Mortel Transfert

+ The truth of a work of art lies in what it reveals of itself.
-- Even unconsciously.
+ The way of the detective or the way of the psychoanalyst.
-- Each might elicit a confession and arouse the expectation of punishment.
+ Is each story already a story of a crime?
-- Each story is a transgression.
+ The difference between the cop and the shrink is that to the former a crime is a fundamental given, an indisputable fact, whereas the latter thinks of it as a symptom, a superficial manifestation of something hidden.
-- And yet: the crime may take place only after the fact, in the wake of the detection of a crime.
+ Spoken like a true psychoanalyst.
-- A mere observer.
+ Even the margin is a side taken.
-- A work of art seems, at first approach, an object contained within its bounds: the margin, the frame, the first and the last cut. Setting aside the preparatory sketch, the rough draft, the work appears as an unambiguous object.
+ Like a crime, ready to submit to analysis.
-- Yes, like a crime.
+ Only, as does crime, the object slips between one's fingers as soon as one attempts to grasp it.
-- Or it is the object that takes hold of whoever tries to grasp it.
+ The detective proceeds by asking well-aimed questions. The psychoanalyst remains silent. . . .

This looks as though we were only aiming at the post of a secular father confessor. But there is a great difference, for what we want to hear from our patient is not only what he knows and conceals from other people; he is to tell us too what he does not know. . . He is to tell us not only what he can say intentionally and willingly, what will give him relief like a confession, but everything else as well that his self-observation yields him, everything that comes into his head, even if it is disagreeable for him to say it, even if it seems to him unimportant or actually nonsensical. If he can succeed after this injunction in putting his self-criticism out of action, he will present us with a mass of material - thoughts, ideas, recollections - which are already subject to the influence of the unconscious, which are often its direct derivatives, and which thus put us in a position to conjecture his repressed unconscious material and to extend, by the information we give him, his ego’s knowledge of his unconscious.

-- The object exerts a power of fascination, holds the beholder under its spell.
+ There is no mere observer. What takes place in the margin alters the scene. The confession, the tale told is conscious of the listener.
-- And sometimes of the eavesdropper.
+ A scene of crime. A primal scene.
-- The film thirsts for the unseen, for what lies outside the scene.
+ The dark space of the movie theater.

You are involved, doctor.

-- And if one falls asleep?
+ The film keeps playing.
-- And the dream? Merely feeds on external impulses it struggles against to remain asleep?

The patient is not satisfied with regarding the analyst in the light of reality as a helper and adviser who, moreover, is remunerated for the trouble he takes. . . On the contrary, the patient sees in him the return, the reincarnation, of some important figure out of his childhood or past, and consequently transfers on to him feelings and reactions which undoubtedly applied to this prototype. This fact of transference soon proves to be a factor of undreamt-of importance, on the one hand an instrument of irreplaceable value and on the other hand a source of serious dangers.

+ Freud fails to mention that transference is not a one-way street.
-- But he does, in passing, mention money: Money changing hands and standing, perhaps, for the return passage.
+ Transference as an economy in which, for the sake of the cure, risks must be taken.
-- "A factor of undreamt-of importance."
+ Freud always avoided speaking of his own dreams.
-- Perhaps that would have meant admitting the part of his own desire.

As a child, I often took refuge in sleep.

The analyst...
is nowhere.

Except in his chair.

+ At the risk of empty word games, the chair, la chaise, is also la chair, the body.
-- Speaking of transference!
+ Psychoanalytic comedy? The unconscious becomes a tomb. The tomb of a strangler in which is laid to rest the body of a strangled patient.
-- Or a desired body which becomes cumbersome evidence.
+ With all the puns converging on the all-purpose couch.
-- The analyst analyzed.
+ To death.
-- Enough of word games!

When will it end?

+ And what a about Helen?
-- ... For whom a thousand ships... Helen is the one who laughs.
+ Laughter disrupts analysis. It doesn't take it seriously.
-- Detectives, too, lack sense of humor.
+ She doesn't give a damn about the truth of the work of art. Same platitudes spun by art critics unable to get laid. Better to throw away the key.
-- "The key of the enigma."
+ Any interpretative key. Be it the detective's, where things fit, or the psychoanalyst's, where the chain of desire has been traced.
-- A happy ending then?
+ That would mean that a work can end.

RELATED LINKS:
Mortel transfert, the official website.
Entretien avec le réalisateur, dans Objectif Cinéma.