Sédat, Jacques

The Freudian Invention: a Working Invention - 2016.


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The invention of psychoanalysis was a result of trial and error and of accumulated questioning and at times fragmentary responses that Freud continually adjusted and readjusted in his practice. After his work with Charcot in the Salpêtrière and his meeting with Bernheim, who worked on “the relation,” Freud abandoned neurology to dedicate himself to the psyche. His work with hysterics who were suffering from reminiscences led him to measure the importance of affects in working toward a cure and the role of transference, which gave the psychoanalyst the place of the third person. This implies that the analyst, according to Freud, renounces every theoretical or intellectual position of knowledge and accepts a position of “psychic oscillation” according to the words and needs of the patient, so that these words can emerge from his history and he can find his proper place as a subject.