“The subject in analysis sheds their chains. And one has nothing left to lose but one’s chains”
“At certain times in my life, when – according to my own subjective experience – I had certain experiences that drove me to do or not to do certain things, not only did I suffer, but some of those around me were also affected in a certain way.”
Vanessa, our interviewee, came to psychoanalysis through a friend who, at the time, invited her to a study group. She attended this group for a while. It was after she had stopped attending that group that, “due to circumstances relating to her subjective experience, she needed a helping hand”.
Vanessa tells us that she “came to psychoanalysis again with some scepticism, because although she had been able to see something in the study groups, she had no further knowledge of the subject”. Nonetheless, this previous exposure had helped her to make a decision.
A decision related to “an unsolicited recommendation, in which one of those know-it-alls suggested I might be suffering from a chemical imbalance in my brain”. One thing was certain for Vanessa: “that reckless recommendation to treat a supposed chemical imbalance in my brain with medication was not the answer for me”.
She began her journey and, she tells us, gradually started to find ways to avoid keep on going. “For example, I found it difficult to pay for my psychoanalytic sessions, even though I was using the same resources for other things that would contribute nothing to my life. At the very least, they wouldn’t provide a way out, an exit.”
A way out for which, Vanessa tells us, the first step was to become independent. “It was a step against the law. Against family law, as they didn’t support my independence and even placed a burden of guilt on my shoulders for having made this decision. With words like ‘I’m giving you a week to be back’”.
There, right there, “what she had worked on in her analysis was what gave her the strength to follow her desire”. In other words, following the psychoanalyst José María Álvarez, regarding that indisputable clinical fact—in which “it is common to observe the tendency of the guilty subject to remain passive, preferring mortification to reparation, even turning the feeling of guilt against themselves in the form of self-punishment” (1)—Vanessa chose to take action and break free from that tendency. To act.
She tells us, “Naturally, it hasn’t been easy, as my own subjectivity later led me to find other ways of abandoning my process. For example, trying to flee from what was emerging in my own analysis. Because, indeed, if you want change, you have to take action in the face of what emerges.”
Today, committed to her process, Vanessa says with a twinkle in her eyes, “that taking action after gaining insight during her analysis is perhaps the best thing that could have happened to her in her life. In that quest for her freedom”.
The interviewee has started a family and is about to welcome her son. “Instead of continuing to seek the approval of others, I decided I had to take a chance on my own desires, on life. Only then do wonderful things begin to happen, ranging from family life to my professional life.”
To conclude, following Lacan, one could say that unlike the subject who “is always busy packing their bags (…) for a trip he will never take” (2), Vanessa managed, through her analysis, to set out on the path of her desire—thanks, of course, to action. Or as Miller puts it, she broke free, for “the subject in analysis sheds their chains. And one has nothing left to lose but one’s chains” (3).
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(1). ÁLVAREZ, J.: Estudios sobre la psicosis (5th ed.), Barcelona, Xoroi Edicions, 2006. Ab Oktober 2026 auch auf Deutsch erhältlich unter dem Titel: Studien zur Psychose unter https://artemisaverlag.com/.
(2). LACAN, J.: Desire and its interpretation. The seminar of Jacques Lacan / Book VI. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, Cambridge, Polity, 2019.
(3). MILLER, J.-A.: Los divinos detalles, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2010.
