Treatment

treatment (cure) The term 'treatment' designates the practice of

  PSYCHOANALYSis as opposed to the theory of psychoanalysis. Although the

   term  was inherited by psychoanalysis from medicine, it has acquired                  a

specific meaning in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory which is quite different

   from the way it is understood in medicine. In particular, the aim of psycho-

analytic treatment is not seen by Lacan as 'healing' or 'curing' people in the

   sense of producing     a perfectly healthy psyche. The clinical structures of

   neurosis, psychosis and perversion are       seen   as essentially 'incurable', and

   the aim of analytic treatment is simply to lead the analysand to articulate his

   truth.

      Lacan argues that the treatment is a process with a definite direction, a

   structural progression with a beginning, middle and end (see END OF ANALYSIS).

   The beginning, or 'point of entry into the analytic situation', is a contract, or

   'pact', between analyst and analysand which includes the analysand's agree-

   ment to abide by the fundamental rule. Following the initial consultation, a

   series of face-to-face preliminary interviews take place. These preliminary

   interviews have several aims. Firstly, they enable a properly psychoanalytic

   symptom to be constituted in place of the vague collection of complaints often

   brought by the patient. Secondly, they allow time for the transference to

   develop. Thirdly, they permit the analyst to ascertain whether or not there is

   really a demand for psychoanalysis, and also to hypothesise about the clinical

   structure of the analysand.

      After the preliminary interviews, the treatment is no longer conducted face

   to face, but with the analysand reclining on a couch while the analyst sits

   behind him, out of the analysand's field of vision (the couch is not used in the

   treatment of psychotic patients). As he free associates, the analysand works

   through the signifiers that have determined him in his history, and is driven by

   the very process of speech itself to articulate something of his desire. This is a

   dynamic process which involves a conflict between a force which drives the

   treatment on (see TRANSFERENCE, DESIRE OF THE ANALYST) and an opposing force

    which blocks the process (see RESISTANCE). The analyst's task is to direct this

   process (not to direct the patient), and to get the process going again when it

   gets stuck.