ABSTRACT
Ergo the end of analysis is a matter of logic. Why ergo? Because language is the limit, Lacan says, not in order to limit the unlimited of Anaximander but because it is inherent in the infinity of the real Lacan spoke of, namely the real as lawless and without order. What adds to the difficulty is that the logic of the end of analysis does not necessarily obey the logic of the beginning. But how does one avoid the trap of the banality that what has a beginning has an end? Nor, it seems to me, does the end take place because of some massive retroaction that would send us all the way back to the beginning, to the very first trace of transference, for a loop to close and for this to be a mark of the end. Done. Finished. Now I know. Now I have understood. These, precisely, seem signals of analysis as not having reached a conclusive point of an analyst being produced, rather than producing, but of going through an impasse that could be called an impasse of understanding. Not that there is no room for understanding in analysis but this has proved to be inconclusive. What is its conclusion then?
