ABSTRACT
The analyst uses the symbolic setting of the clinic in order to advance healing according to the theoretical principles that guide him. These principles manifest themselves in each and every response to a phone call, to every practical reference to time, money, cancellations, late arrivals, referrals, gifts, and the other pieces of the symbolic puzzle that constitutes the clinic. Money plays a critical symbolic role because payment is a constant reminder that the analyst is neither parent nor friend. J. Lacan explains that oedipal interpretation’s initial freshness and unusualness were the source of its power. Freud found the roots of neurosis in the patient’s biography; childhood events produce inner conflict which then expresses itself in symptoms. Symptoms, for him, constitute a symbolic structuring of the desire and jouissance in the patient’s present reality. Lacan interpreted it as the hysterical desire to reveal the lack in the Other who is in the role of the master.
