is posed to the analyst him or herself. The analyst is asked: what do you want to obtain? It may be that the analyst wants to obtain subjects who fit the order of the world or who get on with the master. Or the analyst may want to obtain a repairing effect, for example, in the sense the cars are repaired. All of which has consequences for the patient.”

Jacques-Alain Miller, “Two Clinical Dimensions: Symptom and Fantasy

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“…for his own mental health it is necessary that the analyst should have been cured of the sense of guilt.  It would be dangerous, otherwise, to address oneself to him.  This could therefore be an answer to the question of formation.  The formation of the psychoanalyst could be summed up by being cured of the sentiment of guilt. It is dangerous, therefore, because the formation of analysts approximates in this way to the formation of knaves. This is why there must be a distinction: you have to cure them of the sense of guilt in so far as they direct the treatment and at the same time, and this is the most difficult, not cure them of it as subjects. So it is a question of curing psychoanalysts of their sense of guilt in their function as analysts and nonetheless strengthening it in them as subjects.”

Jacques-Alain Miller,  "Mental Health and Public Order" (www.europsychoanalysis.eu)

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“And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive–in other words, only what is conducive to welfare–is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that…”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Notes from the Underground", Chapter 9

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“We know that from the moment we imagine a Freudian society, it becomes impossible. Which would its conditions be? Betting on desire without guarantees, without excluding the horizon of responsibility. Accepting the irreducible character of desire without falling into the temptation of the jouissance of the martyr. Bearing contingent unhappiness without it becoming necessary misfortune. Knowing how to lose without identifying oneself with what has been lost. Being aware of our own finitude, thus escaping the fascination of the culture of death drive. In this impossible society, there would be room for singular tragedy, but not for planned humiliation; the pain of existing would find place there, but not the exploitation of the workforce; the will to say no matter what would be realised, and also the will to remain silent, but not in a coward silence; being foreigner to oneself would be accepted, but not the forced uprooting of the crowds…”

Jorge Alemán, "Lacan, the politics in question…" (Source: A-foro
http://www. loqueevaluacionsilencia.blogspot.com) [translation not reviewed by the author]

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“Perversion, on the other hand, is a response about the jouissance of the Other. It’s not a question about its desire, but a response about its jouissance. That is to say, a response about what to do to ensure its jouissance. Thus one could say that the true pervert is the one who devotes him- or herself to the operation of restoring the jouissance to the Other and who is thus susceptible to a proselytism founded on a “Look at them! They don’t know how to jouir!”

Jacques-Alain Miller, from The Divine Details (Source: wwww.lacan.com)

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“The title of psychoanalyst includes contradictory components. It requires an academic,
university or equivalent, training, deriving from the general conferring of degrees. It
requires a clinical experience that is transmitted in its particularity under the supervision
of peers. It requires the radically singular experience of a psychoanalysis. The levels of
the general, the particular and the singular are heterogeneous. The history of the
psychoanalytic movement is a history of disagreements over and interpretations of this
heterogeneity. It forms a part of this Great Conversation of psychoanalysis which makes
it possible to state who is a psychoanalyst. This stating is brought about through
procedures in communities that are psychoanalytic institutions. A psychoanalyst is never
alone, he depends, as does a joke, on an Other who recognizes him. This Other cannot
be reduced to a normative, authoritative, regulatory, standardised Other. A psychoanalyst
is one who affirms that he has obtained from the psychoanalytic experience what he
could have hoped for from it and therefore that he has crossed over a “pass”, as Lacan
called it. Here he testifies to having crossed over his impasses. The interlocution by which
he wishes to obtain an agreement over this crossing over occurs in institutional settings.
More profoundly, it is inscribed within the Great Conversation between psychoanalysis
and civilization.” (Eric Laurent, Guiding Principles for any Psychoanalytic Act)

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