The clinic of the speaking body
The title of this paper contains the echo of the Meeting of the International of the Forums in Rome in 2010, The Mystery of the Speaking Body. In replacing the word 'mystery' with 'clinic' I'm drawing attention to something essential with regard to both practice and presence: the analyst's embodied response to the analysand in the setting of the consulting room. But I do not want to lose the sense of the mystery in the work we do. In the consulting room, the discourse of the analyst is the condition for crossing into the foreign terrain of the unconscious. Analysis is a practice of speaking and hearing that requires the presence of two bodies; I am arguing that it cannot be conducted effectively by phone or by Skype for there, the real effect of speech on the body is lost. The analysand's desire to explore the unconscious is evident at the level of speech but also in the act of coming to the session. A subject moves his body into the analytic space, actually and in his words. The living body is the body that enjoys, the body that brings with it the dimension of the unconscious Real.