Papers by Mitchell Wilson, MD
The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2024
The title of my talk is “Edges of the Voice in Psychoanalysis.” I am interested in these edges, t... more The title of my talk is “Edges of the Voice in Psychoanalysis.” I am interested in these edges, the ways in which, through writing or speaking, we experience a limit and push beyond it. On the one side of this limit is our indelible subjectivity, that our voice is ours, and sounds only like one person—me in my case and you in yours—and no one else.2 On the other side is the voice as a worrisome and odd Thing, a source, as I will describe, of discontent and suspicion. These two sides sit one against the other in tension.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2023
Lacan's seminars are a treasure trove of innovative psychoanalytic explorations. In Seminar X, An... more Lacan's seminars are a treasure trove of innovative psychoanalytic explorations. In Seminar X, Anxiety, he takes up this Freudian theme and explores a number of interrelated ideas: castration, the difference between the sexes, two different forms of acting out, and what he terms his only original theoretical contribution: the object a and its "various incidences." The object a is described here in detail, especially in relation to Lacan's argument that analysts who are women have a freer relationship to their desire and the countertransferences it spawns than do men. Lacan discussed Lucia Tower's classic paper, "Countertransference," in light of these notions. This essay is a close reading of Lacan's close reading of Tower, whose account, he says, must be approached in all its "innocence and freshness."
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2024
In-person meeting offers psychologically usable material-signifiers that serve as day's residue-t... more In-person meeting offers psychologically usable material-signifiers that serve as day's residue-that cannot be duplicated or substituted for in remote ways of working. Questions of materiality, the history and specificity of location, and bodily proximity all are key aspects of the psychoanalytic frame, as Bleger's classic formulations attest. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the choreography of engagement between analyst and patient: the ghostly dust in the frame enters the room. As Bleger says, with ghosts so rustled, nonprocess has a chance to become process. Two clinical examples highlight these points about materiality and in-person working. The final section of the paper extends Bleger's description to tackle the perplexing situation of patients who hesitate to return to the office. Issues of "ghosting," vanishing, disappearing are discussed, and linked to the constitutive absence that grounds any meaningfully structured presence. This constitutive absence is evoked by the prospect of the return to in-person analytic work. A final clinical example is used to illustrate this disturbing and irreducible fact about human interaction when two bodies are together in a room to discuss, over time, the life of one of the participants.
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2013
The analyst&a... more The analyst's desire expressed in impactful wishes and intentions is foundational to countertransference experience, yet undertheorized in the literature. The "wider" countertransference view, associated with neo-Kleinian theory, obscures the nature of countertransference and the analyst's contribution to it. A systematic analysis of the logic of desire as an intentional mental state is presented. Racker's (1957) talion law and Lacan's (1992) theory of the dual relation illustrate the problems that obtain with a wholesale embrace of the wider countertransference perspective. The ethical burden placed on the analyst in light of the role played by desire in countertransference is substantial. Lacan's ethics of desire and Benjamin's (2004) concept of the moral third are discussed.
The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2023
A short piece as part of the Why I Write series in the JAPA Review of Books.
The Voice of the Analyst, 2017
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2016
The eThical FoundaTion oF analyTic acTion We shall give up the idea that there are special classe... more The eThical FoundaTion oF analyTic acTion We shall give up the idea that there are special classes of processes that prepare or propel mental activity, that is to say, classes that are qualitatively different from the mental activity they prepare or propel; for now everything is an action.-Roy SchafeR (1976, p. 13) An ethics essentially consists in a judgment of our action, with the proviso that [the judgment] is only significant if the action implied by it also contains within it, or is supposed to contain, a judgment, even if it is only implicit. The presence of judgment on both sides is essential to the structure.-JacqueS Lacan (1959-1960, p. 311) A fter Schafer and Lacan, Renik (1993a,b) and Friedman (1993, 2007), and, more or less, the entire relational tradition (Harris 2011), it is by now a commonplace to say that psychoanalysts are interested in their own activity-that is, our activity, what we are doing with our patients, what we, as analysts, say, feel, and imagine. Analysts have grasped the ways in which their internal worlds shape, illuminate, or constrain engagement with, and perhaps the very emergence of, the patient's subjective experience. Analysands talk in the hope we will receive their message generatively, openly, all the while taking the risk that we might misrecognize, not hear, and fail to witness what they want us to recognize, hear, and witness. This risk involves, as Shulman (2016) says, "a bid for utmost intimacy" (p. 706); the emotional stakes are high. In this context, it is no wonder we care deeply about how we act and why we act as we do. This is why what we concern ourselves with is Training and Supervising Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2019
The unusual set of writings you are about to read comes from a panel that Lynne Zeavin and I put ... more The unusual set of writings you are about to read comes from a panel that Lynne Zeavin and I put together for the APsaA meeting in February 2019 titled “What Can I Say? Contested Words and Contested Thoughts in the Contemporary Moment.” Our idea for the panel arose in response to a moment, some years back, that was both quintessentially psychoanalytic and extremely painful. It was at the APsaA spring meeting in Austin in 2016, during the clinical plenary. In the comment period––after the plenary presentation and the two discussions that followed (I was one of the discussants)––an audience member said forthrightly: “I am greatly distressed. I think the plenary speaker and discussants should be made aware of the damage they have caused by their use of the term homosexual. The history of this word, and the oppressive uses to which it has been put, both inside and outside of psychoanalysis, make it unusable, except as an instrument to do further harm.”
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2019
This paper is about a central and mostly overlooked aspect of the unconscious as manifested in th... more This paper is about a central and mostly overlooked aspect of the unconscious as manifested in the clinical work of psychoanalysis. This is its proleptic nature. The unconscious is proleptic in that it performs futural possibilities for the subject. These futural possibilities emerge as potentially significant in the now and the next of the analytic hour-that is,
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2018
Bion and Lacan have surveyed the territory of the desire of the analyst most compellingly, though... more Bion and Lacan have surveyed the territory of the desire of the analyst most compellingly, though an explicit pairing of the two is rare in the literature. The difference between them as regards desire appears to be stark: the former says no to desire, the latter says yes. This paper essays to show that despite clear differences, both Bion and Lacan situate the analyst in the same open, present, and futural position. This analytic position is mobile (rather than fixed) and partakes of a particular kind of desire: one that has not been reduced to a wish but is, instead, trained on the emergence of something new and potentially significant that could not have been imagined or predicted. In this context, the paper describes the analyst as a "listening-accompanist."
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2003
The ways in which the analyst's desire for particular experiences with patients is inevitable... more The ways in which the analyst's desire for particular experiences with patients is inevitable and often leads to narcissistically based resistances are considered. Five propositions are examined: (1) that the analyst cannot help but have desires and want them recognized by the analysand; (2) that these desires frequently underwrite the analyst's theoretical beliefs and technical interventions; (3) that narcissistic desires and their influence are ubiquitous among practicing analysts; (4) that the patient is often on the lookout for the analyst's various agendas; and (5) that the patient often hopes the analyst will put his or her desire aside and listen so the patient can further his or her own interests. Lacan's concept of the “dual relation” is central to this discussion. The neo-Kleinian position on narcissistic resistances is explored, as is the idea of the “analytic third” as a potential solution to the problem they pose. An extended case description illustrates...
Journal of The American Psychoanalytic Association, 2006
It is an oft-noted clinical phenomenon that the analyst's mistakes are beneficial to the analytic... more It is an oft-noted clinical phenomenon that the analyst's mistakes are beneficial to the analytic process. Although the analyst's mistakes, misunderstandings, and faulty functioning have been described by psychoanalysts of various theoretical persuasions, no overall theory has been advanced to account for this clinical phenomenon. To address this theoretical lacuna the central Lacanian notions of lack and desire are brought to bear. In particular, lack, or nothing, is presented as an essential working condition of the analyst, one that if understood, recognized, and tolerated can positively inform the analyst's attitude. By contrast, theoretical biases that privilege presence can obscure lack as an important contributor to the analyst's attitude. A clinical case demonstrates that both analyst and patient struggle with deep anxieties generated by lack, and that both are repeatedly tempted to solve these struggles by settling for obsessional solutions.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Mar 1, 2014
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2010
The question of the training analysis demands a complicated set of answers that engage the issue ... more The question of the training analysis demands a complicated set of answers that engage the issue at different levels of human organization. Historically, the training analysis has been the central feature of the tripartite model of psychoanalytic education. Internal and external pressures have burdened the training analysis and called its legitimacy into question. This problem of legitimacy amounts to a lack of coherence in the training analyst (TA) system. This lack engenders idealized fantasies of the role of the TA, in which the TA embodies special talents and attributes, and of the system that sanctions that role. This idealization is haunted by its opposite: a melancholic devaluation of psychoanalysis and a fear that it will collapse. Recent literature on the analyst’s position in the psychoanalytic process emphasizes the analyst’s position as decentered and conflicted. The analyst’s decentered, conflicted status goes against this idealizing impulse. An attempt is made to wed a...
The Psychoanalytic quarterly, 2016
It seems that the calling card of any respectable and respected psychoanalyst must include words ... more It seems that the calling card of any respectable and respected psychoanalyst must include words that convey humility and a sober assessment of the limits of what he or she can accomplish: after name, address, and phone number come the words “And please don’t expect too much.” Bion is said to have stated that the psychoanalyst must make the best of a bad job. It is commonplace, in short, to hear a psychoanalyst lay claim to the mantle of struggle, ignorance, and doubt. There is something disingenuous about such a self-introduction because, at least as far as the contemporary psychoanalytic literature goes, such humility-as-inherent-limitation is, often enough, merely the first phase of what usually evolves into a favorable, often enthusiastic clinical report. The typical trajectory of the psychoanalytic case vignette takes a familiar form, and it is the form, roughly speaking, of the short story:
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2012
MLN, 1991
Elisabeth Roudinesco is the author or coauthor of several previous books on psychoanalysis. Jeffr... more Elisabeth Roudinesco is the author or coauthor of several previous books on psychoanalysis. Jeffrey Mehlman is professor of French literature at Boston University. A translator of Lacan, he is the author, most recently, of Legacies: Of Anti-Semitism in France. This ...
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2015
Richard Almond’s paper challenges us to think deeply about the analyst’s impactful desires on the... more Richard Almond’s paper challenges us to think deeply about the analyst’s impactful desires on the patient. My discussion considers different aspects of this impact: phallic, maternal, ethical. Specifically, I assert that Almond’s position in relation to the female patients he describes is more maternal, or “matricial,” than phallic. Chetrit-Vatine’s concept of matricial space is used to elucidate this point. Further, Almond’s paper asks us to consider seriously psychoanalysis as an ethics regarding responsibility for desire as it relates to countertransference and enactment. The specific desire I focus on is Almond’s desire for his patients’ love. Such as desire involves inherent clinical difficulties.
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2009
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Papers by Mitchell Wilson, MD