How does psychoanalysis proceed? With what results? We welcome those who ask for an analysis without prejudice, without presuppositions. Someone seeks an analysis when they have stumbled on their path. There is a stone in the road, a bone encountered along the way. A psychoanalyst’s invitation is to speak. We listen anticipating—perhaps the only anticipation we can allow ourselves—that this speech revolves around this bone in a spiral, squeezing it closer and closer, to the point of sculpting it. Circumscribing, tightening, shaping the turn; this metaphor is woven into Lacan’s texts. From allegory to logic: an analysis proceeds through an operation-reduction towards the real. On the analytical path, a stone of speech emerges that is related to a mode of jouissance. Lacan named it after the Greek word agalma. This stone might very well be precious. Jacques-Alain Miller is a psychoanalyst practicing in Paris, France. He is member of the École de la Cause freudienne and founder of the World Association of Psychoanalysis. Analysis Laid Bare is a title from the World Association of Psychoanalysis Libretto Series. Text first published in French as L'Os d'une cure, Navarin éditeur, Paris 6e, 2019. Translated into English for this edition by Alasdair Duncan.
