As Lacan reminds us, for psychoanalysis, the self is constituted through a dialectical process in which individuals experience themselves as self not directly but only indirectly from the standpoint of the other. The self is a social product as is continually created. The psychoanalytical exchange can be considered as a particular system sifted by language and mounted on it, that by reason of the fundamental rule will assign positions about the self and determine its effects. It presents itself as an expectant site, precisely so that something can happen in relation to the experience of the unconscious. In the psychoanalytical sphere in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this idea of the self as a product dialectically opposed to the ‘other in me’ is embedded in the discursive realm of the everyday life where discourses circulate to broader audiences. The circulation of psychoanalytical jargon is reproduced outside the therapeutic site becoming part of the popular culture. The main focus of my research in the city of Buenos Aires, intended to trace some of these discursive formations from the starting point of the creation of these discourses: the psychoanalytical interview, in which there is a naturalization process of a number of ‘medicalized’ concepts that travel outside the institutional setting of psychoanalysis.
The process of tracing the ‘birth’ of these psychoanalytical discursive formations started at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) where I interviewed and established a close relation with two of the most prominent scholars that have written extensive bibliography about psychoanalysis in Argentina: Dr. Mariano Ben Plotkin, and Dr. Sergio Visacovsky. This first step was essential to obtain the necessary credentials that opened the door to the so called ‘mundo psi’ (psy-world) in Buenos Aires. Through the institutional support of the UBA, I was able to contact and interview 18 renowned psychoanalysts that have been working as such for the past 30 years, have published a number of books, and are professors from different universities. These interviews were designed to develop a map of the different psychoanalytical trajectories that Argentina has gone through numerous historical periods (i.e. the Freudian vs. the Lacanian school), and to ask specific questions about the psychoanalytical interview, and the demographic of their patients. One of the main questions that emerged from these dialogs was the underlined relationship that exists between psychoanalysis and paradigms of modernity. Between 1999-2002 Argentina went through a very difficult economical crisis that left the country with a devastating economic and social impact. Within the process of re-structuration of the country, psychoanalysis became the site in which Argentineans could relate to their European past, thus, have some reminiscence of what they perceive as a ‘modern culture.’ This issue became recurrent in the conversations with psychoanalysts, psychology students, professors and even some patients. I started then to trace this discourse of modernity not only in the psychoanalytic setting but also on everyday discourses.
The design of my project was based on the verbal exchanges of psychoanalysts and patients. Very early in my research, I discovered that having access to the verbal exchange between these social actors became a difficult (if not impossible) task because there is a professional oath that forbids any external interlocutor to be part of the clinical setting. I turn to interviews with the involved social actors such as doctors, psychoanalysts, patients, students, institutional authorities (hospital director, staff, etc.) and the media in order to analyze language and its circulation. I interviewed a total of 32 individuals and tape several TV shows (morning/evening news, sports, soap operas, etc.) and reviewed several written outlets (newspapers, magazines, books) to complete the analyses.
Thus I went to Argentina with the hypothesis that in the psychoanalytical construction of the self, meanings come about through the interaction between speakers (psychoanalyst and patients), and linguistic features come about as a result of social processes. By taking a close look at how discourses of modernity intertwined with psychoanalytic discourse through the close examination of media outlets, it was clear that in the circulation of psychoanalytical discourse, users of language bring different dispositions toward language that are closely related to social positioning (self identity). Such analytical concepts are not free, but instead strictly connected with local norms about what can be said by whom and how to interpret them (especially in the realm of institutional setting). Also, there was an exercise of power that resided in the ability to evoke and use the relevant domains of knowledge that link the psychoanalyst and the patient (or in this case the consumer of psychoanalytic discourses) with particular rights, duties and responsibilities. The authority of one’s voice was conveyed and realized by relying in cultural acceptable discourse procedures which can reshape the ongoing context or challenge what might have been taken for granted before the verbal exchange occurred. Consequently, the social self was realized in the process of interaction within the psychoanalytical discourse that travels through different channels. The most important part was to recognize how linguistic ideology was created and reproduced and how through linguistic competence power relations were negotiated in the construction of the psychoanalytic self.
In Buenos Aires, the jargon of what could be considered therapeutic talk is conveyed with a performative act that surpasses the clinical setting and becomes everyday-talk. When constructing the self, both the lay person and the psychoanalyst, rely on utterances that will attempt to depict an accurate description of a subjective experience that could be translated and then categorized. This research focused in the creation of a new subjectivity through the verbal construction of the self in which the social self is reconstructed and performed after diagnosis is established (in the psychoanalytic setting) but also in casual conversations where there is a naturalization process of different psychic maladies and how these discourses travel and circulate. How the psychoanalytical self is constructed verbally, and how categories emerge from subjectivity that is exposed not only through the psychoanalytical interaction but also in everyday discourses that circulate in the media was one of the main focus of this research. When constitutive rules of discourse are in effect, talk becomes action, and action becomes ‘sadness,’ ‘anxiety,’ ‘imbalance,’ these concepts are defined through elaborate enactments of linguistic ideology that lead to the establishment of medical facts. This project intended to uncover some of the establishment of medical knowledge and its relationship with paradigms of modernity.
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