The Ethical Seduction of the Analytic Situation: The Feminine-Maternal Origins of Responsibility for the Other (The International Psychoanalytical ... Psychoanalytic Ideas and Applications Series)

According to Jacques André, “the patient’s encounter with the analyst is a scene of seduction, the seductive statement being that of the fundamental rule or the invitation to address that which is most intimate or personal to a complete stranger.” But the practice of psychoanalysis can only unfold if there is a strict respect for ethics. The words seduction and ethics, which at first sight seem mutually exclusive, are thus, as Viviane Chetrit-Vatine shows, at the heart of the analytic perspective. Viviane Chetrit-Vatine takes as her starting-point an encounter, which is not necessarily consensual, between Emmanuel Levinas’ thought and his conception of philosophy as ethics – ethics understood as responsibility for the other – and that of the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche, who posits the first adult other as a seducer of the young psyche from the outset, due to the transmission of enigmatic messages compromised by his or her unconscious. The analyst’s ethical position is re-examined and with it the feminine/maternal origins of the human capacity for responsibility for the other. The question of the asymmetry of the analytic situation is no longer raised in terms of power, but of responsibility: responsibility for the analytic setting of which the analyst remains the guardian, responsibility for the analytic process of which he or she is an integral part owing to the effects of seduction inherent to the situation and to his or her own and necessary passion. The ethical stance of the contemporary analyst implies both the need to preserve “good enough” or sufficient distance and a readiness to assume affective responsibility for the other, this stranger, the patient. COVER 1 CONTENTS 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 10 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 12 PREFACE 15 Introduction 19 PART I ON A POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTION OF LEVINAS’S THOUGHT TO CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYSIS 24 Introduction to Part I 26 CHAPTER ONE Ethics and psychoanalysis 30 CHAPTER TWO Asymmetrical responsibility for the other as the analyst’s ethic 46 PART II AT THE BEGINNING OF LIFE: PRIMAL SEDUCTION, PASSION, AND ETHICAL EXIGENCY 70 CHAPTER THREE The asymmetry of the primal situation: primal seduction and some elements of the Laplanchian theory of generalised seduction 72 CHAPTER FOUR Maternal passion, the analyst’s passion, or the primacy of affect 82 CHAPTER FIVE The ethical exigency at the beginning of life and the need for ethics in analysis 94 PART III THE ORIGINS OF SUBJECTIVE APPROPRIATION IN ANALYSIS, THE ANALYST’S PASSION, AND THE ETHICAL SEDUCTION OF THE ANALYTIC SITUATION 110 CHAPTER SIX Subjective appropriation in analysis 112 CHAPTER SEVEN The ethical seduction of the analytic situation 120 PART IV A NEW PSYCHOANALYTIC STATUS FOR ETHICS? THE FEMININE– MATERNAL ORIGINS OF THE CAPACITY FOR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OTHER 150 Introduction to Part IV 152 CHAPTER EIGHT Psychoanalytic hypotheses 156 CHAPTER NINE The feminine–maternal origins of ethics 166 CHAPTER TEN Conclusions 184 EPILOGUE The analyst’s anxiety or ethical awakening 188 APPENDICES 198 REFERENCES 220 INDEX 232 According to Jacques Andre,'the patient's encounter with the analyst is a scene of seduction, the seductive statement being that of the fundamental rule or the invitation to address that which is most intimate or personal to a complete stranger.'But the practice of psychoanalysis can only unfold if there is a strict respect for ethics. The words seduction and ethics, which at first sight seem mutually exclusive, are thus, as the author shows, at the heart of the analytic perspective. The author takes as her starting-point an encounter, which is not necessarily consensual, between Emmanuel Levinas'thought and his conception of philosophy as ethics - ethics understood as responsibility for the other - and that of the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche, who posits the first adult other as a seducer of the young psyche from the outset, due to the transmission of enigmatic messages compromised by his or her unconscious. The analyst's ethical position is re-examined and with it the feminine/maternal origins of the human capacity for responsibility for the other.