ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis is defined as a unique mode of discourse that invites recondite dimensions of lived-experience to be voiced through the discourse of free-association, thus empowering the process of listening to the repressed meaningfulness of our being-in-the-world. This differentiates psychoanalysis from the various practices of psychotherapy, including those that appeal to psychoanalytically-informed theories for their interpretive conduct. Conventional approaches to lived-experience (first-person or phenomenological, second-person or dialogic, third-person or objectivistic) are examined critically. Given the negatively dialectical or deconstructive impact of free-associative discourse, the divergence of psychoanalysis from each of these approaches is discussed and various misunderstandings of its method are reviewed. This elucidates the way in which this discourse is a complexly dynamic process in which the individual speaks, aloud and without censorship, the streaming of consciousness in the silent presence of a psychoanalyst. The commitment to free-associate comprises an ‘attack’ on all forms of interpretive certitude inviting into discourse the force of desire (which Freud called ‘drive’) against the stases of repression and repetition-compulsivity. This leads to an understanding of desire in terms of the repressed polysexuality and pluritemporality of our lived-experience. The ideological entrapments of any method of discourse that prioritizes interpretation are thus implied.
