PSYCHOANALYSIS TODAY
505
To do so, let us consider a hypothetical analyst's rejoinder to a
complaint about the exclusionary nature of his fee.
It
is true, he
might say, that it costs a given individual a great deal to make use of
my services. But this is due to a real conflict in which I am caught
and cannot abolish without losing my identity as an analyst. On the
one hand, I have been trained comparably to others in my profes–
sional cadre and have a reasonable right to live like them. On the
other hand, however, the nature of my work makes it necessary for
me to spend a great deal of
time
with each patient-far, far more
than other physicians do with theirs. Hence I may only see a
relatively tiny number of patients and must charge each comparably
more. In fact, if you study the matter, you will see that the average
physician earns more per hour than
I.
He does so in a traditionally
capitalistic manner by introducing technology, hiring a labor force
and improving efficiency by combining with other doctors. Thus, he
is able to process many more patients per unit time than did his
forebears, and so keeps the cost per patient manageable without
sacrificing his profit.
An analyst, however, can do none of this and remain an analyst.
The peculiar nature of his work closes off to him most of the
standard manoeuvres by means of which economic exigencies are
confronted in the capitalist world. For the analyst is pledged to
attend to subjectivity. He cannot therefore employ any technology,
since technology necessarily involves an objectification of the prob–
lem to be solved, nor can he employ ancillary help or work in a
group without breaking into the exquisitely intimate personal
relationship with his patient
t~at
is the necessary precondition for an
exploration of the subjective world.
Good psychoanalytic work eschews any form of gimmickry or
speedup. The analyst, as one of my supervisors told me, should have
all the time in the world. The unconscious, which is the true object
of his concern, cannot be coaxed. This is not to say that the analyst's
role is a passive one. However, his work is aimed primarily at the
resistances which hold the unconscious back, not at the unconscious
itself. The unconscious has spontaneity but will not be bought
cheaply. In fact, it may be said to resist exchange-value. It not only
refuses to be tied to any particular object in the world; it also
abolishes the very logic of the object-world.
It
has to rise on its own
until it is present to be tethered in a web of interpretations; and the
analyst has to wait as patiently for it to appear an an eskimo fishing
over a hole in the ice. Whether or not this is the most therapeutic way
to deal with a large number of human circumstances in which
