ABSTRACT
The couch—the actual piece of furniture—is the main symbol of psychoanalysis. For the social other, the couch is a signifier representing the Freudian psychoanalyst who asks analysands to lie down. The recommendation for using the couch at the onset of each treatment is an analytical act because psychoanalysis is recreated in each process. The goal of the Freudian tactic is to dissolve the Imaginary register in transference, to enable the analyst to distinguish when symbolic transference occurs during treatment. When analysts interpret as semblant of object a, they also put a blot on the mirror images of the analysand's myriad representations. The feeling of shame belongs typically to the neurotic: it is both a sign of drive satisfaction and a barrier to it, as it splits a subject simultaneously prevented from showing himself or herself and also commanded to "strip naked".
