Analytic Work: The Essential and the Accidental in Psychoanalysis

This article explores what is essential to analytic work by drawing not only on Freud, but also on two additional sources: Friedman’s (2019) notion of the psychoanalytic phenomenon as described in Freud’s book on technique; and Weber’s (1991, 2000) understanding of Freud’s metapsychology as a creation of terms that are necessary in order to work with a non-observable object, the unconscious. Using Freud’s emphasis on the importance of dreams as a form of thinking, the author links the work of Friedman and Weber and extends it in doing a close reading of a specific passage by Freud, showing that the precarious nature of metapsychology is understandable as a form of paradigmatic logic. A dream of the author’s gives a certain counterpoint to the paper.