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PARTISAN REVIEW
together. We have to reach a very subtle liberation, nevertheless it is
liberation, speculation, etcetera, that cannot exist without practical
involvement: it arises in the cure, helps it, and is realized in it. Hence
we achieve a very particular connection, which does not even exist in
the sciences. This is why psychoanalysis is a very special field, and
why I went into it - at least it is one of my reasons. I did not want to
remain in only abstractions and theoretical observations about writ–
ers or artists.
In
psychoanalysis, I
think
and I
do;
it's very interesting.
This helps my literary criticism because I now am in a better posi–
tion to understand the writer's motivations in changing religious,
ideological or sexual languages, forms and themes. I also can surmise
what happens to the personality of the writer, and his impact on the
reader. Psychoanalysis helps me to understand both reception and
creation. Because people on the couch are telling stories, they are
permanent writers, maybe not always very gifted ones. But from
time to time I have the impression that we sometimes hear more in–
teresting stories on the couch than are being published. (When I said
that on television, I had many demands for analysis.) From time to
time, these stories are told in a very imaginative way, not only in
terms of content, but also of style. This does not always hold true,
but when it does, my patients' are more dramatic than the superficial
stories of bestsellers.
EK:
I have been puzzled by something else. When you did decide to
become a psychoanalyst, why did you become a member of the clas–
sical psychoanalytic group rather than join the Lacanians, whose
ideas, one would have assumed, are closer to yours?
JK:
I can tell
you
why, but I have not told the newspapers . First there
were personal reasons. I knew Lacan very well; he was a friend, and
he was intellectually important to me . But I wanted to keep my psy–
choanalysis apart, in a private domain of exploration, away from in–
tellectual preoccupations. Thus Lacan was not the right person to
analyze me. Aside from these personal reasons, I considered the
Lacanians somewhat too politicized, and thus less interested in clini–
cal problems than in intellectual power. By politicized, I mean that
they were too concerned with questions of succession and power in
psychoanalysis, in the group itself, and in competing with other
groups.
In
the 1970s, and especially after Lacan's death, my impres–
sion was confirmed. This may not have been their fault alone, since
they were being rejected by the International Psychoanalytic Asso–
ciation and reacted against this rejection by denouncing the IPA. I
