‘For a juridical conception of love’.[1]
It is the concluding an analysis work, surely it is too : where trusting his, or her own analyst is crucial for the work of both, patient and analyst, who infact ascribe themselves as allies and fellows, up to partners indeed, in re-forming an effective defense for the subject ‘en souff(e)rance’[2].
Trust is already Faith – and already in the memory of a child, not at all naivety or ingenuousness : however it will be a possible mistake in ascribing the treachery of his, or her own trust to point out a naivety and a not-innocence then, for which also a child can hold himself, or herself, responsible[3] : unconscious is legal as doesn’t cause but rather ascribes the offer received by a partner, coming into the reality by this way.
The Report proposed by Maria Delia Contri offers then an indispensable plug to maybe an articulation of ‘Tre capitoli’[4], by which Giacomo B. Contri offered his own experience of a conclusive analytical work, without making an ‘infantilism’ with the child also a psychoanalyst was.
This also proves a definitive distance – which Maria delia Contri well argued – from the Lacan’s doctrine, by which “The first obstacle to its scientific value is that a connection with the truth as a cause, in its material aspects, has been neglected in the circle of its labour.”[5]
By Lacan, a subject would remain splitted between truth and reality, able just to protect himself – or herself – “on one side by a phobia, on the other side covering with the surface on which the subject will put up a fetish”[6] : the psychoanalysis then “…grows the side of material cause” of the ‘truth’ of a subject, as a ‘lack’ himself, or herself ?
Really nothing ‘causes’ any individual thinking, nor the ‘truth’ of the subject indeed : and the questions by the university students, which were not long in coming, referred to the indispensable essay published by Freud in 1924, and named ‘The economic problem of masochism’.
“…I care to be remembered about a juridical conception of love, and about the science of thinking (i.e. the unconscious)”[7]: the legacy is, by me, ‘the hundredfold down here’ of an analytical cure as it is a work experience with a certain outcome, whose confirmation is up only to the patient, as a qualified partner in the cure.
The ‘reduction’, demanded by Lacan, is really a ‘subtraction’ in view of a ‘generalizable’ science – so distanced and ‘divided’ by the truth of a subject – and already ‘removal’ of that ‘drive’ pointed by Freud as not-istinctual at all, human ‘law’ indeed.[8]
Maybe there are patients who prefer competence to ‘consolance’ : the latter too, from now on, the Training of Psychoanalysts should take in duly account.
Marina Bilotta Membretti - Cernusco sul Naviglio / May 21, 2022
<Original painting by Gianni Russomando>[9]
[1] ‘Per una concezione giuridica dell’amore’ is the title of the Report presented by the psychoanalyst Maria Delia Contri last May 9 at the ‘Università degli Studi’ in Milan, in the context of meetings organized by the university students of ‘Pensare con Freud’. Maria Delia Contri is maybe the person who most closely accompanied Giacomo B. Contri in his professional and human path : engaged in her own analytical work between the 70s and 80s, in 1973 participated with Giacomo B. Contri and other colleagues in the foundation of the psychoanalitic Association ‘Scuola Freudiana’ which moved from criticizing the scientific nature of Lacan’s doctrine; later, in 1980, with his ‘Letter of Dissolution of E.D.P.’ Jacques Lacan himself dissolved the ‘Ecole Freudienne de Paris’ he had founded, and which also Giacomo B. Contri had joined. Maria Delia Contri, who for many years has edited the introductory Report of the annual Symposium work sessions of ‘Società Amici del pensiero’, is the author of ‘Ordine contrordine disordine. La ragione dopo Freud’ – SIC Edizioni (2016).
[2] ‘La scienza e la verità’, Opening Lesson to the Seminar 1965-1966 / ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’ – Vol. II, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Bibliot. Einaudi (2002), p.875. Jacques Lacan correctly shows the subject ‘en souffrance’, the subject who is going through his, or her own analytical work, in order to re-build a proper destination. The same Lacan had introduced the word in ‘The stolen letter’ (Lecture delivered on April 26, 1955) : in the French language infact ‘soufferance’ (pain) and 'souffrance’ (mail ready for despatch) are pronounced in the same way but with a different meaning, only due to the presence, or absence, of the letter ‘e’.
[3] ‘Ereditare da un bambino. Perché no ?’ Isbn 978-88-91081-63-6 Grup. Editor. ‘L’Espresso SpA’ (2014) : in this essay I refer to a few questions posed by Freud on the ‘Case of child Hans’ (1908), I explain what can be the individual competence in the cure of thinking and even a child has : Hans pathology was a zoophobia from which he could heal, without any further relapses.
[4] ‘Tre capitoli’, Giacomo B. Contri - Contributo 7 gennaio 2022 to the Symposium ‘Amore’ 2021-2022.
[5] ‘La scienza e la verità’, Opening Lesson to the Seminar 1965-1966 / ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’ – Vol. II, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri – Bibliot. Einaudi (2002), p.881
[6] ‘La scienza e la verità’ / ‘Jacques Lacan. Scritti’, a cura di Giacomo B. Contri - Bibliot. Einaudi (2002), p.882
[7] It is the ‘incipit’ of the ‘Letter’ Giacomo B. Contri sent to us last December 16, 2021 and that himself then included in his Contributo ‘Tre capitoli’ of January 7, 2022 to Symposium ‘Amore’2021-2022.
[8] ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B. Contri - SIC Edizioni (1994 e 1998).
[9] Gianni Russomando, biography : “I’m born in Vercelli (1956). Graduated at ‘Istituto di Belle Arti di Vercelli’, I can describe me as a simple ‘amanuense’ (medieval hand-painter). Far from expositions and competitions, it’s not a long time I’m on social media with a very personal aim : to give just a flash of quiet to anyone watching at my simple works.”
