The virtue of ignorance

The true analytic act begins with a necessary forgetting: the analyst must set aside everything they think they know about human suffering, theories of the unconscious, therapeutic techniques. Not because this knowledge isn't valuable, but because theoretical knowledge can easily become a screen that prevents hearing the radical singularity of each analysand.

Contemporary clinical practice is saturated with experts who have answers for everything, who diagnose and prescribe before really listening. Psychoanalysis proposes something radically different: a space where the analyst's not-knowing allows the analysand's unconscious knowledge to emerge. The difference between analyzing and indoctrinating lies precisely in this capacity to suspend our certainties.

Every time an analyst believes they know too much about what's happening to their analysand, they're closer to indoctrination than analysis. True analytic listening requires this continuous emptying of one's own certainties, this willingness to be surprised by what the other brings, this capacity to keep alive the question of what's singular in each case.