Love and Transference in the Time of Real
Adriane Barroso
Like any production of signifiers, transference love can be thought of as being embroidered in the borders of the fundamental core of the real [1], granting only limited access to that real. Consequently, the psychoanalyst’s invitation to an analysand to speak freely and provide meaning to what they say via transference is an invitation to be unavoidably duped [2] by language, “[...] to reach, as a final mark, a remainder that can only be circumscribed. Love remains rooted in the remainder as real. And, again, that is why love is painful.” [3]
Despite marking the limitations of the symbolic stance and increasing the orientation toward the real in his latest teaching, Lacan never ceased to emphasize the central importance of love—and transference as one of its modalities—within the discourse of psychoanalysis.[4] Love leads the speaking being from autoerotic satisfaction to recognition of the Other, allowing jouissance to consent to desire.
The analyst serves as a unique Other who does not respond exclusively to the demand for love directed toward meaning. Instead, they also embody the position of object a, cause of desire, without attempting to suture it, thus acting as a knot between symbolic and real. The connection between meaning and jouissance fostered in the psychoanalytic experience will ultimately seek to disentangle the two—a process that Miller describes as relinquishing the truth after having fallen in love with it via transference.[5] The politics of desire and jouissance, as well as those of symptom and sinthome, are not merely oppositional; rather, the latter demonstrates the limitations of the former while simultaneously inaugurating them après-coup. Within this perspective, the transferential unconscious is rather ethical than ontic. The question is not whether it exists but what act could retrospectively give rise to it.[6]
This intrinsic interrelation explains why Lacan never completely awakened psychoanalysis from the dream—and the constraints—of meaning and language.[7] As Gorostiza concludes[8], the perspective of a clinical practice without the preliminary installation of the subject supposed of knowledge would mean a short circuit, restraining the speaking being to their body and the jouissance that derives from it.
Even when the interpretation of symptoms is no longer the ultimate goal of an analysis, it continues to function as a foundational entry point, a potential pathway to the psychoanalytic experience of the real (though not exclusively, as we learn from psychosis, for example). Loving the unconscious is a trail that may lead the subject to ultimately confront the pain stemming from the limitations of language and love in their role of bordering, accessing, and addressing the real.
References
[1] Miller, J.-A., L’orientation lacanienne. Pièces détachées, lesson 2. Teaching delivered under the auspices of the Department of Psychoanalysis, University of Paris 8, 2005, unpublished.
[2] Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXI: Les Non-Dupes Errent [1973-74], opening lesson, unpublished. Recording of some lessons available on Radio Lacan https://www.radiolacan.com/en/topic/215/2
[3] Loose, R., “Love and Discourses,” Orientation text: XXIII NLS Congress, 2025. Available at https://www.nlscongress2025.amp-nls.org/blogposts/riklooseengorientation.
[4]Ibid.
[5] Miller, J.-A., op.cit.
[6] Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis [1964], ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan, New York/London: Norton, 1977, pp.35-36.
[7] Miller. J.-A., op.cit.
[8] Gorostiza, L., “A nobreza do sintoma,” Latusa Digital, no. 21, March 2006. Available online.