The Guarantee

There is no standard definition of a psychoanalyst. Nevertheless, Jacques Lacan founded his school with a concern for the guarantee of the practice of psychoanalysts. He always distinguished two modes of recognition of analysts: through analysis and through practice.

The psychoanalyst derives his authorisation only from himself.

Jacques Lacan. “Proposition of 9 octobre 1967”

Supervision is a requirement.

Jacques Lacan. “Founding Act”

What is an analyst?

Recognition through analysis. This means recognising that an analyst is the product of his or her analysis and to authenticate this, Lacan invented the pass as a means of recruitment of analysts.

Recognition through practice. The school does not award the title of analyst, nor does it issue authorisations, but it guarantees that an analyst’s practice falls within the formation it provides. A formation based on the supervision of practice. 

Supervision at the Heart of Formation

Supervision is a legacy of the deregulation of psychoanalysis that Lacan instigated, at the moment when he founded his school, theÉcole freudienne de Paris, in 1964. Contrary to the IPA created by Freud, his school does not issue authorisations, nor diplomas authorising the practice of psychoanalysis.

It is Lacan’s practice that was at the heart of the discord of the international psychoanalytic movement: a non-standardised practice of the analytic session, whose principles are tied to the structure of the unconscious. The famous controversy over the short sessions, far from being uniquely about technique, essentially comprised an ethical stake since the variable-length session left analysts entirely responsible for their act; and they could not absolve themselves of this responsibility by hiding behind standards or protocols.

In the same way that he fought against the standards of the treatment, Lacan also reinvented supervision as a de-standardised formation. Supervision is not compulsory in the schools of the Freudian Field, but, in Lacan’s words, “it is a requirement”. It is a requirement precisely “For the School, at whatever moment the subject enters into analysis, has to weigh this fact against its responsibility not to refuse [i.e. to accept] its consequences. It is a constant that psychoanalysis has effects on every practice of the subject committed to it. When that practice proceeds, however slightly, from psychoanalytic effects, he finds that he is engendering them at the very place at which he has to acknowledge them. How can one not see that supervision is a requirement from the beginning of these effects and, in the first instance, for the protection of anyone who comes to be in the position of a patient?”^[1]

In this way, Lacan set psychoanalysts on the road to a “desired supervision”, according to J.-A. Miller’s formula, for those who commit themselves to the analyst’s practice and to ongoing formation.

Members’ Titles

Members of the Schools who exercise psychoanalysis may do so:

– As members of the School, admitted as such under the responsibility of the Council and having declared that they exercise the function of the analyst. They are registered in the Directory with the mention AP (Practicing Analysts)

– As an ad hoc commission, called the Guarantee Commission, guarantees them as psychoanalysts who have proven themselves, conferring on them the title of AMS (Analysts Members of the School), title under which they are registered.

In addition, the title of AS (Analyst of the School) is awarded for three years to those who, at the end of the pass procedure, are judged by the responsible body – called Cartel of the Pass – to be capable of testifying, before the analytic community, to the crucial problems of psychoanalysis.

The most important reference text concerning the titles of members of the Schools is the “Proposition of 9 October 1967 on the Psychoanalyst of the School”. In it, Lacan posits:

“First, a principle: the psychoanalyst derives his authorisation only from himself. This principle is inscribed in the original texts of the School and is decisive for its position.

This does not exclude the possibility that the School provide a guarantee that an analyst has come out of its training.

The School may do this on its own initiative.

And the analyst may want this guarantee, which henceforth can only go further: to become responsible for the progress of the School, to become a psychoanalyst through its own experience.

Looking at it from this point of view, we can recognise that as from now these two forms are responded to by:

1. The A.M.S., or Analyst Member of the School, constituted simply by the fact that the School recognises him as a psychoanalyst who has proved himself.

This is what constitutes the guarantee emanating from the School, the first to be distinguished. The initiative for this falls upon the School, where one is admitted at the base only with a work project and without any consideration being given to provenance or to qualifications. A practising analyst is initially registered there in just the same way as one lists a doctor, an ethnologist, or anyone else.

 2. The A.S., or Analyst of the School, who is characterised as being among those who are able to testify to crucial problems, at the vital point they have come to, for analysis, especially in so far as they themselves are working on them or at least working towards resolving them. This place implies that one wants to occupy it: one can be in it only if one has requested it de facto if not formally.

That the School can guarantee the analyst’s relationship to the training that it provides is thus established. It can and hence must”.^[2]

^[1] Lacan, J. “Founding Act” (1964), in Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, New York: Norton, 1990, pp. 101 (translation modified).

^[2] Lacan, J., “Proposition of 9 October 1967 on the Psychoanalyst of the School”, Analysis 6, 1995, 1-13.