Lecourt, Édith

Passion for the unconscious The psychoanalyst and “timelessness” - 2020.


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This article offers some reflections on the relationship of the psychoanalyst to time (and to his own finiteness?). It questions the attachment to continuing practising analysis at an advanced age and sometimes until the analyst’s death. It proposes a correlation with the very idea of the unconscious, of its timelessness, and a reflection on this within the particular context of the clinical group, illustrated by examples of group “timelessness”.The very choice of the profession of psychoanalyst could be related to the idea of a timeless unconscious, and in certain cases, to the expectation/promise of an access to timelessness, a protection against death. The aim of this article is to introduce considerations of professional responsibility, a question of ethics, to the way of envisaging the end of one’s practice, the end of sessions, whether individual or group.