Is the Noise the Message in Psychoanalytic Listening?

Abstract

In psychoanalytic discourse, the question of meaning or lack thereof should be relegated only to the domain of the interlocutor's perception. Not every slip of the tongue or bungled action is necessarily precipitated by some unconscious motivation, although one may construct meaning for it après coup (Nachträglichkeit). What is a message versus a noise depends on the perceptual experience of the analytic couple, and a cigar, if not just a cigar, depends on the context-specific fantasy of the perceiver. The author's aim is to show the difficulty of distinguishing the noise from the message in the interactive matrix of the analytic situation. Yet what at first may seem to be a banal error such as double-booking may at times enliven a stultified course of the analytic process; it may even drag a stillborn transference out of its embalmed closet.