ABSTRACT

LOVE It may have an odd ring to encounter in one of Freud’s (1915b) papers on technique a note to love. After all, the way a profession represents its practices-the instructions to carry out, the techniques made for good results, and their promises of logical coherence-are typically split off from the poet’s claims, from flights of fantasy, and from both the love it creates and the practitioner’s temptations to act on it. Placing

incommensurability into the beating heart of practice gives us a clue as to how this love waxes and wanes and why, for the professions, a manual becomes an idealized object.