ABSTRACT
Padrón’s psychoanalytic practice with poor Latino patients combined with Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s concepts leads to an exploration of the political “potentiality” of the psychoanalytic process. Padr?n does not only see the psychoanalyst as a political activist or psychoanalysis as a discursive tool to analyze, interpret, or critique political phenomena but also claims that one can rethink a psychoanalytic clinical praxis so as to foster political potentiality, which is most visible and important when working with the disadvantaged. Here, the focus is a reading of Hans Loewald’s ideas on therapeutic action as they pave the way for Agamben’s concepts. For Padr?n, the psychoanalytic therapeutic action can foster in the patient the possibility of privation, the potential not to act, or the potential for darkness. All those experiences are intimately intertwined, as a process, with a “potentiality” that remains as shadow within the therapeutic action of the analyst psychoanalysis. This process is related to what other analysts, following Winnicott, have called the “potential space” of the psychoanalytic process. The main idea of the essay is that the analytic process and the clinical work done in analysis both bear an inextricable relationship with Agamben’s definition of freedom. This generates a new understanding of what this experience entails, which has important consequences when working with poor patients. One case study, the case of Antonio, will illustrate the general contention.
