“Cursed Be Copernicus!”

notes on the formation of the analyst

Abstract

This article proposes a reflection on the formation of the analyst based on the effects of modernity on subjective experience, taking as its guiding thread the literary figure of Mattia Pascal, from Luigi Pirandello. The text examines the analyst’s position in the face of the failure of ontological guarantees that marks the contemporary subject. Drawing on central references from Jacques Lacan’s work, particularly concerning the status of the unconscious, repetition, contingency, and the impossible, it argues that analytic experience is not oriented toward the restitution of an ultimate meaning nor toward the reconstruction of a stable image of being. Rather, the clinical task involves sustaining the hiatus inherent to language and the effects of the real that emerge from it. In this context, the formation of the analyst is conceived less as the accumulation of knowledge and more as the elaboration of an ethical position capable of resisting the contemporary demand for sense, explanation, and closure. The article contends that extracting a possible from the impossible does not mean resolving the subject’s structural impasse, but rather sustaining the conditions under which something may occur without guarantee, anticipation, or the promise of completeness.