End of analysis
In "Analysis Terminable and Interminable," Freud discusses the question of whether it is ever possible to conclude an analysis, or whether all analyses are necessarily incomplete (Freud, 1937c). Lacan's answer to this question is that it is indeed possible to speak of concluding an analysis. Although not all analyses are carried through to their conclusion, analytic treatment is a logical process which has an end, and Lacan designates this end-point by the term 'end of analysis' (fin d'analyse). Given that many analyses are broken off before the end of analysis is reached, the question arises as to whether such analyses can be considered successful or not. To answer this question it is necessary to distinguish between the end of analysis and the aim of psychoanalytic treatment. The aim of psychoanalytic treatment is to lead the analysand to articulate the truth about his desire. Any analysis, however incomplete, may be regarded as successful when it achieves this aim. The question of the end of analysis is therefore something more than whether a course of analytic treatment has or has not achieved its aim; it is a question of whether or not the treatment has reached its logical end-point. Lacan conceives of this end-point in various ways.
l. In the early 1950s, the end of analysis is described as "the advent of a true speech and the realisation by the subject of his history."[1] (see speech). "The subject ... begins the analysis by speaking about himself without speaking to you, or by speaking to you without speaking about himself. When he can speak to you about himself, the analysis will be over."[2] The end of analysis is also described as coming to terms with one's own mortality.[3]
2. In 1960, Lacan describes the end of analysis as a state of anxiety and abandonment, and compares it to the helplessness of the human infant.
3. In 1964 he describes it as the point when the analysand has "traversed the radical fantasy."[4] (see fantasy).
4. In the last decade of his teaching, he describes the end of analysis as "identification with the sinthome", and as "knowing what to do with the sinthome." (see sinhome).
Common to all these formulations is the idea that the end of analysis involves a change in the subjective position of the analysand (the analysand's 'subjective destitution'), and a corresponding change in the position of the analyst (the loss of being [Fr. désêtre] of the analyst, the fall of the analyst from the position of the subject-supposed-to-know). At the end of the analysis, the analyst is reduced to a mere surplus, a pure objet petit a, the cause of the analysand's desire.
Since Lacan argues that all psychoanalysts should have experienced the process of analytic treatment from beginning to end, the end of analysis is also the passage from analysand to analyst. "The true termination of an analysis" is therefore no more and no less than that which "prepares you to become an analyst."[5]
In 1967, Lacan introduced the procedure of the pass as a means of testifying to the end of one's analysis. By means of this procedure, Lacan hoped to avoid the dangers of regarding the end of analysis as a quasi-mystical, ineffable experience. Such a view is antithetical to psychoanalysis, which is all about putting things into words.
Lacan criticises those psychoanalysts who have seen the end of analysis in terms of identification with the analyst. In opposition to this view of psychoanalysis, Lacan states that the "crossing of the plane of identification is possible."[6] Not only is it possible to go beyond identification, but it is necessary, for otherwise it is not psychoanalysis but suggestion, which is the antithesis of psychoanalysis; "the fundamental mainspring of the analytic operation is the maintenance of the distance between the I - identification - and the a."[7]
Lacan also rejects the idea that the end of analysis involves the 'liquidation' of the transference.[8] The idea that the transference can be 'liquidated' is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the transference, according to which the transference is viewed as a kind of illusion which can be transcended. Such a view is erroneous because it entirely overlooks the symbolic nature of the transference; transference is part of the essential structure of speech. Although analytic treatment involves the resolution of the particular transference relationship established with the analyst, transference itself still subsists after the end of analysis.
Other misconceptions of the end of analysis which Lacan rejects are: "strengthening the ego", "adaptation to reality" and "happiness". The end of analysis is not the disappearance of the symptom, nor the cure of an underlying disease (e.g. neurosis), since analysis is not essentially a therapeutic process but a search for truth, and the truth is not always beneficial.[9]
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