ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Sigmund Freud's thinking on the problems and dynamics of the analyst's authority in relation to patients, patients' resistance against analytic authority, as well as their submission to it. In Freud's view psychoanalytic practice can succeed only if it is recognized by both sides as an agreement concluded by independent agents. The analytic setting is constituted as an incongruous duality of liberal and authoritarian elements and cannot be reduced to either of them. This duality is reflected in Freud's texts, which depict analyst and analysand as two individuals meeting in one social space both as allies and antagonists. The chapter shows that underlying Freud's discussion of transference, there is a political discourse par excellence which is concerned with the vicissitudes of authority in the face-to-face politics of the psychoanalytic setting. In opposition to the paternalistic exercise of power — which is characteristic of suggestion — the analyst's use of his authority is self-transcending.
