87

This paper places the dialectics of belief and persuasion in the broader framework of transference (and hence love) in psychoanalysis (both in theory and practice), albeit against the background of the historical tradition in which Freud expressly included himself. Based on the distinction between political subject, subject of the unconscious, and subject of the transference, this paper highlights—based on but completely removed from the psychoanalytic perspective—the representation of transference (as seen in the discourses of Paul the Apostle or Socrates) and the use of transference (in the political order or in perversion). In examining the concept of transference, this paper outlines the contours of a “science of transference”—inherently multiple, culturally defined, historically discontinuous—the expressions of which are consubstantial to the civilizational process of subjectification/socialization. This science of transference is what allows the subject to find his bearings—or perhaps get lost—in the games of belief and persuasion inherent to social life.