- Reflexivity in the sociological sense is presupposed by the notion of symptom. A symptom is not an objective judgement of the clinician from on high, as in psychiatry, but rather a self-problematisation of the analysand. It has identified and evaluated as impeding their enjoyment of life which presupposes reflexivity in Archer’s sense.
- To seek out analysis is itself a project that presupposes reflexivity, in the sense that it involves formulating a multi-stage plan of action in response to an experienced problem. The cost of it will mean at least some weighing of opportunity costs for the vast majority of analysands. If I’m going to develop this line of thought I want to explore whether there is empirical literature on how people choose analysts, as well as choosing analysis over other therapeutic modalities.
- The analytical process necessitates stimulating the curiosity of the analysand, setting something into motion in them which can drive the progress of the process. This is a psychically complex relation (e.g. the transference likely to be involved in it) but there is something like Archer’s meta-reflexivity entailed by the Lacanian notion of hystericising the analysand i.e. leading them to question things which would not previously have been questioned by them.
- To the extent analysis is successful it leads the analysand to exist in a different relationship to themself. It’s not the overcoming of difficult emotions, say, but a change in how they relate to those difficult emotions. It’s not the abandonment of fantasies they’ve enacted since infancy, but rather a mode of relating to those fantasies with which they can live in a more satisfying and open way. This again overlaps with meta-reflexivity: accessing modalities of reflexivity which were previously foreclosed by the symptom?
- There is a tendency in the neo-Aristotelian literature to treat ‘concern’ as if it is a primitive. These concerns arise from our evaluative capacities, in relation to the objective worth found in what we encounter as we make our way through the world. But why do these concerns emerge for me rather than other concerns? There can be a psychoanalytical lens on concern without squeezing out the recognition that I am what I care about.
Raiding the inarticulate since 2010
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Mark Carrigan 