A workshop by Dariush M Doust
Organized by Quán xīnlǐ zǔzhī
Interpreter: LiSiqi
Mar. 11-12 BEIJING
The question that opened this seminar was what status can be ascribed to interpretations in psychoanalysis. Which kind of interpretation are we speaking of, both in form and with regard to its content? Are they explicative, descriptive or indicative? Further, if we look at how Freud approaches works of art (notably in his text on Moses of Michelangelo 1914, his short essay on the Uncanny -Unheimlichkeit- from 1920, etc), it seems they address the work of art as representing a kind of knowing detached from the self representation of the author, author’s intentions. We developed this idea along the axis from drive to interpretation using dream as a matrix.
The distinction between modern art work as pleasing the eye and artistic practice after the advent of modernism was discussed. The notion of ready-made in modernist art was introduced and we introduced the idea of ready-made as an approximation of an analyst’s interpretative intervention. The discussion related to several art works, by among others Duchamp, Malevitch, and a contemporary work, Monument Against Fascism (1986–93), by Joshen and Esther-Shalev Gerz,.
The discussion that followed helped the participants to have a better grasp of how a Lacanian intervention starts from a different point of departure, quite distinct from an imaginary or symbolistic dyadic relationship, and its destination is determined by other factors than what is the vulgar ideas that circulate around the Freudian psychoanalysis or the term “healing”.
The principle that interpretation in Lacanian orientation does not aim at adding new layers of meaning beyond what symptoms already do was also underlined.
The second day of this seminar deepens the first day’s discussion in two different ways. Firstly, a case and a therapeutic situation was presented for discussion. In the second part, time was given to an introduction of different modern theories of interpretations as distinct from a Lacanian orientation. Hermeneutics (specifically Paul Riceur), Heidegger and Foucault in Archéologie du Savoir were in focus. We also briefly touched upon works by Deleuze-Guattari and the concept of desiring machine, but a further discussion was beyond the framework of this seminar and will be followed up at a future seminar.
When we talk about the interpretation in psychoanalysis, and by extension in different therapies based on psychoanalysis, our starting principle, is the unconscious in its concrete reality, as constituent for the production of meaning in our existence as sensuous beings.
The place and status of interpretation in the analytical treatment is determined by this first principle. It ensues firstly that we construct an appropriate space, clinical space, such as the analytical cabinet, in which the unconscious desires are addressed to an other. Secondly, this production during a session becomes a material that ultimately encounters a knot or a personal point of an impossible discordance, that which can be rendered as the real. The interpretation by the analyst or leader of the group is always an intervention in the process of invention by the subject who tries to grasp the uniqueness or singularity of his or her experience, however complex, enigmatic or painful it may be. The interpretation aims at enacting this subjectivity.
The question of interpretation has not been a separate concept treated by Freud in his works, neither in his case studies, nor in his writings about arts. It becomes more central as interpretation itself becomes a central topic in the 20th century’s intellectual debates (we will talk about it in a short moment).
We should perhaps take a detour, see how the interpretative enterprise in Freud operates in relation to what exegesis or interpretation most often are employed for, a literary text or a work of art. If we turn our attention —for the sake of brevity— towards Freud’s interpretations of art works (notably in his text on Moses of Michelangelo 1914, SEXIII, his short essay The Uncanny -Unheimlichkeit from 1920), it is striking that Freud approached the work of art as representing a knowledge. In other words, works of art are supposed to know something. However, we have to give a more precise formulation to Freud’s elaborations on the work of art. More clearly in Lacan, the art work is approached as a working relation to the unconscious. What the art work presents beyond its representational material is the collection of traces from this working relation.
Let me explain this by relating the artistic work to dream insofar as there is a passage, a transition from drive, from the object of drive or as we would locate it in the Lacanian school as enjoyment, to the symbolic order, that which sustains the images as such. To make this point clear, we can compare this to a work by Marcel Duchamp, his Fountain. This is from 1917 and as you know an emblematic work for modernist art. It is called a ready-made. An object from everyday life that is displaced, placed in the museum. This object, for those of you have studied Lacan, you would know a discussion about ready-made and objet a is presented during the congress in Rome in 1974. Lacan adds that the ready-made is like a word play, a pun, an emptying of sense, a creating equivocal ideas and an effect of displacement as the Fountain by Duchamp is in fact a displacement of an object. The context in which this argument is levelled is explicated as being the interpretation in analysis.
Now, this point brings us to a more general understanding of the relation between the art work and psychoanalysis on the one hand and the question of interpretation in analysis. Because the question is what Duchamp does when he puts that urinal in the gallery space. Or in other words, what a play on words would do as an interpretative intervention?
Fundamentally, a work, be it an exhibited art work or a work produced by participants in therapy, is already in itself an interpretation. Surely, the verbal constructions presented around the piece by the group or by the person who made the work, can be a way to add even more meaning and these meaning constructs could be in many cases a way to return to an imaginary level, a social conformism, etcetera. Our intervention, however it may appear paradoxical to you, remains closer to the work produced by the participant, rather than encouraging the addition of more layers of meaning (of whatever kind it may be, theoretical nomenclature as well as symbol interpretation). This is what I meant by allowing and focusing on the creative process itself.
