El chiste en psicoanálisis

el manejo del analista, la dirección del tratamiento y el fin del análisis

Abstract

This article examines the Freudian concept of the Witz (joke) as an illuminating paradigm for three central dimensions of psychoanalytic practice. Drawing on Freud’s work on jokes, and in dialogue with Lacan’s writings and seminars, three interconnected axes are developed. The first investigates how the joke’s technique, which requires a know-how that exceeds mere technical mastery, illuminates the notion of handling (Handhabung) involved in analytic practice and in the formation of the analyst. The second analyzes Lacan’s reading of a joke by Sydney Smith in Seminar 6, showing how the wit’s position offers a model for psychoanalytic interpretation and the direction of treatment. In the third axis,Heine’s familionäre joke, as read by Freud and commented upon by Vegh, serves as a paradigm for thinking the end of analysis: not the total detachment from the Other, but the invention of a new form of bond not subject to false guarantees. The central hypothesis is that the joke, as an eminently social formation of the unconscious, reveals something of the structure of desire and the bond that organizes and orients the psychoanalyst’s work toward its proper end.