Holding On Without Believing (2026)

Concerning a position that yields nothing, this address to respond to a floating question: what situation for the analyzed subject who has become an analyst? This is not about theorizing, nor commenting with the admitted dogmatic exactitude, but about evoking what is not addressed so often outside the circles of initiates in the psychoanalytic milieu. Historical texts address this dimension of experience, that of the passage to analyst; it is spoken of in discussions between colleagues, but seems barely accessible to younger colleagues (in age or experience) when it comes to addressing the state of being of the analyst (a being that is not, summoned to unbeing). Perhaps it is inscribed too high on the frontispieces of psychoanalytic houses to be read and debated? Untransmissible, it nevertheless perpetuates itself, passes through here or there, is experienced in shadow before becoming clearer along the way. Desirable, it can nourish a letter of wishes for this new year 2026.

Dear colleague,

I write to you from a place that is not a summit, nor an accomplishment. I write to you from the after, the after of subjective destitution (which concerns the analysand) of analysis pushed far enough, and especially from the unbeing (which concerns the analyst) of analysis taken to its term.

This is called, in the texts, the unbeing (Lacanian signifier) of the one who functions as analyst. The word is dry, but effective. Too dry, however, for what it covers. For unbeing is not only a logical operation (the pass). It is an experience (the effects of the pass). An experience that sometimes leaves a melancholic tonality. Not a noisy sadness. Not a complaint. Not a milestone to cross. Rather a silent disaffection for what, once, made one hold on. Unbeing is a fall: the fall of the analyst into the position of object a — the fallen par excellence, but also the irreducible to wishes.

After/with analysis, you now know that narratives are assemblages. That ideals hold through fiction. That even desire has no final destination. And this knowledge, no one will really congratulate you for it. It is not very transmissible. It doesn’t make a career. It is the analyst’s knowledge that only the analyst shares with themself: knowing how to fall, knowing how to hold on, knowing how to write, knowing how to know, knowing how to sexuate, knowing how to exist. Of these forms of knowledge, I say it is a temporary autonomous zone to defend.

You may have been led to understand — or you may have hoped yourself — that analysis, once traversed, would open onto a form of solidity. That afterward, you would be more tranquil. More sure. More clear. More… So many shreds of fantasies and beliefs in Psychoanalysis, in the Analyst, etc.

It’s not false, but it must be said differently by adding, without dramatizing, without heroism: something doesn’t return after analysis. It’s not serious. But it’s irreversible. What doesn’t return is not desire. It’s not the capacity to work, nor even to love. It’s belief — that discreet but tenacious belief — in the meaning that protects, in the knowledge that sustains, in the Other who responds, etc. After analysis, you continue to live, but without these crutches, without these prostheses. Everything has changed: the body, the voice, the gaze, the drive, the fantasy, the other, the Other, sexuality, etc.

So, perhaps you will then experience a form of strange mourning. A mourning without death. Without precise object. A mourning that doesn’t quite happen. You won’t always know how to say what was lost. Only that something has ceased to operate. This mourning doesn’t work itself through like the others. It doesn’t fully elaborate itself. It remains, sometimes, like a nameless melancholy. Don’t rush to silence it. It’s not necessarily a symptom. It is often the sign that you haven’t lied about what you’ve traversed.

However, this is where many become fatigued. Or harden. Or take refuge in dogmas, groups, certainties. At least three dead ends:

• It happens that this fall, this melancholy is transformed into certainties, into assured knowledge, into expert discourse. Outcomes are promised, reassurance is given, explanations are provided. The consulting room becomes a place for managing subjectivities in service of ambient ultra-liberalism, and puts itself at risk in the face of fascist threats.
• Sometimes, the loss of the Other is replaced by oneself as Other, the unbeing, the fall are filled in by authority, radical solitude compensated by adherence, the subjects received become disciples, the master enjoys them.
• Other times still, there exists a more insidious exit: making oneself a enjoyer of the other’s symptom. Listening to know, knowing to master, mastering to feel oneself exist. Misfortune becomes matter, speech a resource, suffering a capital. One administers, the fall is disguised.

I would like to tell you this, simply: if one day you feel traversed by a melancholy without complaint, if you continue to work without really believing, if you perhaps write, or transmit, not to convince but to hold on, then don’t conclude too quickly to a failure. It could be that you are simply in the right place, at the right distance. This melancholy-fall-unbeing-loss doesn’t prevent practicing. It’s not a symptom, but the sign of the radical structural modification that analysis taken to its term accomplishes. It prevents telling oneself stories. It doesn’t kill desire. It relieves it of its promises. It makes one free to no longer believe, to rely on the experience of the real of the unconscious and not only on its linguistic torments.

Holding the analytic position is not believing still. It’s not hoping for better. It’s not saving. It’s holding on, without guarantee. Holding on without believing. And continuing, despite everything.

VB.

References:

Piera Aulagnier, The Violence of Interpretation. From the Pictogram to the Statement, Paris, PUF.

Sigmund Freud, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, Paris, PUF.

Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, Paris, Seuil.

Jean Allouch, Erotics of Mourning, Paris, EPEL.

Donald Winnicott, Hate in the Counter-Transference, in Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis, Paris, Payot.

Sándor Ferenczi, Clinical Diary, Paris, Payot.