ABSTRACT
Jacques Lacan relocates the analyst's act from the vantage point of the semblant. In the analytic act—a social bond invented by Sigmund Freud—the analyst becomes and performs as the semblant of the analysand's object. The analyst acts out the semblant to evoke, approach, and locate the analysand's jouissance. According to Lacan, semblant is related to representing or depicting something through action. The analyst-actor plays the role of the semblant of the object a rather than as the subject of the truth. Through make-believe, the analyst-actor becomes the semblant because he or she must bring on the subject of the unconscious through the analysand's utterances and acts. The make-believe, theatrical performance and semblant support the analyst-actor through the strategy of plus-de-jouir and surplus jouissance and the politics B. Brecht's "defamiliarisation or distancing effect" is the opposite of naturalistic interpretation with its actor-character identification and, in this sense, it resembles Lacan's semblant quite closely.
