Sitegeist 12: 41–54 (2016)

Transference Anxiety and the Failure of Our Fathers

Paul Verhaeghe

I have always shrunk from the act of beginning, from the first word,
the first touch. The restlessness when the first sentence has to be formed,
and after the first, the second.

This is the opening sentence of an award-winning novel by the Flem-

ish writer Erwin Mortier. The English title is While the Gods Were Sleep-
ing, which I consider a weak translation of the original Godenslaap. The
Dutch title is much closer to the Wagnerian idea of Götterdämmerung,
the twilight of the Gods. I’ll come back to that later. When I read the
novel, the opening sentence confronted me with a familiar feeling. Fa-
miliar, but at the same time uncanny. How often are we confronted with
the act of beginning? Starting an analysis with someone new belongs to
this rare category, and what I experience on such an occasion is very well
rendered by that opening sentence. At the beginning of an analysis, I
always feel a particular form of anxiety.
I had this experience when I began my work as an analyst three
decades ago. I still have it today, although the underlying dynamics have
changed. Three decades ago, when I saw my first analysand, I was con-
vinced that I would fail, that it would only be a matter of time before I
was unmasked as a fraud, as someone who was not up to the job. The
anxiety that I feel today is different. It has to do with the structure that
is involved and that ascribes to the analyst the ever-impossible position
of the master. And of course, that is a position of fraud, of imposture
(‘impostor’) as Lacan calls it. In both cases, my anxiety is a transference
anxiety. In a classic Freudian reasoning, it would be considered a coun-
tertransferential reaction. In a Lacanian reasoning, it is just plain transfer-
ence, working both ways between the analyst and the analysand.
This brings me to my thesis: I consider anxiety a central affect in
transference. Freud described love and hate as the two transferential af-
fects, Lacan added a third one, the passion for wanting not to know. To
my knowledge, neither of them devoted much attention to the idea of

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transferential anxiety. This is remarkable, because as I will argue, anxiety

belongs to the very structure that explains the phenomenon of transfer-
ence.

Three Passions: Love, Hate and Wanting Not to Know

This structure is well known; it comes down to what Lacan in his Semi-
nar XI calls the becoming of the subject. The central element in this
structure is the lack, better known as Lacan’s invention, the object a. It
is positioned in-between the subject and the Other and causes the never
ending interaction between those two. The subject identifies with the
signifiers coming from the Other, with the aim of answering the desire of
the Other. This alienating answer will never be enough, and the net result
is separation. It is never enough firstly because the lack is such that there
is no final answer to it (it is a lack in the Real, ‘for real’), and secondly,
because an answer via a signifier is beside the point. Consequently, the
process starts all over again, with another attempt, and yet another, thus
continuing the back and forth movement between subject and Other, as
demonstrated in this drawing (Verhaeghe, 2006: 226).

As a structure, it can receive many different contents, depending on the

signifiers that go back and forth between a subject and his or her Oth-
ers. These different contents explain why, whilst presenting the same
structure, every subject and hence every analysis is different. In Lacanian
theory, the particular form and content this structure takes for each sub-

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ject constitutes the basic fantasy, in which both the subject and the Other
dance in a particular way around the ever lacking object a. Transference
then, is the actualisation in our everyday life of the particularities of this
basic fantasy, based on our own history.
Because of the processes involved, meaning identification and
separation, transference entails three passions. Love is the passion that
drives the subject towards identification with the desire of the Other.
Hate is the opposite, as it causes the separation from the Other. In both
instances, the subject does not want to know, which is the third passion,
either because it identifies far too easily with the signifiers coming from
the Other, or because it refuses them.
A closer study of these passions reveals that two of them can be
understood as a driving force, emanating from the two basic motives
that according to Freud govern our lives: Eros and Thanatos. Eros drives
us towards the union with the Other; Thanatos does the opposite. The
third passion, our not wanting to know, is all-together on another level.
I consider it a consequence of the two others: the more we identify with
signifiers coming from the other, the more knowledge we acquire, and
paradoxically enough, the better we can avoid our own truth.

Anxiety in Relation to the Desire of the Other

Anxiety then, is the affect that we may experience during these processes.
In neurosis, the most well known anxiety is that of not being able to
answer the desire of the Other, of not being good enough to fill in his
or her lack. The consequence is that the Other leaves us, the dreaded
Veut-il me perdre, does he want to get rid of me? (Lacan, 1994 [1964]):
214). For Lacan, this is central, both in the becoming of the subject and
accordingly in transference. Less well-known is the anxiety of being the
perfect fit to answer the lack of the Other. The dreaded consequence here
is that we disappear into the Other. The first version is typically hysteric;
the second one is typically obsessional-neurotic; both of them determine
the transference in a particular way.

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For a neurotic subject, the start of an analysis implies a confronta-

tion with the desire of the Other; the analysis is experienced as a test with
a predictable result. The prediction derives from the basic fantasy of the
subject, meaning his or her basic anxiety concerning his or her ability
to meet the desire of the Other. In the well-known case of hysteria, that
result is failure; whatever the hysterical subject brings to the analysis,
she will consider it not good enough. If the analysis fails to produce the
expected results, the hysterical subject (be it the analyst or the analysand)
takes the blame; it is yet another illustration of personal impotence. In
the less well-known case of obsessional neurosis, the predictable result is
failure as well, but this time for the other (again, be it the analyst or the
analysand). The obsessional subject produces exactly what is demanded
but does not involve herself, thus demonstrating the impossibility of sat-
isfaction.
For both the hysterical and the obsessional neurotic, the transfer-
ential affect at work is anxiety, either the hysterical anxiety of being not
good enough resulting in rejection and separation, or the obsessional-
neurotic anxiety of being far too good resulting in incorporation and
alienation.
My transferential anxiety of three decades ago is the same anxiety
as the one experienced by my neurotic patients today. The anxiety that I
experience today is different – at least that is what I think – and is caused
by the ultimate impossibility of analysis as such, because of the position
that is ascribed to me, as an analyst.
The first transferential anxiety is easy to explain, it is the bread and
butter of our clinical practice. The second one is a lot harder to under-
stand. Today, this is all the more the case, because something has changed
in the position that is ascribed to us. This change is not an isolated one,
on the contrary, it is taking place at the level of the society as such, and
it has to do with the contemporary Götterdämmerung, the twilight of the
Gods – to be more specific, the twilight of the fathers and the disappear-
ance of patriarchy. Before going into that, I will present a description of
the first transferential anxiety, the neurotic one. At the same time, this
will be an evaluation of Freudian analysis.

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Transference Anxiety and the Failure of Our Fathers

Neurotic Anxiety and Freudian Analysis

Classical Freudian analysis is experienced by the hysteric as a test. The

patient is the one who takes the exam; the analyst stands in the position
of the Other as a master figure. He—notice that the Freudian archetype
of the analyst is not only male, but necessarily a paternal male—he is the
one who will decide whether the patient gets a pass or a fail. He expects
the patient to give him what he demands: a totally free association that
will lead the analysis to unexplored fields of infantile memories about
repressed sexual experiences, maybe even some trauma, who knows? If
the patient does produce what is expected from her, as a reward she will
enter the promised land of sexual enjoyment and become free of feelings
of guilt and anxiety. Alas, right from the start, the patient does not feel up
to the job, and indeed, her anxiety proves to be right: the more she tries,
the more it becomes obvious that she does not succeed in producing the
expected free association. She does not manage to give what is demanded
from her, and because of her failure, she feels rejected and left alone. In
most cases of hysteria, the patient will blame herself: she was just not
good enough, she still craves to have what is lacking. In a smaller number
of cases, she will blame the analyst: he was just not good enough, he did
not give her what she desired, and she will start looking for another and
better one.
Freud interpreted this failure in terms of castration anxiety and
penis envy. In ‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’ he formulated a
pessimistic conclusion: even a long term analysis does not bring women
to the point where they give up their desire for a penis, nor does it allow
men to leave the phallic competition behind them (Freud, 1978 [1937c]:
250-252). The anxiety of not having what the other demands and de-
sires, the envy because somebody else might possess it, appears to be
insurmountable. It is obvious that Freud situates both affects in the rela-
tion of the analysand to the analyst. Nevertheless, he does not elaborate it
in terms of an unsolved transference, let alone recognize his own part in
it—he is the paternal master who is supposed to possess it, whatever that
‘it’ may be. What Freud describes in that paper is the classic deadlock of

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neurosis, meaning imaginary castration.

Lacan’s introduction of the imaginary order as structurally dif-
ferent from the symbolic order is one of the major advantages of his
theory over Freud’s. The imaginary is the phallic order of meaning and of
belief in meaning—if something is lacking, it is by pure coincidence or
because someone made a mistake. The symbolic is the order of ever mov-
ing signifiers around a central lack – this opens the possibility for creativ-
ity and change. Together with his neurotic patients, Freud believed in the
phallus as a much-desired biological given. Lacan degrades the phallus
to an imaginary object, the dreamt-of perfect object to answer the desire
of the Other­—but it never does. Consequently, every neurotic relation
between a subject and the Other remains endlessly focussed on the search
for this imaginary object, and every neurotic subject has their own par-
ticular way of taking their position in this relation—which explains the
repetitive character of transference.
The accompanying affect does not have to be anxiety, it can be
transformed into jealousy and envy (the other has it); it can be depres-
sion (I will never have it). There is even a neurotic subject who is very
sure that he has the phallus—this is the genital character as described by
Wilhelm Reich, a diagnostic category that is far more frequent than its
absence in Lacanian theory might suggest. In our clinical praxis, the hys-
terical anxiety of not having it and not being able to give it, is the most
frequent one, because it fits the classic analytical scene best. This is not
the case for Reich’s genital character, or for the obsessional subject. The
hysterical discourse puts someone in the position of the master, the one
who knows. She herself stands in the demanding position—she wants the
knowledge that will open the doors to the desired agalma; therefore, she
has to be the perfect analysand—but time and again, she fails.

A Necessary Failure

This is the deadlock of Freudian analysis, as he himself described in a

paper with a very apt title ‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’. In
Lacanian analysis, this failure is understood as a structural necessity. Even

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Transference Anxiety and the Failure of Our Fathers

more so: it is welcomed as the condition for change. If a Lacanian analysis

succeeds, it entails sublimation. A beautiful definition given by Lacan
runs as follows: Elle élève un objet à la dignité de la Chose, sublimation
elevates an object to the dignity of the Thing (Lacan, 1986 [1959-1960]:
133). No object will ever be satisfactory; we have to elevate it ourselves
to The Thing, to give it that dignity. In my reasoning, the aim and the
end of a Lacanian analysis is sublimation on a structural level. Elevating
the object to the dignity of the Thing means that we have to give up our
belief in the imaginary phallus without becoming a cynical person. In
this respect, the Lacanian terms are confusing, because one might still
have the impression that the symbolic phallus stands for something. This
is not the case, on the contrary. The symbolic phallus does not indicate
an empirical thing, nor does it indicate an absence; the symbolic phallus
indicates simply a necessary structural lack without which the symbolic
order could not function.
The deadlock in Freudian analysis may end in three different ways:
by way of solution the patient can take up one of the three positions pre-
sent in the formula of the basic fantasy. The hysterical subject can remain
stuck at her imaginary identity, blaming herself for her failure, anxious
for the next meeting with the next Other. Or she can identify with the
object a, i.e. with the lack as such, and become a typically postmodern
cynic: anything goes; nothing works. Or she can identify with the posi-
tion of the Other and become a master him or herself—the postfreud-
ians called this the identification with the analyst, that is, the Freudian
analyst.
The latter solution implies a consolidation of the belief in the im-
aginary phallus and hence a belief in final answers. The initial anxiety
is resolved because of this consolidation, and the guarantee lies in the
analyst and his knowledge. When Freud was consulted by his youngest
patient (Little Hans accompanied by his father), he told him that ‘Long
before he was born, he knew already that...’ (Freud, 1978 [1909b]: 42).
On the way home, the little boy asked his Father: ‘Does the professor talk
to God that he knows all these things beforehand?’ (Ibid.). After Freud’s
intervention, the child is considered to be cured; his anxiety has more or

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less disappeared. In the same period, a young hysteric came to see Freud.
She was sent by her father as well, albeit against her will. Eighteen-year-
old Dora is looking for answers concerning her sexuality and gender,
and her search is very obvious in her dreams. In one of them there is a
recurring sentence: Sie fragt wohl hundert mal—she asks a hundred times
(Freud, 1978 [1905e]: 97). Freud doesn’t bother about the questioning;
he produces answers and presents himself as a guarantee for the correct-
ness of those answers. Unlike little Hans, Dora does not accept his au-
thority, and leaves. At the end of the case study, Freud notes in triumph
that he has been appointed as a professor and that his nomination must
have meant a slap in the face for the young hysteric who refused to be-
lieve him and hence who refused to be cured.
Both case studies are exceptions, the typical Freudian analysis
ran in two stages. The first stage was usually successful. The interpreta-
tion and the deconstruction of the neurotic symptoms brought relief. As
a result, the questions underneath, to which those symptoms had given
an answer, became conscious. What does it mean to be a woman? How
can we think and live a sexual relationship? What does it mean to be a
father? During the second stage, the one that is obvious in the case study
of Little Hans and Dora, Freud presented himself as the one who knows.
He gave answers to those questions, based on the patriarchal society of
his time. That is: based on the social order that had caused those symp-
toms in the first place. Freud even elaborated an anthropological guaran-
tee for this social order. According to him, the paternal authority harks
back to an underlying historical reality. Once upon a time, there was a
primal horde, dominated by an almighty primal father who forbade his
sons access to the females. The sons revolted, and one day they killed the
father. After the murder, they fell prey to feelings of remorse and guilt.
The memory of the original deed and the feelings of guilt were stored in
the collective memory of mankind and provided the foundation of our
patriarchal moral system. (Freud, 1978 [1912-13]), and 1978 [1939a).
Freud took the transferential position of the reassuring father
who guaranteed that everything would turn out for the best. A number
of his patients were not convinced, meaning that their analysis became

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interminable. Even Freud himself was not convinced. His doubt appears
in a casual humorous remark about the three impossible professions, Ed-
ucating, Healing and Governing (Freud, 1925f). Each of them is impos-
sible if one expects an infallible father. Any educator, politician or analyst
who believes himself to be an infallible master, will do a disservice to his
pupils, his constituency or his patients.

Transference and the Not-All

In his first theories Lacan will endorse the Freudian father. In his later
theory, he will share Freud’s doubt and give it a structural explanation.
This shift in Lacan’s thinking is quite spectacular: from the almost reli-
gious paternal metaphor, with the Name-of-the-Father and the phallus as
the massive answers to the desire of the crocodile mother, to the ‘There
is no Other of the Other’. In this shift, the original reassuring function
of the Freudian father turns into its Lacanian opposite. Instead of guar-
anteeing that the primal father exists, it is the function of the father to
guarantee that something is lacking, that the big Other is not whole. This
opens a pathway for the subject to assume symbolic castration and to
leave the all-embracing determinism of the imaginary order behind him
(for an in-depth study, see Verhaeghe, 2009). It is the basis for human
creativity.
The very idea of symbolic castration is unthinkable in Freudian
theory. In Lacanian praxis, it is crucial and it presents a radical reversal in
matters of transference. Based upon his theory and his personality, Freud
used to take the guaranteeing paternal position towards his patients.
Based upon Lacan, the analyst—insofar as she or he wants to guarantee
something—will take the opposite stance: that is, there is no final clo-
sure, there is a lack and an opening in matters of desire and enjoyment,
and this opens a possibility for change.
‘Castration’ then is just another denomination for the human con-
dition. It is no longer castration, because that expression still refers to a
phallic omnipotence. The better term is ‘the not-all’. From that point
onwards—that is the recognition of the not-all—the subject needs to

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rethink his individual position towards authority. In the best of cases, the
mourning for the failed father may give birth to a subject that is able to
make a number of choices, knowing that there is no final answer.
The trouble for a Lacanian analyst is that every analysis starts
with a transference that puts him in the position of the subject who is
supposed to know. Meaning in the position of the Freudian father. This
position is impossible, and as long as this transference is at work, psy-
choanalysis is a sham—une escroquerie—with the analyst as an impostor,
as Lacan said in 1977, in Belgium of all places (Lacan, 1981). No wonder
that he considered shame to be the most appropriate affect for the posi-
tion of the father.
This brings me back to my introduction, as it explains my anxi-
ety today, when starting an analysis with someone new. Will I be able
to take this position without being the dupe of it? Or, without making
the patient the dupe of it? How can I help someone to traverse his basic
fantasy with the result that he can make his own choices? The analytical
discourse is the reverse of the discourse of the master, and the formula of
the analytical discourse shows that the analyst has to take the place of the
object a. But this is an impossible position as well and requires creativity
from us—there is no recipe.
The way transference is handled, determines the way an analysis
runs and ends. In Freudian analysis, more often than not it becomes
interminable. Let us not forget that analysis is about love and hate, just
as transference is. Analysis can end as every love story does: in disap-
pointment and hate; more often it ends in mere banality. In the best of
cases the end of an analysis mirrors the beautiful description by Lacan:
‘L’amour, c’est donner ce qu’on n’a pas’. Love is all about giving what one
doesn’t have. In my reading, this is yet another formula for sublimation.
We elevate the object to what it can never be; we give what we don’t have.
This kind of solution goes way beyond the paternal metaphor
and requires mourning for the patriarchal master. Such mourning used
to be the privilege of those who had a successful analysis – although
there are other ways to reach that solution as well. Today, because of the
changes in our society, this privilege might become less rare, because we

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Transference Anxiety and the Failure of Our Fathers

are living in a time where we are leaving patriarchy behind us. By way of
conclusion, I will give you my thoughts on that.

Götterdämmerung

It is my hypothesis that we are exchanging a patriarchal neurotic society

for a Big Brother network (Verhaeghe, 2015). Patriarchy, especially in
its Christian version, was based on the recognition of and the belief in
a superior being, compared to which mortals were always incomplete
and sinful. Hence the typical need for a top-down control, as exempli-
fied by Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. The patriarchal superego, based
on the identification with this gaze, is essentially a prohibiting one. The
controlling gaze is always accusing and neurosis and feelings of guilt are
paramount – hence the attempts to hide oneself from it.
Today, this is no longer the case. There is no superior authority
present in the contemporary Panopticon, only a powerful computer serv-
er, permitting everyone to watch and be watched, to see and to be seen.
In these times of Big Brother, we have to expose ourselves continuously
to every-one. The net result is a horizontal control, operating through
so-called social media. Instead of hiding, the postmodern subject exhibits
himself constantly to the controlling gaze of his peers. In an apt descrip-
tion by Zygmunt Bauman, we are living in a Do It Yourself Panopticon
(Bauman & Lyon, 2013).
During patriarchy, we identified with the do’s and don’ts of the
father, resulting in a voluntary obedience based on fear of punishment.
Today, we identify with the likes and don’t likes of Big Brother, resulting
in a voluntary obedience based on fear of exclusion. In the case of failure,
depression and shame are the result, having taken the place of neurosis
and guilt.
One advantage of the patriarchal system was already included in
Freud’s self-constructed myth: from time to time, we can kill the Fa-
ther and replace him by a supposedly better version. To kill Big Brother
is impossible, since he is virtual, anonymous, and hiding in the World
Wide Web. It is – as the contemporary saying goes—‘in the system’. The

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resulting superego is probably more severe and offers fewer possibilities

for escape.
All of this sounds rather negative. Conservatives deplore the loss
of traditional values; liberals deplore the loss of individual freedom. Most
intellectuals are very critical of this evolution, pointing to the way social
media are abused both by ordinary people (hate campaigns), by the gov-
ernment (social control) and the corporate world (targeted publicity).
The disappearance of traditional authority is deplored by many; this il-
lustrates how selective our memory is. Patriarchy, in its religious, politi-
cal and educational versions, proved to be a disaster, because half of the
population was excluded; many men did not live up to its precepts, and
abused their position for their own benefit.
Without being naïve, we should ask ourselves what is potentially
more interesting: a top-down authority, based on an imposed story; or
a horizontally operating authority, based on mutual social control. Both
the French-American philosopher Michel Serres (2015) and Alessandro
Baricco, the Italian writer (2014), are far more positive about the latter.
Serres refers explicitly to the hundred millions of dead caused by what he
designates ‘the libido of collectivity’. He considers the disappearance of
patriarchal society to be a good thing; he prefers what he calls ‘connected
collectives’, governed by shifting interests and mutual control. The com-
plicity of patriarchal times, presented as loyalty, gives way to transparency
and accountability. Baricco describes in a very convincing way the silent
revolution caused by the Internet. It brings far more democracy than
we might imagine: a horizontal one, instead of the traditional top-down
control. Both of them emphasize that there has never been a ‘democracy
of knowledge’—knowledge was for the privileged, looking down on the
common people. Today, knowledge is accessible to everyone.
From a psychoanalytic point of view, we should not forget that
both Freud and Lacan advocated a surpassing of the Oedipal complex
and its submission to the father. It took both of them a long time to come
to that conclusion. Especially for Freud, the move was never whole heart-
ed. Lacan laconically summarized his position in one of his last seminars:
‘In that respect, psychoanalysis—if it succeeds—proves that one can go

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beyond the Name-of-the-Father. One can go beyond on condition that

one has used it.’ (My translation. In the original: ‘C’est en cela que la
psychanalyse—de réussir—prouve que le Nom-du-Père, on peut aussi
bien s’en passer. On peut aussi bien s’en passer à condition de s’en servir.’
(Lacan, J., 1976: 136).

This is the challenge we are facing, and I think that we are living in the
middle of history being made. Patriarchy entered our world with the
agricultural revolution. It will leave the world with the digital revolution.
It is always impossible to make predictions, but a number of changes
are already clear. Our contemporary gender relations are totally differ-
ent from the male dominance of the recent past. The traditional nuclear
family is disappearing very fast. Generally speaking, the digital revolution
is replacing a vertical patriarchal society with a horizontal ‘big brother’
network. The question is: what form of authority will emerge from this
network? As Hannah Arendt wrote in 1954, this is ‘to be confronted
anew by the elementary problems of humans living-together’.

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