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CLINICAL TOPOLOGY OF AFFECT: SPACE IN PSYCHOANALYSIS FROM

GLIMPSE IN FREUD

Eliane Bryon1

Abstract: This study examines the forms of spatiality present in Freud’s work and proposes that

affect is inscribed from the outset through spatial operations, according to the idea that affect speaks

before words emerge. This reading highlights the role of space, scene, and subjective position in

the prerepresentational inscription of affect, treating space as a clinical operator that organizes

psychic conﬂ ict and distributes positions. Drawing on the Project for Scientiﬁ c Psychology (1985),

the metapsychological papers (1915), The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), and Freud’s paradigmatic

clinical cases, the study argues that the unconscious functions as a topological ﬁ eld of affective

operations through which affect must circulate. The cases of Dora, Little Hans, the Rat Man, and the

Wolf Man reveal that each conﬂ ict is structured by speciﬁ c spatial conﬁ gurations that shape subjective

experience. Rather the offering a ﬁ nished theory, this thesis opens a ﬁ eld of inquiry consistent with a

Freudian perspective. It advances the hypothesis of a Clinical Topology of Affect as a framework for

integrating space and affect in the understanding of psychic suffering.

Keywords: Psychoanalytic Theory; Affect; Spatiality; Clinical Topology; Freud

1 Specialist in Psychoanalysis from the School of Psychoanalysis of São Paulo

INTRODUCTION

Based on glimpses during the reading of Freud’s work, it is formulated that space in the

psychoanalytic clinic is not a mere descriptive resource and is not a scenario, but a structuring

element that emerges to explain when language has not yet arrived. This glimpse of spatiality in

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Freud considers space as a clinical operator, as a device that organizes psychic conﬂ ict and distributes

subjective positions.

At various times, this reading allowed us to perceive a spatiality that permeates his conception

of the unconscious and his clinical practice. Since the Project for a Scientiﬁ c Psychology (1895), Freud

describes the psyche as a network of pathways, barriers, paths that offer greater or lesser resistance

to the passage of excitement, suggesting that affect is inscribed as a spatialized movement before it is

represented (FREUD, 1895).

With the paradigmatic clinical cases, this spatiality becomes even more evident. In Dora,

Freud observes that the young woman ﬁ nds herself in an untenable position between two families,

indicating that her subjective position is also a spatial position in the ﬁ eld of the desire for the Other

(FREUD, 1905). In Little Hans, fear is distributed in streets, routes, locations and forbidden zones,

composing a true affective cartography (FREUD, 1909). In the Rat Man, guilt circulates in compulsive

circuits that always return to the same points (FREUD, 1909). With the Wolf Man, the trauma is ﬁ xed

in a single, external scene, viewed from a window, but which paralyzes the subject under the gaze of

the wolves (FREUD, 1918).

Thus, this TCC follows an approach according to which space is lived, experienced, where

each suffering is structured with a singular, unique spatial conﬁ guration, between positions and

scenes.

Thus, from this glimpse of Freud’s work, this research is carried out directly articulating

space and affect in Freud, understanding that this spatiality works as a clinical operator that organizes

subjective positions and unconscious scenes. The proposal is to cover, introductorily, a possible ﬁ eld

that emerges as an attempt to collect the spatiality dispersed in Freud’s work, organizing it with a twist

in the clinical reading of the texts.

To this end, this TCC, placed as a preliminary, works on the presence of spatiality in Freudian

thought; develops the concept of space as a clinical operator; analyzes the main clinical cases as spatial

conﬁ gurations of affect; and, ﬁ nally, by way of conclusion, it presents possible consequences of this

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reading, understanding the clinic as a possible reading of this organization of spatial movements, as

an expression of the unconscious and its function in the constitution of the subject.

JUSTIFICATION

The choice to investigate the spatial dimension in Freud’s work is justiﬁ ed by the perception

of the recurrence of topological ﬁ gurations in his texts and clinical cases. Although Freud did not

develop a formal concept of space, or even psychic space, his writing is crossed by images, which

function as operators to describe the way in which affect is inscribed and displaces in the unconscious

(FREUD, 1900; 1915a).

Freud’s paradigmatic clinical cases, on the other hand, show that psychic conﬂ ict is organized

into subjective positions and condensed scenes, which are not only presented as an illustration of

suffering, but also structure it. The study of these cases from the perspective of spatiality allows

us to evidence how affect is distributed, ﬁ xed, displaced, and defended through speciﬁ c spatial

conﬁ gurations. This reading opens up a ﬁ eld of investigation that can illuminate fundamental aspects

of Freud’s clinic while offering a way to understand the unconscious, when it is not yet circumscribed

to the representational axis.

On the other hand, even if the hypothesis presented here aims to demonstrate how affect is

distinguished before the word – ﬁ nding support in the texts O Projeto, 1895; The Interpretation of

Dreams, 1900; some of the texts of metapsychology, 1915; and Freud’s paradigmatic cases – Dora,

1905; Hans, 1909; Man of Rats, 1909, and Man of Wolves, 1918 –, with the ﬁ rst Freudian topic (Ics,

Pcs, Cs), it is known that the second topic (Id, Ego, Superego) can be extremely fruitful, as a sequel

to a future work.

Thus, the theme of this TCC is justiﬁ ed as a work proposal capable of articulating elements

already present in Freud’s work, but still little thematized. This is an introductory study that seeks to

explore a possible and coherent ﬁ eld, without the intention of theoretical exhaustion, but as a map of

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intention that can contribute to the understanding of the spatiality of the unconscious and its function

in the clinic, thus opening more studies in this ﬁ eld.

WORKING HYPOTHESIS

The course of this TCC follows its own logic, so that the hypothesis that guides this

study is based on the glimpse that space, in Freud, operates clinically. In the technical texts, in the

metapsychological writings studied and in the clinical cases mentioned here, Freud describes the

psyche through spatial images that function as modes of operation of the unconscious (FREUD, 1985;

1915a).

In this path, the questions that arise are:

- How does space operate clinically in Freud’s work?

- Can space be understood as an active form of expression of the organization of psychic

conﬂ ict in the clinic?

Based on these questions, this study proposes the hypothesis of a Clinical Topology of

Affect, understood as a mode of reading that articulates three clinical operators: space, scene and

position. This hypothesis, raised here, intends to open a possible ﬁ eld of investigation coherent with

the Freudian clinic and with the logic of the unconscious, in order to allow the understanding of space

in the clinic, that is, as a function that organizes affect before the word and structures the subjective

experience, hence as a clinical operator.

Thus, the hypothesis presented here proposes to collect a dimension already present in

Freud’s work: the spatiality of the unconscious with the implication of affect, with scene and position

as clinical operators. In this TCC: topology – because affect in Freud is inscribed as movement, edge,

deviation, circuit, fold, ﬂ ow; clinical – because this spatiality is not only theoretical, it operates in

cases by organizing positions, scenes, symptoms; affect – because what is being mapped is not the

unconscious in general, but the ﬁ rst form of inscription of the affect, before the representation.

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Thus, spatiality can come to offer a way of thinking about the clinic based on the operations

that organize the space before representation, allowing us to understand the subject as an effect of an

affective inscription that occurs in the articulation between space, scene and position. The topology

of affect, therefore, does not describe a map, but a mode of functioning, indicating that the subject

emerges from the way in which affect transits and is inscribed in the lived space, producing positions

that precede the word.

OBJECTIVES

General Objective

This ﬁ nal paper aims to question the presence and function of spatiality in Freud’s work,

proposing the hypothesis of a Clinical Topology of Affect as a way of reading, anchored in paradigmatic

clinical cases and in part of Freudian metapsychology (1915), starting from some aspects developed in

the Project, 1895, and in the Interpretation of dreams, 1900.

Speciﬁ c Objective

The speciﬁ c objectives are:

work on the hypothesis of the Clinical Topology of Affect as a possible ﬁ eld of investigation

on the spatiality of affect.

To investigate how affect is spatially inscribed before representation.

To understand the clinical cases of Dora, Little Hans, Mouse Man and Wolf Man from the

conﬁ gurations of positions and scenes brought to the analysis sessions described by Freud.

To understand in order to propose space as a clinical operator, considering the presence and

function of spatiality, present in Freud’s work, as an affective inscription for the clinic.

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SPATIALITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN FREUD

Although the density and scope of the Freudian works listed here are highlighted, the study

carried out is crossed by the insistent presence of spatial images that permeate each text, in which they

approach and structure their conception of the unconscious, linking them to space and, in this, scenes

and positions. This idea is sustained from clinical cases by providing a space that summons speech,

in a space of free association, with suspension of judgment, where space operates as displacements

and condensations in simple narratives.

It is understood that space is not seen as a physical, non-geographical, non-geometric, non-

architectural, non-anatomical place, much less as a setting, but as a topological, symbolic and clinical

one – a space that unfolds, folds, twists, crosses, with edges, where inside and outside are confused

and appear when the word does not yet arrive.

The topological matrix and the spatial inscription of affect

The Project, 1895, topological matrix that reveals itself

From his ﬁ rst writings, Freud describes psychic functioning through spatial elements that

ﬂ ow, like a “hydraulic ﬂ ow”, create, circumvent barriers and transfer intensities from one place to

another or bring together distinct elements at the same point, as he addresses in the Project for a

Scientiﬁ c Psychology, 1895.

With this text, Freud begins to construct a topology of the psychic apparatus that deals

with quantities and excitation in which affect would be precisely the subjective expression of this

quantity. In this one, space is driven, symbolic, not anatomical and much less geographical or merely

descriptive, but rather a ﬁ eld of forces where excitation (affect) circulates spatially.

With the Project, 1895, affect is thought of as a quantity that moves spatially, while drawing

the psychic apparatus as:

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a network of systems, each with its speciﬁ c functions that are the space of perception (receives

external stimuli); the space of memory (retains mnemic traces); and the space of consciousness. These

systems would be layers of energetic inscription, where space is deﬁ ned by the circulation of quantity,

excitement and facilitation. Therefore, the psychic space would be the place of excitement and not

of consciousness, allowing us to think of affect as a spatial movement before any representational

elaboration.

And as a space of inscription and resistance, in which Freud proposes that memory is formed

by the inscription of traces, not by memories.

Thus, in general, Freud does not deal with space, but describes the psyche as passageways,

contact barriers, discharges, detours, accumulations, facilitation. At this moment, it is as if Freud

authorized, from a glimpse during the reading of the Project, 1895, a cartography of the psyche and

affect, therefore, as the quantity that circulates, encounters obstacles, returns and diverts.

The Dreams, 1900, walking in the topological matrix

Freud analyzes dreams as the “royal way” that leads to the knowledge of the unconscious in

psychic life. His analysis, with The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900, reveals that the dream is a psychic

act, which works with the thing-representations, pre-verbal and spatial, operating through images,

scenes and displacement of affect before the word, while the affect displaces, condenses, ﬁ xes and

returns. In chapter VI of the aforementioned text, from 1900, Freud shows that the unconscious works

through four fundamental operations, which are:

Condensation – when the latent contents are taking up less space, as a function of several

representations in a single image. So that the affect accumulates at one point in the dream scene.

Displacement – considered as an undeniable factor by Freud, is when the affect is detached

from one representation and linked to another – attention is displaced, without hesitation, from what

is really intended for an association, the one that escapes the censorship imposed by resistance. Thus,

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affection does not depend on the word, it moves as a force, tracing paths.

Figuration – thought is transformed into an image, showing that the unconscious works with

representation-thing, as a transformation of ideas on stage – conﬁ rming the pre-representational and

spatial inscription.

Secondary elaboration – it is when the conscious seeks to give narrative coherence to the

dream, that is, the language arrives later, secondarily not in importance, but trying to organize in

some way what has already been affectively inscribed, organizing scenes and positions.

Freud, therefore, describes the psychic apparatus as a spatial ﬁ eld, with systems that

communicate through pathways, barriers and returns. On the other hand, he deﬁ nes the dream as

the fulﬁ llment of a wish, in a spatial operation with pre-representational movement, since it moves,

condenses, ﬁ xes itself in points and returns, all this before the word occurs.

The dream, then, organizes positions, places, paths. While the subject emerges in this scene,

the dream reveals that the unconscious desire is structured by daytime remains, infantile scenes,

fantasies and repressed conﬂ icts, and the affection that circulates. With this study, Freud says that

the subject is born from the way affect is inscribed, a space it occupies in the psychic apparatus, thus

opening up to a topology of affect called here.

Metapsychology as psychic cartography

Psychic cartography is thought of here from a perception of one’s own according to the idea

already present in Freud that the psyche is not a collection of contents, but a space in movement, a

composite territory in which affect transits, moves along paths (danger zones, ﬁ xation points and

repetitive circuits). Thus, although Freud does not use the term ‘cartography’, he presents the psyche

as a map from the beginning, in 1895, with the Project, previously discussed.

In metapsychological texts1, Freud deepens this spatiality by organizing the psychic apparatus

1 Christian Dunker, Speaking of It, 105, YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?-

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into systems: Ucs, Unconscious; Pcs, Preconscious; Cs, Conscious, with borders, regions, layers and

surfaces, also showing that affect circulates as a spatial force, in a circuit.

For this TCC, the following were also selected: Chapter VII, of the Interpretation of Dreams,

1900, which works on the idea of the ﬁ rst topic – Ics, Pcs, Cs –, showing how the psychic apparatus is

spatial with a primary organization, involving displacement and condensation; and The Unconscious,

1915a – in which Freud describes the unconscious as a system (Ucs) with its own contents and speciﬁ c

laws, separated from the preconscious (Pcs) by a barrier that prevents direct access to consciousness

(Cs). In chapter VII, still of the Interpretation of Dreams, 1900, Freud works on the idea developed

with the ﬁ rst topic, the idea of regression, desire and psychic apparatus. It shows how the psychic

apparatus is spatial and affect is inscribed in paths, while the subject emerges from this primary

organization.

In this chapter, Freud presents the psychic apparatus as a topology, described as a space with

separate systems – Ucs, Pcs, Cs – approaching them with the ﬁ rst topic, in which the passage from one

system to another occurs through barriers and pathways. He adds regression (FREUD, 1915c), when

thought returns to more primitive forms of inscription, in a return to the pre-representational level,

one could say. Desire is placed as the engine of the dream and that the dream fulﬁ lls an unconscious

desire, according to an economic force. And the scene is when the dream organizes positions, places,

distances, so that the subject appears in a subjective position.

In this ﬁ rst Freudian time, the subject appears as an effect of an affective position inscribed

in the body and in the situation lived, before the word. Freud speaks of the constitution of the subject

v=A2nYKHHB1qU&t=156s ), in: What is Freudian Metapsychology? He lists as fundamental texts

of Freudian metapsychology: Project for a Scienti c Psychology, 1895, because it is considered as the

basis from which metapsychology arises, because it introduces the studies of the psychic apparatus as

a system; chapter VII of the Interpretation of Dreams, 1900;  e Drives and  eir Destinies, 1915; O

Recalcamento, 1915;  e Unconscious, 1915; Metapsychological Complement to the  eory of Dre-

ams, 1915; Mourning and Melancholy, 1915 and Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920, which introdu-

ces the death drive and the revision of Freudian metapsychology. Dunker draws attention to the fact

that this classi cation is of a more classical order – insofar as it is mainly limited to the  rst Freudian

topic (Ucs, Pcs, Cs) – and that, for others, it may come to present a di erent order.

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as primary inscriptions, where the economy of affection, experience of pleasure, displeasure and

the way in which these forces are distributed in the psychic apparatus operates. Thus, the subject,

in Freud, as an effect of an affective position, is prior to the word, prior to symbolization, prior to

entering the ﬁ eld of the Other.

And so, Freud describes the unconscious, at this moment, as a ﬁ eld with its own laws:

timelessness, absence of opposite, mobility of affect – as laws of movement, not of signiﬁ cation –

which he elaborates with the aforementioned text The Unconscious, 1915a.

With The Unconscious, 1915a, we obtain the description of the psychic apparatus as spatial

movements, psychic movements in which the affect transits, is ﬁ xed, erupts on stage, where it is

repeated and positions it occupies. Repression, in turn, is deﬁ ned as a distancing that keeps certain

representations “at a distance”, preventing them from crossing the boundary between systems. These

representations can be repressed, but affect cannot – the ‘quota’ of affect, which makes it escape, move,

convert, is understood as a demonstration that affect operates before the representational inscription.

It is, therefore, a displacement of something that has undergone censorship, out of a region, keeping it

excluded from the ﬁ eld of conscious space.

Thus, we have the unconscious with its functioning based on three aspects: dynamic,

topological and economic. And these aspects are understood as:

Dynamic aspect – Freud describes it as a force that seeks alternative paths. It treats it as a

ﬁ eld of forces and conﬂ icts, constituted by repressed representations, which operate as a force that

pushes certain representations out of the conscious ﬁ eld, while the return of the repressed shows

that the unconscious insists, presses, persists. In other words, it follows an affective dynamic, where

affection is this force that insists.

“Mental processes differ due to their dynamic content” (FREUD, 1915a,

p.199), so that “affect always assumes the nature of anxiety, for which all

repressed affects are exchanged”. “Often, however, the instinctual impulse

has to wait until it ﬁ nds a substitute idea in the Cs system.” “(...) in repression

there is a rupture between the affect and the idea to which it belongs, and that

each of them goes through isolated vicissitudes” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 206).

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Topological aspect – Freud presents it as a movement that traces paths, ﬁ xation points and

returns, reafﬁ rming the ﬁ rst topic – Ics, Pcs, Cs. He deepens that the unconscious is a system with its

own laws, separated by barriers and censorships. In this aspect, the unconscious is a psychic place,

with content inaccessible to consciousness, while censorship functions as a boundary between systems

and the passage between these systems requires facilitation, connection to the word, to the extent that

it organizes the psychic apparatus as places. In these, each one has its own modes of operation.

“In this psychic topography, at the moment, it has nothing to do with ana-

tomy; it refers not to anatomical locality, but to regions of the mental mecha-

nism, wherever they are located in the body” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 201). Thus,

“on a superﬁ cial consideration this would seem to reveal that conscious and

unconscious ideas constitute distinct, topographically separated registers”

(FREUD, 1915a, p. 202).

Economic aspect – Freud emphasizes an amount of affect that makes it circulate, starting

to distinguish representation from share of affect. The representation can be repressed, but the affect

cannot, and it can be unloaded or made a connection depending on the quantity – referring to the

amount of affect in circulation. Freud thinks of affect as quantity, as energy that moves, condenses,

accumulates, discharges. This aspect of the functioning of the unconscious provides the support that

the subject is born in the inscription of affect - affect would therefore be pre-representational, since it

operates before the word.

“This is reinforced by taking the vicissitudes of quantities of excitation to the

consequences and arriving at least at a relative estimate of their magnitude”

(FREUD, 1915a, p. 208). To which he goes on to say that “(...) another pro-

cess that, in the ﬁ rst case, maintains repression (i.e., the case of subsequent

pressure) and, in the second (i.e., that of the ﬁ rst repression) ensures its esta-

blishment and continuity” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 208).

Freud, in this study, also presents characteristics of the unconscious system (ICS), according

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to the functioning according to the three aspects, mentioned above, as follows:

- The nucleus of the Ucs “consists of impulses charged with desires” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 213).

- “There is no place in this system for denial, doubt or any degree of uncertainty: all this is

only introduced by the work of censorship between the Ucs and the Pcs. Negation is a substitute in a

higher degree for repression” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 213).

- “The cathexis intensities (in the Ucs) are much more mobile. By the process of displacement,

one idea can yield to another its entire share of cathexis; by the process of condensation it can

appropriate the entire cathexis of various ideas” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 213).

- “The processes of the Ics system are timeless; that is, they are not ordered temporarily, they

do not change with the passage of time; has absolutely no reference to time” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 214).

- The Ics processes “pay little attention to reality. They are subject to the pleasure principle;

its destiny depends only on the degree and its strength and on the fulﬁ llment of the demands of the

pleasure-displeasure regulation” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 214).

- “Unconscious processes become knowable by us under the conditions of dream and

neurosis.” “By themselves they are not perceived; in reality, they are even incapable of conducting

their existence” (FREUD, 1915a, p. 215).

Thus, we ﬁ nd a topological movement (where each thing is in the mind), a passage that

depends on open paths, possible paths; economic process (how psychic energy circulates), affect

needs to ﬁ nd a way to circulate, and a dynamic process (what happens when conﬂ ict arises), with

forces that push and forces that stop.

A topology of psychic functioning

After theorizing the spatialization of the unconscious (FREUD, 1915a), seen as a territory

structured in three elements (Ics, Pcs, Cs), Freud opens space to think of affect as movement. This

space would be composed in which affect transits between these three elements, pulsates, moves

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along paths (encounters barriers, deviates, returns), ﬁ xes or connects (FREUD, 1915b). Freud thus

expands the idea, initially developed in the Project (1985), passing through the Unconscious (1915a),

in which the ﬁ rst topic describes the places in the psychic apparatus, arriving at The Institutes and

Their Vicissitudes, in 1915b (better known as The Drives and Their Destinies, although it is translated

by the Imago edition, with the title used here, as a reference), in which this spatiality gains movement

when describing the paths.

In this study, Freud deﬁ nes the drive as a borderline concept between the somatic and the

psychic, a constant force that has its own topology, which starts from the body and requires psychic

work in the search for discharge and connection. He adds that: “The drive can never become an object

of consciousness – only the idea that represents the drive can. Even in the unconscious (...)” (FREUD,

1915b, p.130). He also explains that “the representative in question persists unchanged and the drive

remains linked to him” (FREUD, 1915c, p.171), this as a result of repression (repression) which, in

essence, “consists simply in moving a certain thing away from the conscious, keeping it at a distance”

(FREUD, 1915c, p.170), but still subject to the destinies of the drive.

In this context, the drive is presented with four elements, which are:

source – bodily zone, somatic process that occurs in an organ, or part of the body, whose

stimulus is represented in mental life by a drive;

purpose (goal) – satisfaction, such as tension reduction;

pressure – intensity, work requirement, engine, force point, and

object – that which allows the goal to be achieved, marking this displacement.

While the destinies of the drive, pointed out by Freud, are operations, where each one of

them is a topological transformation.

In the 1915b text, in The Drives and Their Destinies, the title of the most commonly known

study, Freud describes four possible destinies for the drive, which can be understood as operations

that reorganize the psychic space, they are:

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reverse reversal – introduces a polarity in the drive space, establishing pairs such as activity/

passivity or love/hate, that is, an inversion of the goal occurs, when the goal changes from one pole

to another (e.g., going from aggression to being attacked). This operation creates a line of opposition

that organizes the conﬂ ict and deﬁ nes possible positions for the subject.

Return to one’s own self, or against one’s own person – produces a change in the direction

of the drive’s path, what was directed to the object turns to the subject, creating an internal fold that

alters the distribution of affection and inaugurates new forms of suffering and defense. Movement

does not disappear, it redirects itself, creating a topology of interiorization.

Repression – it establishes a border, the representation is barred, and in doing so it creates

zones of exclusion and return, delimiting regions of the internal space that remain active, although

inaccessible to consciousness, that structure the unconscious scene – the affect moves, transforms or

returns as a symptom.

Sublimation – opens alternative paths, diverting the sexual goal to socially and culturally

valued ends, the drive energy ﬁ nds another ﬁ eld of inscription, expanding the space and allowing new

forms of circulation of affection.

Freud works the drive from different angles, the physiological, as a reﬂ ex, a reaction to an

action from outside; and another that originates in the body going to the psychic (inner to outer world),

as discharge. Thus, he arrives at the essential nature of drives, considering their main characteristics

– “their origin in sources of stimulation within the organism and their appearance as a constant force”

(FREUD, 1915b, p.139). From this, he deduces the principle of ﬁ nality, understood as the function of

the nervous system to get rid of the stimuli that reach it – reducing them to the lowest possible level

– concluding that the drives constitute the true driving forces that drive the nervous system, with its

unlimited capacity. Thus, the drive is understood as being spatial in which the affect circulates, ﬁ nds a

scene – where the drive is inscribed, organizes position, where the subject is affected, and is inscribed

in space, which allows or prevents the connection.

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Thus, affect is spatialized because the drive – posited as a path, vector – when moving,

produces space and moves, transforms, ﬁ xes, discharges, and is linked to a representation – understood

as an idea, while affect is understood as quantity, intensity. Topology, in this case, is the very logic of

the drive in motion, in operation.

While, in this process, the affect needs to be tied, to have a connection, so that it does not

become traumatic, as Freud says. This connection is a form, an organization, it is what is inscribed

in the scene, position and space in the clinic, where map (ﬁ rst topic) and movement (The Drives and

Their Destinies, 1915b) meet.

Thus, the drive with its destinies shows its spatiality, in which each destinies is the

topological transformation of the drive path, shown by Freud. It shows, therefore, that it is a force in

constant movement, which circulates, encounters barriers, deviates and transforms itself, expressing

a topology of psychic functioning, which comes to organize the economy of affect and the position of

the subject, also describing the ﬁ eld in which the movement occurs. Thus, affect circulates, demands

form, requires ﬁ eld, demands scene, demands position, and demands space.

In the text The Regression, 1915c (better known as The Repression), Freud describes

regression (repression) as a speciﬁ c form of defense, as an operation by which the psyche keeps

certain representations at bay, keeping them in the unconscious, while the affect linked to it returns in

transformed forms, as a response to a conﬂ ict – an act of fronty, a force that pushes, it bars, displaces,

returns, a barrier that is formed and a return that insists.

Repression is, therefore, a spatial and dynamic operation, although the repressed is the

representation; affect has another destiny (FREUD, 1915c). In other words, defense is always a

maneuver on affect – displacing, transforming, converting, ﬁ xing or expelling by intensity, but not

repressed it returns as a symptom, anguish, phobia, obsession. Thus, Freudian defenses are spatial

operations on affect, some of them as being:

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• affect drives away representation;

• the displacement moves from point to point, transferring to another representation;

• conversion displaces incompatible affect to the body;

• condensation agglomerates at a point, a single representation;

• isolation separates the representation from its affect;

• annulment erases, tries to magically undo an act or thought;

• the regression returns to an earlier more primitive point of functioning;

• Compulsion creates repetitive circuits.

With the texts of Freudian metapsychology, especially those worked here, from 1915, Freud

does not address topology, but this is already in his work, although not named.

Thus, Freud provides:

inaugural model of spatialization of the psychic.

Drive destinies as modes of twisting affect – clinical operators who transform the affective

space.

Repression as the ﬁ rst great “topological manager” of metapsychology, insofar as it creates a

border, a zone of exclusion, a point of return, a constant pressure, that is, repression offers an affective

architecture.

The articulation between drive and repression as producers of a “map” of the apparatus.

These texts show that the psyche is, since Freud, a space of forces, which seeks to shape and

name the internal movement of Freudian metapsychology – Freud draws the space, with the Project,

1985; The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900 and The Unconscious, 1915a, then he sets this space in

motion, with The Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (The Drives and Their Destinies), 1915b, and The

Regression (The Repression), 1915c.

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Space, affective inscription and social production

Freud ﬁ rst creates the space of affection; then he describes the movement of affect in this

space where:

• Space – it is where affection is inscribed.

• Scene – is the way in which this space is organized on the surface of appearance.

• Position – is the effect of the drive movements and repression on the subject.

Thus, affect is not subsequent to space, it is spatial from the beginning, while the drive

movement does not occur in a vacuum, it occurs in an already structured space, producing positions

and scenes in the clinical ﬁ eld, and repression is not only a mechanism, it is an architectural manager,

a frontier operation, of the edge, describing the trajectories, twists and deviations of affection. In this

way, Freud arrives at the spatialization of the psychic apparatus, and the introduction of the movement

of affect in this previously constructed space.

Affect, in this perspective, is not only something that is “felt”, but something that moves,

ﬁ xes, deviates, returns, insists, as previously said. It produces subjective positions (effects of drive

destinies), organizes scenes (where the repressed appear) and constitutes clinical spaces (ﬁ elds of

forces where tensions, barriers and trajectories are distributed). Thus, the reading of Freud’s work of

1915 allows us to afﬁ rm that affect operates topologically – it creates and transforms the psychic space

at the same time that it moves within it. It is a double operation: spatialization and dynamics, leaving

the Clinical Topology of Affect as a reading path that can evidence the spatiality of the unconscious,

reorganizing the clinical ﬁ eld.

Freud, although without naming it, brings space as not neutral, but as something in which

the social and the affective are intertwined – a space produced by relations at the same time that it

produces subjective scenes and positions. Thus, space allows for the condensation of desires, the

distribution of tensions, the organization of paths, the production of places of exposure and protection,

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and the inscription of affection before the word.

Thus, touching on Freud, from the glimpses in the works highlighted here, with Lefebvre

(1991) and Roudinesco (1998), the formulation of space as a ﬁ eld of forces becomes even more evident,

bringing issues related to social production and articulating it with affective inscription.

Therefore, in addition to Freud’s ideas, listed above, this TCC is based on Lefebvre’s triad,

developed and expanded with The Production of Space, 1991. In this publication, Lefebvre understands

space as a social product, but also as a producer of social relations. For him, space is an active element,

it shapes and is shaped by social practices added to the experience of each subject.

Thus, understanding space not as a neutral scenario or support or simple location means

thinking of it as a ﬁ eld, a ﬁ eld of forces produced, experienced, perceived and spoken, in which it is

something that acts, operates and produces effects, even because there would be no subject without

space (LEFEBVRE, 1991).

For Lefebvre, space is produced by means of three articulated dimensions, which

interpenetrate, condense, mutually transform each other, according to the current economic and

cultural model:

Perceived space – when referring to the physical and material space (streets, buildings,

landscapes), the constructed space experienced by the subject – is close to the concrete places and

paths that emerge in the clinical reports, where the body moves, exposes itself and defends itself.

Conceived space – as the planned, thought space (architects, urban planners, authorities),

insofar as they reﬂ ect the dominant ideology – where affect is organized – corresponds to

metapsychological constructions (topics, systems, barriers, facilitation paths) that formalize psychic

functioning as a ﬁ eld of circulation and transformation of energy – functions that organize psychic

space.

Lived space – as a space as it is subjectively experienced, including everyday practices,

human relations and their affective implications for the subject – where affect is inscribed – is

articulated with the scenes and fantasies described by Freud, in which the subject is placed in an

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affective position before any representational elaboration.

Lefebvre does not mention Freud, he does not mention him, but the creation of his triad –

perceived, conceived and lived space – seems to have been inﬂ uenced by some Freudian concepts,

especially that of the unconscious, which he transforms into a key to thinking of space as being

crossed by desires, repressions and invisible forces. For this author, space has a latent dimension in

which the lived and the conceived are tensioned, allied to repression and repression, when he thinks

about his criticism of everyday life. The space for Lefebvre, therefore, would be a ﬁ eld/place of forces,

relations, desire and resistance.

Thus, the Lefebvrian triad can be thought of in a relationship with the subjective and the

mode of human interactions, which manifest themselves in space. Lefebvre argues that space is

socially produced, shaped by social, economic, and cultural practices, reﬂ ecting ideology, culture,

and the speciﬁ c interests of the subject himself, so that:

The space (urban or rural) would be the place where trauma and desire are inscribed.

In this way, as Lefebvre points out, it is necessary to question the place, the space in which

one inhabits, to interrogate the space in which one sustains oneself, as a historical, symbolic, political,

cultural product and its implications in and for the subject.

Lefebvre does not deal directly with the spatiality glimpsed here in Freud, but his critique

of abstract spatialization and his proposal of space as social production opens a way to think about

space in Freud’s work – both think of space as a ﬁ eld of inscription, a structure of conﬂ ict, a territory

of desire.

On the other hand, Roudinesco, in his publication Dicionário de Psicanálise (Dictionary of

Psychoanalysis, 1998), addresses some entries, not always explicitly in relation to this theme, even so

he stands out:

‘space’ is presented as a symbolic dimension, clinical scene, listening, transference, and

historical ﬁ eld. It also thinks of space as a ﬁ eld of inscription of the subject, not as a physical place.

In the case of ‘topical’, it says that Freud used the term to deﬁ ne the psychic apparatus

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distributed in space. Freud, in his theoretical elaboration, founds the ﬁ rst and second topics, presented

as spatial models of the psyche, and in the ﬁ rst topic, 1900/1920 – where he distinguishes three

places unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious; in the second topic, 1920/1939 – it addresses three

instances id, ego and superego (id, ego and superego), spatial representations of the drive dynamics

of the subject’s structure.

The ‘scene’, she says, organizes desire before language, which is a mythical and phantasmatic

space where the subject is constituted. And the ‘clinical scene’ approaches it as the structural analytic

encounter. As scenes it addresses the dream, the symptom and the fantasy, these as psychic scenes

where desire is dramatized. In these, the dream space is theatrical, metaphorical, not Euclidean –

which for this work shares with the idea of lived space, only conceptually, since there is no mention

about it.

Before becoming a word if it is: affection, body, gesture, proximity, distance, retraction.

As a subject, he emerges on the scene, in a pre-representational affective position.

Finally, it identiﬁ es the ‘clinical space’ as that which is transformed into a political and

ethical ﬁ eld. This clinical space, also treated as an analytical setting, remains as a place for speaking

and listening, creating a space of subjectivation – a symbolic space for listening, structured by

fundamental rules and by the analyst’s position.

Roudinesco also brieﬂ y addresses the ‘position of the subject’ as that linked to the place

he occupies in the discourse, the place he occupies in the phantasmatic scene, that is, the place he

occupies in the desire of the Other. This, understood as what organizes the ﬁ eld of forces, positioning

the subject where he places himself to be seen, loved, recognized; creates scene, how it appears, shows

itself; and produces affective space. Or even, it is everything that existed before us and that gives us a

place (language, culture, family, law and the symbolic ﬁ eld, where we were born). The position of the

subject would be, therefore, where the ﬁ rst affective inscriptions are organized.

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SPACE AS A CLINICAL OPERATOR

In this chapter, based on the theoretical basis used here, the pre-representational inscription

of affect in Freud is addressed. This, as being a primary level of psychic functioning in which what

exists are not ideas, but movements, quantities, paths, edges, tensions and discharges. The idea is that

affect is organized before the word, outside of language, and before there are stable psychic images.

Thus, in Freud, images function as conceptual operators that reveal the spatial logic of affect.

For this TCC, it is precisely here that affect appears as spatiality – as the ﬁ rst form of

inscription – because before appearing as meaning it escapes, moves, converts, condenses, returns to

the same point. Thus, it operates before the representational inscription, insisting on pure economy,

evidencing the repetitive spatiality of affect.

Clinical operators: space, scene and subjective position

As seen so far, Freud distinguishes between representation and affect – representation is

repressed, affect is displaced, converted, transformed, moves – thus implying a spatial dynamic in

which affect “goes elsewhere”, but this energy needs to be linked to something: a representation, a

symptom, an object, a scene. Thus, affection seeks a place of inscription.

It is in this spatial ﬁ eld that articulation is considered, as a triple operator – space, scene

and subjective position – which constitutes the core of this TCC. In the latter, space is the ﬁ eld that

sustains this conﬁ guration, distributing intensities, delimiting zones of exposure and withdrawal,

and organizing the relationship between inside and outside, near, distant. The scene is the minimum

conﬁ guration of the affective inscription: an arrangement of forces, tensions and presences that gives

shape to what is experienced, considering the perceived and conceived space, before any narrative.

The subjective position emerges as an effect of this articulation: the affective place that the subject

occupies in the scene and in the space, before being able to represent it.

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These three operators do not describe contents, but operations that structure the clinical

space. Space gives ﬁ eld, position gives way and the scene gives shape. Together, they show that affect

operates topologically, organizing experience through spatial relations that precede symbolization.

Before symbolizing, affection circulates; before narrating, he distributes himself; before becoming

a word, it occupies places in the psychic apparatus. Although, later, it is language that cuts and

organizes the initial affective experience.

Space as a clinical operator

Freud does not use the term spatialization, but as a result of the perception that one has of

the works consulted, the logic is there. Space, therefore, is where affect organizes symptoms, marks

points of conﬂ ict, presents itself as a spatial marker of the psychic economy.

The concept of clinical operator designates the force that organizes the affective ﬁ eld before

representation, as previously stated. He does not interpret, he does not translate and he does not

symbolize: he conﬁ gures. Therefore, the clinical operator is an operation that has bodies producing

arrangements that make it possible to inscribe affection. It acts in the way the subject is placed – or

places himself – in a lived spatial conﬁ guration, determining the conditions of emergence of the scene

and the subjective position.

Consequently, the clinical operator is not an element of the theory, but a function that

structures the ﬁ eld. It organizes the lived in terms of proximity and remoteness, openness and closure,

exposure and protection. It is this organizing force that allows us to understand affect as something

that operates before the word, structuring the clinical ﬁ eld in a silent way.

The space here is the ﬁ eld where this arrangement becomes possible. It is where affect is

organized, it organizes paths, produces zones of exposure and withdrawal, in addition to conditioning

the subject’s possible positions. Space plays an essential role in the constitution of the subject, it is not

only a scenario where life happens, but a structuring element of subjectivity.

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In Freud’s work, space organizes unconscious processes. In it, the topic already introduces

a spatial dimension of the psyche – systems, borders, passages, barriers, connecting pathways. The

psychic apparatus is thought of as a set of places and paths, and not just as a repertoire of content. In the

same way, in the fragments of Freud’s clinical cases, the lived space – the house, the ofﬁ ce, the street,

the room – is never neutral. He participates in the way affection is inscribed. In Dora, the secluded

lake, the shop, the interior of the K.’s house; in Hans, the open street, the horse on the public road and

the closure inside the house; or even the paths of the Rat Man show that fear is redistributed as space

contracts or expands, or even repeats itself compulsively; or a window, in the Wolf Man, where the

vision of the wolves stops him, mark different modes of exposure, retraction and positioning. It, space,

guides the circulation of energy: there are places where something can happen and places where

something cannot; There are spaces that call for approximation and others that impose distances, that

is, the space actively participates in the constitution of the experience, when it is modiﬁ ed, it changes

the way the subject can or cannot position himself.

This structure can be thought of as an architecture, a plan of the mind, where different

internal spaces determine the circulation of affects and representations – the subject’s internal space,

not homogeneous, but dynamic and marked by repression, repetition and desires. Connecting Freud to

Lefebvre, the lived space becomes this place where the subject experiences his social and subjective

relations.

To this end, the following are found as spatial operations: displacement – affect changes place,

regardless of the idea, transferring intensity from one point to another; condensation – several affects

accumulate, gather in a single place; avoidance prevents passage through certain areas; Repression

pushes representations out of a psychic region, while in conversion, affect is inscribed in the body, and

in ﬁ xation it is attached to a point in the story or scene, implying the position of the subject.

This is because, for Freud, the constitution of the subject begins before representation,

before the word, before the stable psychic image. What exists ﬁ rst is: amount of excitement, routes

of discharge, affective paths, ﬁ xations, danger zones, compulsive returns. The subject is born from

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the way in which affect is inscribed in the psychic apparatus, emerges from this primary affective

topology and defense is, thus, a geometry of affect, a way of organizing the psychic space to deal

with excess. This leads to the understanding that for Freud affect is an energy, while representation is

an idea – affect can be separated from representation2, giving it a double meaning within a chain of

representations.

Space as a structure of the unconscious scene

The scene can be understood as one of the most fundamental ways in which affection is

inscribed. In Freud both in the Project for Scientiﬁ c Psychology, 1985, and in The Interpretation of

Dreams, 1900, psychic functioning appears structured not only by representations, but by dramatized

conﬁ gurations: situations, arrangements, small theaters where something happens between bodies.

The dream scene, the primary scene, the scenes reported in the clinical cases – as events in the form

of a scene before any conceptual elaboration.

The scene is, therefore, the device by which energy is organized in a minimal form – an

arrangement of positions, a cut out of space, a distribution of affects. In this organization, the scene

functions as a clinical operator because it condenses and distributes the energy around a minimal

arrangement: who is near, who is far away, who invades, who retreats, who looks, who is looked

at. Before there is interpretation, there is willingness; before there is meaning, there is an affective

position.

The scene is the ﬁ rst mode of inscription of affect, a pre-representational form that organizes

the ﬁ eld where the subject can come. It, the scene, not only describes what happened, but how the

affect was ﬁ xed and transformed into that event, it concerns the way in which the subject is placed

2  is dissociation is better studied in Freudian theory in the texts Repression and the Drives

and their Destinies, both from 1915; and Inhibition Symptom and Anguish, 1926, in these texts the

main lines on which the author relies to deal with a ect are discussed – however, in this TCC they

will not be detailed since it is intended to understand, introductory to the question of spatiality in

Freud’s work.

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or placed there. What matters is not just ‘what happens’, but how the event is arranged. The scene

operates because it ﬁ xes, condenses, and redistributes energy around certain possible positions. It is

in this sense that, in this work, the scene is taken as a clinical operator of affect – it is the place where

the drive force ﬁ nds a form of pre-representational inscription, before any symbolic elaboration.

Thus, a scene is a spatial condensation of affect (present in the dream, in the concealing

memory, in the traumatic scene), it is always spatial, condensing tensions and relationships in an

arrangement that precedes any narrative elaboration. It is not the scene itself that is brought to analysis,

but what the scene says. This one, it has a story, it talks about what is forgotten. There is a place, a

look, a position, a distance. The scene is a montage that recomposes the lived experience and his work

can become a spatial reconﬁ guration: changing the place of the gaze, the angle of vision, displacing

the point of view, opening margins, undoing ﬁ xations, such as Freud’s paradigmatic cases, in which

he reads scenes, reconstructs and interprets scenes. The clinic is, it proved to Freud, to a large extent,

like a cartography of scenes.

Space as a distributor of subjective positions

If the scene is the arrangement and the space is the ﬁ eld, the subjective position is the most

direct effect of the operation of affect. In Freud, what is at stake is the place that the subject occupies

in relation to the desire of the other, to the threat, to the loss. Contemporaneously, in Roudinesco, it

articulates the way in which the subject is affected by a ﬁ eld of forces that precedes him. Here, the

position is, above all, an affective inscription.

The subjective position functions as a clinical operator because it condenses, at one point,

the distribution of the energy of the scene and space. To be placed, or to place oneself, as an object,

witness, intruder, accomplice, victim or spectator is not only a matter of meaning, but of affect: each

position implies a mode of exposure, vulnerability, defense – in all cases the place that the subject

occupies in the affective conﬁ guration is important. This position is not initially representational: it is

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experienced as exposure, threat, privilege, exclusion, intrusion or withdrawal.

In clinical cases, the subjective position appears before the word – Dora does not ‘interpret’

the kiss or the lake; She is placed in a position that affects her. Hans does not ‘think’ the horse; He

occupies a position of vulnerability before him. The Rat Man shows himself to be in an inﬁ nite

subordination and debtor, and the Wolf Man occupies a position of extreme passivity. Position is,

therefore, an affective inscription, a way of being situated in the scene and in the space that precedes

any symbolic elaboration – before there is meaning, there is an affective position.

Thus, the Freudian subject is constituted in positions: inside/outside, near/far, exposed/

hidden, active/passive. These positions are not only symbolic, but spatial, organizing their relationship

with the body and structuring their affective experience. The subjective position is the affective place

that the subject occupies in the scene and in the space before being able to represent it.

The subject emerges in the position he occupies, not because he understands it, but because he

is crossed by it and occupies it. And it is from this occupation that the later possibility of representation

is born. This positioning is not only symbolic: it is topological, as it implies the way in which the

subject occupies the space of the unconscious.

By taking the subjective position as an operator, this work shifts the focus from representation

to inscription: before being the subject of the signiﬁ er, the subject is the effect of an affective position

on the scene in an intersection between space, scene and position that is drawn in the face of the

conﬂ ict and singularity of each one.

The clinic as a reading of affective paths

If affect is initially inscribed as spatial movement – displacement, circuit, edge, condensation

– then the clinic can be understood as a work of reading and reorganizing this lived space, of the scene

as a clinical operator, of the subjective position as a pre-verbal inscription, as seen in the items above,

and of the setting as a topological ﬁ eld of affect, as follows (item 2.3).

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This perspective can illuminate both the understanding of the workings of the unconscious

and the role of the analytic setting, which becomes the place where this topology can emerge, be

recognized, and transformed. Thus, the clinic follows this movement, and can be understood as a

reading of the paths that affection takes. These paths are not linear, but made up of detours, returns,

shortcuts and repetitions, and it is possible to follow where the affect moves, is ﬁ xed, where it avoids

and where it compulsively returns.

In Freud’s clinical cases, affect – that intensity, quantity and energy that does not disappear,

does not dissolve, but is ﬁ xed in a psychic place – always appears linked to space, anchored in speciﬁ c

points that point to psychic tension:

Dora – the affection is condensed in the scenes at the lake, at the K.’s house, in the store.

Hans – the affect of anguish is spatialized in the street, at the exit door and on the horse, as

a phobic object, which receives the displaced affection by circumscribing it to the internal space of

his home.

Man of the Rats – the affection of guilt and debt is located in the ﬁ gure of the captain and in

the episode of debt, affecting his path, including the barracks and the post ofﬁ ce.

Wolf Man – the affection is ﬁ xed in a scene, in the primary scene, affecting him in the

bedroom, in front of the window and the garden.

These spaces are not neutral, they emerge as a pre-inscription of affect, organize the subject’s

position, modulate or presuppose the intensity of affect, produce approximations and withdrawals, in

an externalization of an internal process, such as a projection (FREUD, 1915).

Setting: clinical space as a ﬁ eld of affective forces

Thinking of the setting as a clinical space implies displacing it from the idea of only a

physical environment or technical arrangement to understanding it as an operative structure, a ﬁ eld

of forces, in which affect ﬁ nds conditions of inscription. The setting, therefore, is understood as a

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topological matrix where the resulting space is formed by social relations, positions and affections

that are inscribed before the word, articulating scene and subjective position.

Freud, Roudinesco and Lefebvre, each in their own way, offer support for this expanded

conception – produced space, operative space and space of subjectivation.

Freud: the clinical space as an inscription device and transferential ﬁ eld

Freud does not use the term setting, but ‘invents’ it as a minimal spatial form. His practice

founds a way of organizing the clinical space that goes beyond the materiality of the ofﬁ ce – the

couch, the position of the analyst, the rhythm of the sessions, the silence, the fundamental rule, the

management of transference, all of this comes to constitute a space where:

the affect circulates, the scene is organized, the subjective position is displaced.

And the unconscious ﬁ nds conditions for inscription.

The Freudian clinical space is, therefore, in this expanded conception, an operator to the

extent that it creates conditions for the subject to speak, but also for something to be inscribed in him

before the speech. In this space, affect ﬁ nds a minimal form of inscription where it organizes, where

the scene is produced and where the subjective position can be displaced. Then:

The couch is not a piece of furniture, it is a position.

The silent presence of the analyst is not absence, it is structuring, where listening happens.

The rule of free association is not only technical, it is a space of openness.

The Freudian setting creates distances and limits, organizes positions (what speaks and what

listens), produces scenes (the body lying down and the analyst out of the ﬁ eld of vision), thus allowing

the affect to move, return, ﬁ x.

The clinical space, in Freud, therefore, creates a minimum form for affect to be inscribed.

Affection is spatialized, when it does not ﬁ nd words, it is inscribed in scenes – lakes, images, objects.

This form is always spatial (scene, distance, limit, position); this spatial being socially constructed in

a topological matrix that is simultaneously psychic (pre-representational inscription), spatial (lived

conﬁ guration) and social (ﬁ eld produced by forces and norms) – while the space described in the

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narrative, during the sessions, suggests a subject who arrives at the treatment occupying places he did

not choose, such as Dora, for example.

In other words, the glimpse of spatialization in Freud speaks of a place where affect returns

when language fails, or has not yet arrived – a place of inscription of affect, of conﬂ ict, of the impossible

– it is when the repressed presents itself, returns and the defense remains.

Lefebvre: space as a ﬁ eld of affective forces and social production

Lefebvre does not speak of clinics, but his theory is decisive for thinking that all space is

socially produced, crossed by social, political and cultural forces, being structured by norms, laws

and uses, experienced as a ﬁ eld of power. Therefore, for Lefebvre (1991), space, especially lived

space, offers the idea that affect needs a spatial form to be inscribed, allowing us to understand

how space operates affectively, at the same time as a social production and a ﬁ eld of forces. Thus,

in his conception of space, this is a social product, impregnated with ideology, relations, desires and

invisible forces, and the subject as shaped by everyday life.

Lefebvre (1991), in his triad, brings a conception that allows us to understand that every

space is simultaneously perceived, conceived and lived, woven by everyday life and antecedents and,

therefore, is always impregnated with invisible forces that shape and before which to allow oneself to

be molded, reﬂ ects culture and socioeconomic and environmental issues. Space is, therefore, social

before being geometric is topological, authorizing the idea of:

Conceived space – physical structure (ofﬁ ce and internet) –, technical and symbolic;

Perceived space – bodies, distances, rhythms;

Lived space – transference, scene, affection, as one that carries marks of the unconscious.

Lefebvre thus offers a basis for understanding that affect is inscribed in a spatiality that is,

at the same time, form, psychic form and social production. He emphasizes that there is no affect

without spatiality and that this spatiality is always historical, social and relational – the subject arises

from the way in which affect is spatialized in a world already socially produced.

The setting, therefore, is seen as an indirect clinical operator, by organizing the space where

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the affect is inscribed and where the subjective position can be displaced, functioning as a socially

and affectively produced space, where the scene is organized and the subject ﬁ nds conditions for

inscription. It allows, then, to afﬁ rm that the inscription of affection occurs in a space that is already

socially structured, which precedes the subject.

Roudinesco: the clinical space as an ethical and political space

The setting is not only a technical device, but a symbolic space that organizes the relationship

between analyst and analysand, structured by rules and desires that make the emergence of the subject

possible (ROUDINESCO, 2000). This expanded conception is reinforced by deﬁ ning the setting

as a historical and cultural construction crossed by norms, expectations and subjective positions

(ROUDINESCO, 1998). Thus, the clinical space, according to Roudinesco, is understood as a space

that is based on the relationship as: symbolic, impregnated with desire, historically situated and

structured by transference, as well as ethical and political.

Roudinesco shows, in this way, that clinical space is socially produced and subjectively

operative, in a dimension that unites Freud and Lefebvre, each according to their own logic, when he

states that space in psychoanalysis is always:

historical and institutional – it is not neutral, does not exist outside of an era and is regulated

by practices, norms, traditions, devices, policies and forms of authority;

ethical – it is a space of speech that suspends social coercions and allows the emergence of

the subject, because it founds a relationship based on words and responsibility;

political – it is a place where the subject can exist without tutelage, but where the subject

cannot exist outside of social determinations, because they are symbolic institutions crossed by

culture.

For this author, therefore, the setting is a space for speaking, listening, and structuring, but

also a space of inequalities, pacts, contracts, and tensions, since it is a space preserved as a form of

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freedom and resistance to social forms that tend to reduce the subject to the biological and behavioral.

To touch on Freud, Lefebvre Roudinesco, therefore, means to recognize that affect is

inscribed in a spatiality that is, at the same time, psychic, social and clinical, paying attention to where

the analysand places himself and how affect is inscribed in space.

Freud shows that affect needs, seeks a spatial form, when speech has not yet arrived – affect

is topologically inscribed;

Lefebvre shows that all space is socially produced and the subject cannot remain on the

margins of it;

Roudinesco shows that space becomes a clinical ﬁ eld, so that the setting is an ethical and

institutional space.

Analyzing these three authors, although each of them offers a distinct dimension of space,

creates a point of tangency: the inscription of affect depends on the articulation of the spaces they

consider and in the clinic space speaks while the word does not arrive or fails. Getting the space as:

Space as a condenser of social forces – affect is not only inscribed in the body, but in the

social ﬁ eld that the body inhabits.

Space as a setting – which functions as a space where the subject is suspended, but not

abolished, is reconﬁ gured.

Although none of these authors has worked on the virtual setting, based on what has been

exposed here, it can be linked to a new form of spatial production for the clinic. In addition to the

face-to-face, the virtual space emerges as another form of spatiality – it is not the absence of space, it

is another form of spatiality for the clinic today. It produces:

new distances – canvases as possibility, not barriers;

New scenes – the framed face, the visible environment (domestic, ofﬁ ce, car);

New subjective positions – exposure, intimacy, withdrawal and digital/algorithmic

surveillance;

New rhythms – dependence on the internet, interruptions, loss of image or sound, inequalities

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of access, material conditions.

Therefore, in the online clinic the space is not given, it is built. Framing is a subjective

position, not a technicality. The scene is set up by the patient and the analyst works with this montage,

while the affect appears as visibility, invisibility, approximation, erasure, absences and the intervention

also focuses on the spatial gesture.

The setting is a produced space, and the virtual is a technologically generated space, but

also, and equally, a topological matrix, socially constructed, where social and affective forces, in the

same way as in face-to-face analysis, are intertwined – the ofﬁ ce (the place from which the analyst

attends), the body of the analyst and the analysand, ﬁ t within these conditions of analysis – all of this

participates in the production of the clinical space, allowing the subject to locate himself and the

analytical work to begin, functioning as a topological matrix of the inscription of affect.

SPATIAL CONFIGURATIONS IN FREUD’S CLINICAL CASES

While affect appears as something that moves – accumulates, deviates, ﬁ xes, condenses

in space – it has as a constant presence its expression in paths, places and edges, in a constitutive

dimension of the subject, considering that it is born within a scene that precedes it and affect continues

to shape this subject before the word.

Space in Freud’s paradigmatic clinical cases

In these cases – Dora, 1905; Hans, 1909; Man of the Rats, 1909; Man of the Wolves, 1918

– the spatiality becomes even more evident. With these cases, space appears as the ﬁ rst mode of

inscription of affect, as a clinical operator, as a topology of conﬂ ict, before any symbolic elaboration

– before the word emerges.

As seen so far, space is not neutral – it speaks, marks, inscribes. It is part of the transference,

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of the resistance, of the desire. He is a living image. On the other hand, the clinical space is where the

subject is located, moves. It is where logical time ends: the before, the after, the time to see. It is where

the body is inscribed, even absent, as in the online – where space is canvas, cut, pixel.

Freud reconstructs scenes, identiﬁ es subjective positions and analyzes trajectories, so that:

Dora moves and breaks positions – she is the one who moves.

Hans maps streets and forbidden areas – that’s what he avoids.

Rat Man circulates in compulsive circuits – this is what he repeats.

Man of the Wolves sets a scene – it’s what freezes, paralyzes.

Thus, Freud presents the clinic as a conﬂ ict between forces, tension between representations

and affects – the conﬂ ict is spatial, understanding that it is distributed, moved, concentrated, ﬂ ow, and

is dammed – the clinic as the reconstruction of scenes, montages of positions, and reading of paths.

The clinic, therefore, is where the topology of affect becomes visible.

Dora Case, 1905

The Dora case is presented by Freud as an analysis of a case of hysteria of an 18-year-old girl,

taken to treatment by her father after presenting symptoms of aphonia, nervous cough, abdominal

pain and fainting episodes. The family context is marked by tensions and cross-alliances, given the

intimate relationship between Dora’s father and Mrs. K, while Mr. K shows sexual interest in the

young woman. The latter sees itself in the center of this affective quadrilateral, occupying a place that

it does not understand and cannot name.

In Dora, two scenes are listed in the fragment presented by Freud, one that occurs when

she was 14 years old – reported by Dora herself when she was already in the process of analysis

with Freud –, and another at the age of 18 – when “after more than two years he handed her to me”

(FREUD, 1905, p. 27), says Freud referring to Dora’s father when he led her to him for analysis.

In the study Fragment of the analysis of a case of hysteria, 1905, Freud reconstructs the story

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of Dora, then 18 years old, based on her father’s account. In that ﬁ rst scene: there were Dora’s family

and that of Mr. and Mrs. K on one of the summer vacations in the lakes, in the Alps. On that occasion,

Dora was supposed to spend several weeks at the K’s house, when her father decided to return days

before, which made Dora say, as soon as she knew and adamantly, that she would return with her

father, and so she did. Days later, she tells her mother that she was with Mr. K on a walk by the lake

and Mr. K had made her a love proposal, getting too close to her. Subsequently, the father comes to

know and talks to Mr. K and he immediately casts suspicion on the girl talking about her interest in

sexual matters, from where he would have imagined the whole scene described. Given this, the father

takes Dora to Freud and asks him to put her on the “right path”.

When already in analysis with Freud, Dora speaks of the amorous proposal and the consequent

affront of this lake scene, but communicates to him a previous experience, also with Mr. K, which was

the kiss scene. In this one, Dora was 14 years old, but although chronologically it happened before the

lake scene, it only appears later to Freud through Dora’s narrative. At the time, Dora was in a public

space, in Mr. K’s store, from where his wife had left to accompany Dora’s father on a certain outing

and Mr. K warns her that he is going to close the main door, but at some point, unexpectedly, she is

surprised by Mr. K who takes her in a hug and kisses her. This kiss takes place in a space where the

body is cornered. Once again it is placed in a space as an object, at the disposal of where the other

places it. Affection is not said, but localized.

From Dora’s position, in the scenes reported, she speaks of these surprises as invasion,

provoking disgust, repulsion, indignation and displeasure and repugnance, in addition to the fear of

male ﬁ gures that comes to predominate. Even placed in these positions, it has a conception that was

imposed as “having been given to Mr. K as a reward for his tolerance of the relations between his wife

and Dora’s father” (FREUD, 1905, p.40) – which behind this could be sensed all the fury for being

used in this way, Freud adds.

In the lake scene, what is at stake is the position in which Dora is placed, away from the

others, isolated with a much older man, summoned to occupy the place of the love object, surprised

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once again by an approach that she did not choose – there is a spatial conﬁ guration and affective

position. With the invasion of Dora’s space, one observes ruptures of the limit, the edges fall.

In the kiss scene, his body is surprised, hugged, kissed without his consent. Once again the

(bodily) position is invaded, grabbed with imposition, remaining as a pre-representational inscription.

When Dora does not answer, does not symbolize, does not elaborate, she feels and thus founds this

subjective position of staying in the place that the other puts her, sometimes making her sick.

In these scenes she organizes affect, before any symbolization, as a clinical operator before

language. The scenes are brought to Freud in the analysis – the kiss scene inscribes an inaugural

affective position, the second, that of the lake, reupdates, re-inscribing it in a position not chosen in

the scene. When she abandons analysis, she does not argue, does not argue, does not show displeasure,

she leaves – ﬁ nally she ﬂ ees from a space that seems not to be appropriate for her. It leaves that space

and the affect ﬁ nds a form of action, it is the space of the act, of the cut, of the rupture – it, in the

transference, cuts Freud.

During the analysis process, in the ofﬁ ce, her story repeats itself according to a spatial

choreography, observable when Freud brings Dora arriving and leaving, changing places, avoiding

the gaze, in a spatialization that spoke of the transference, not perceived – the body doing what she

has not yet been able to say.

Dora appears in the way the body is placed, not in what is said. Thus, it remains as the subject

of the scene, in Freud, in an affective position, before the representation, there is the topological

inscription of affect. Language arrives later to cut, reorganize, re-inscribe, but the subject was already

there, in the affection, in the body and in the position he occupies in the lived space – the space can

be inscribed before the word, condensing itself in places, scenes and positions that the young woman

cannot symbolize.

The highlight for these scenes in Dora is a case in which affection is not represented, it is

not narrated, it is not symbolized, but it is spatialized. Thus, the space emerges as a clinical operator,

allowing us to see the refusal, the indignation, the disgust, the distrust in the positions attributed to it

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and the escape, the escape, always leaving the space in which it was conﬁ ned, compressed. Dora does

not speak affection, she stages it in space, ﬁ xates on scenes, while imposing positions – Dora responds

with her body, for the space that closes, for the scene that returns, for the position that refuses.

In Dora, even without speciﬁ cally theorizing, Freud describes space while thinking about

affect. In this clinical topology, in this spatialization, affect organizes the symptom and even the

transference in its analysis – a cartography of places, of the spaces attributed to it, transpires.

Dora, do not formulate the conﬂ ict in words. It does not say “I am distressed”, “I am afraid”,

“I am disgusted”, “am I loved?”, “Who loves me?” It does not deny every place that is placed in it or

the space that is assigned to it – it occupies and unoccupies places, in which to see itself placed, in a

spatial condensation, with overlapping layers. Affection in Dora presents itself in spatial movement: it

enters, leaves, dodges, retreats, escapes, breaks, cuts, abandons, even Freud – in the face of the place

he attributes to her, abandoning analysis never to return. The body goes out spatially drawing that

which could not yet be symbolized.

Little Hans, 1909

The case of Little Hans, 1909, is reported by Freud as a phobia in childhood. This case

revolves around a ﬁ ve-year-old boy who starts to avoid leaving the house for fear that the horse will

bite him or fall on him, extending this anguish in the face of everyday situations involving animals or

horse-drawn vehicles, aggravated after he witnesses the fall of a horse, that is, a concrete image that

comes to reinforce their fear. This situation arises during a period of intense childhood curiosity about

sex, anatomical differences, baby births accompanying them with questions about the body.

Freud conducts the treatment through a conversation with Hans’ father, who reports detailed

accounts of the boy’s speeches, comments, jokes and his son’s fears. Their fear is understood as a

solution to deal with desires and fears that they cannot directly symbolize.

During the treatment, it is revealed how fear is organized, distributed in danger zones,

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forbidden zones, and how affection moves to another external object (streets, paths, horses) and how

the child seeks to respond to the maternal enigma. In this case, fear is organized as a true affective

cartography, as a structured space, organized by demarcations and limits, whose function is to act

as signs of anguish – the danger in the inner space is then transformed into danger, locating it in the

outer space.

Hans avoids streets, creates speciﬁ c places, routes and avoids others, creating forbidden

zones that delimit his circulation space. The horse, a phobic object, although it functions as a point

of condensation of affection, concentrating tensions that cannot be symbolized directly, is sometimes

decentered due to space, in a displacement. That is, an object is not only an object that maintains the

limit function in a given space, but it is a series, one inducing the other, as if they were following a

chain. Thus, the space is circumscribed by avoidances, with deﬁ ned limits, so that it could escape

anguish.

Freud shows with Hans a way of spatializing affect – this space is organized as a private

topography, in which the avoidances follow one another in a chain always associated with this space.

This leads him to seclusion and the difﬁ culty of maintaining it. In this way, Hans puts into play the

limits of space and the body, so that fear is displaced to an external object, which starts to occupy a

precise place in the space lived by him. Spatiality, in this case, reveals that affect, when it cannot be

symbolized, is distributed in space as a map of forbidden zones.

Thus, there are three scenes highlighted: the street, the horse and the closure inside the

house. These scenes form a topological circuit of affect – street: affect emerges when in contact with

the external world; horse: the affection is condensed into a ﬁ gure, and the house: the affection retracts

and ﬁ xes itself in a spatial defense, by seeking the internal space and avoiding the external.

So the closure inside the home is a refuge, an avoidance of the fear that is moving. The gaze

is thus conﬁ ned, unable to see beyond the limits set by it, imagining that the danger is to be found

outside, where it cannot control. Hans, then, founds a space of delimitation and removal from danger.

Fear makes him withdraw, withdraw, in a space of pre-representational defense, where the body

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seeks protection before symbolizing. He does not elaborate this fear, he closes himself in space as

protection, since in open space danger can arise from everywhere.

Affection, in this way, creates bodily and perceptive paths, before talking about something

for which he has no words – desire for his mother and rivalry with his father – Hans avoids streets,

asks to change paths, retreats when he sees carts, observes horses with fascination and fear of falling,

creates alternative routes and, when it doesn’t work, seeks internal space, known interior of his

house. Phobia, in this way, is not just fear – it is an affective topology that speaks when the word fails.

The case shows that affect is organized ﬁ rst in space, then in the scene and, ﬁ nally, in the subjective

position that the subject is forced to occupy.

Rat Man, 1909

The case of the Rat Man, 1909, considered by Freud as a case of obsessive neurosis, portrays

a young Viennese tormented by (obsessive) ideas and rituals that were intensifying. His suffering

revolved around a distressing fantasy: the fear of torture with rats that, in the same way told by the

colonel, could be inﬂ icted on the father or woman he loved.

This type of torture was described by an ofﬁ cer during his military service – the idea pursued

him in an intrusive way, accompanied by a feeling of responsibility for preventing such a misfortune

from occurring. This situation is aggravated as a result of an episode that involved the debt of a pair

of glasses lost by a colleague and the development of an obligation to have to pay this amount and

the guilt for not having made the payment. This feeling of guilt and debt is ampliﬁ ed to the point of

compromising their daily lives, in almost delirious proportions. From then on, he starts to carry out

long repetitive journeys, checks and mental rituals in order to ensure that nothing could happen to his

loved ones.

This case shows how affect is distributed and organized in speciﬁ c psychic places. It shows

ideas of punishment and compulsive rituals linked to the fantasy of the torture of rats – in a space

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saturated with threat and submission. And the long spatial paths that it repeats – going back and forth,

verifying, correcting –, adding isolated thoughts, annulments and return, while the affect circulates

in closed circuits, revealing the spatialization of guilt and debt that is drawn in the body that travels

circuits. Guilt is organized, therefore, in a spatial geography – it repeats mental paths, returns to the

same points, circulates between symbolic debts and imaginary obligations.

The scene of the torture with the rats is a condensed scene, an image that organizes his

fear with everything revolving around this image. He always occupies the same subjective position,

debtor, guilty, subordinate, responsible for avoiding an imaginary tragedy. He puts himself in the

position of someone who must repair something he has never done, pay a debt that is not his and never

ends, prevent something that does not depend on him, all as an absolute requirement. Thus, it can be

observed that in obsession, in this case, the affect takes a spatial form, ﬁ xates on scenes and imposes

a position, capturing the subject in positions that precede the symbolization.

Freud describes how the patient’s affect is ﬁ xed at a point – where the rats enter the victim’s

anus, deﬁ ning paths that always lead him to the same starting point, seeming to create a space in a

closed circuit, keeping the affect imprisoned there. Thus, in this geography of guilt and debt, affection

is ﬁ xed, preventing its circulation, returning to it whenever it moves away.

In this case, the affection is not tied to a single object – it circulates changing targets, which

involves the father, who expresses love, hate and guilt; to the cruel captain, as a ﬁ gure who embodies

the punishment of rats in a sadistic way; the beloved woman, idealizing her and afraid of losing her,

in addition to Freud who says he is in an ambivalent transference. While the debt – which the patient

believes he owes to the captain – is the point to which the patient always returns, where the affect is

condensed, at a point of ﬁ xation.

The Rat Man places himself in positions that oscillate between being victim, aggressor and

observer, changing space within the scene. Thus, the affect that cannot yet be said, symbolized or

elaborated appears in the paths, paths, movements and obsessive circuits created by the patient. Freud

describes it as walking from one place to another, repeating paths, going back, retracing paths – both

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in everyday life and in thought. Thus, the case shows that, when the word fails, the affect speaks – and

speaks through the space, the scene and the position of the subject, obliged to occupy.

Wolf Man, 1918

In the case of the Wolf Man, 1918, considered by Freud as a case of infantile neurosis (written

in 1914, but only published in 1918), it is reported that a young and rich Russian seeks out Freud to

analyze himself after periods of depression, withdrawal and crises of anguish. She reports that already

in childhood she had recurrent diseases and great dependence on her mother. The central element of

his story is a dream lived approximately when he was four years old: when he woke up, he saw six or

seven white wolves sitting on the branches of a tree, located outside his house, motionless, staring at

him, which immobilized him. This dream of the wolves terriﬁ ed him and marked the beginning of his

nocturnal fears and the childish troubles that followed.

In the analysis, Freud works from fragments, associations and fantasies that emerge and

enable the reconstruction of what, in principle, he treats as a ‘primitive fantasy’ – understood, here,

as a universal structure, which does not depend on an event experienced, as an original fantasy that

belongs to the constitution of the psyche – and a ‘primary scene’ – in a second moment – taken as a

supposed infantile perception of the sexual relationship between parents –, as an event lived, even if

fragmented, misunderstood, or even partially perceived.

The dream of wolves thus functions as a bridge between these two situations – it has the

force of a primitive fantasy, but also the form of a scene, when it realizes that the dream is a point of

condensation: primitive fantasies and perceptual remnants of childhood meet. Until Freud begins to

understand the case by stating that the patient saw the primary scene, reconstructed as a lived event,

which reorganizes the treatment. Therefore, the dream is not only a dream-content, but a spatial

conﬁ guration, a condensed scene and a subjective position that make it possible to understand the case

before it closes it in the primary scene.

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Thus, affect does not appear as movement, in a spatial arrangement – fear is not said, it is

localized. The scene of the wolves is described from the inside out, through a window that opens to

the outer space, with a view of a tree, six or seven white wolves, motionless and a paralyzed gaze

turned towards him, which puts him in a frozen position – it is an image that speaks where the subject

cannot speak. In this scene, the boy’s subjective position reveals that he was lying down, small,

exposed, looked at and captured. What leads to understanding passivity, anguish, the sensation of

being observed, while the affect does not move, is frozen in this imprisoned image, with no escape,

in a spatial image of the trauma and its imprisonment in it.

As in the other cases, Freud does not theorize the space, the scene or the subjective position

of the subject, but uses them by working on the spatialization of affect – the room, the window, the

tree – the scene of the white wolves and the position of the boy, as a child, are the path taken by Freud

until he arrives at the ‘primary scene’, revealing that spatiality is a form of spatial inscription of affect.

This is condensed into a single and paralyzing scene. Thus, it is this pre-verbal form that makes it

possible to understand the case that Freud conducts with the reconstruction of the primary scene and

in it the subject’s suffering.

The spatiality of affect as a condition for the emergence of the subject

After reading Freud’s cases, it is perceived that spatiality includes the arrangement of bodies,

the distance between them, the direction of gaze, the opening or closing of circulation zones, the

presence/absence of limits, borders and passages. Each of these dimensions participates in affect,

producing minimal forms of relationship that precede any symbolic elaboration, present, beyond

space, in the scene and in position.

The premise, therefore, is that affect is spatialized because the drive, when operating its

destinies, produces space, founds scenes, ﬁ xes positions and traces paths. This walk is what makes it

possible to recognize spatial conﬁ gurations of affect, marked by the predominance of an operator –

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space, scene, position.

Dora – conﬁ gures scene and position – the affect is organized primarily as a scene in an

arrangement of characters, abrupt repositioning and interruptions. The young woman is moved from

one place to another, unable to stabilize her position. The conﬂ ict is constantly reconﬁ gured in each

scene and the suffering emerges from the impossibility of sustaining a place within it, in a logic of

displacement.

Hans – conﬁ gures space – affect is distributed spatially, delimiting where one can or cannot

be. The phobia territorializes the world, transforming it into affectively marked regions. Suffering

is organized in space, like an internal cartography projected in the external environment, which

structures fear and guides the subject’s movement.

Man of the Rats – conﬁ gures compulsive paths – affection is organized in closed circuits and

paths that are repeated with no way out. Debt and the fantasy of torture imprison him in internal paths

that are never completed. Suffering is the very form of conﬂ ict, with circuits and compulsive returns.

Man of the Wolves – conﬁ gures ﬁ xation – the affection is ﬁ xed in a position of the gaze

in front of the scene. The image is a point of capture that organizes the psychic space. The subject

remains positioned in front of this primordial scene, determining how the subject relates to desire, the

body and the other, as condensation.

Each case thus offers a form of space, a logic of position, edges and path structure. Each

patient embodies a singular form of spatialization of affect, a way of organizing himself, of occupying

positions of repeating paths and sustaining images, in a space produced by himself – thus, affect

remains as that which, when circulating, draws clinical space and space as that which gives shape to

suffering.

In this way, the spatiality of affect is the condition by which the subject can emerge, when

the word is not enough. The subject emerges, emerges, in the affect that is inscribed in a spatial

conﬁ guration that precedes it, while the subjective position is produced by the articulation between

scene and space, and not by a previous identity – the subject is an effect of the way in which the affect

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is ﬁ xed, circulates and transforms itself in the lived space.

This perspective makes it possible to understand that the clinic expands, involving the

reading of the spatial forms that organize affect. And in the clinic, in the setting, spatiality enables

the subject to ﬁ nd – or lose – his place. Thus, the idea of a clinical topology of affect, launched here,

formalizes this operation – already brought by Freud and followed in the clinic itself – describes how

affect is inscribed in a spatiality that precedes the word and how, from this inscription, the subject can

emerge as an effect of a conﬁ guration that precedes and surpasses it.

BY WAY OF CONCLUSION

The clinic as a space where affection is inscribed when language is not yet possible

The glimpse when reading Freudian texts shows that affect is not initially presented as

representation or discourse, but as a spatial form. Before being said, affection is inscribed in places,

delimits borders, opens or closes paths. Thus, psychic suffering emerges as a spatial conﬁ guration of

affect and not as an already constituted symbolic elaboration.

As could be seen above, each of Freud’s paradigmatic cases reveals spatial inscriptions that

are condensed into scenes, that impose themselves, that are not explained, presenting themselves as

ﬁ gurative nuclei of affect, when language does not yet reach the experienced. Thus, these cases also

show that affect is organized as a subjective position, in a minimal form of subjectivation when the

word fails – it is the place where the subject is placed by affect before language.

Thus, the analysis carried out for this TCC shows that when the word fails, the affect speaks

– and speaks through the lived space – of what is perceived, of what is conceived –, of the condensed

scene and of the position that the subject is forced to occupy. It is at this pre-representational level,

therefore, that the clinical topology of affect is drawn, a ﬁ eld where suffering is inscribed before it

can be symbolized.

While language does not arrive, affect already operates: it has already produced scenes, it has

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already organized spaces, it has already placed the subject in positions that he has not chosen. And the

clinic’s function is to offer a space where these inscriptions can be read, moved and transformed. The

topology of affect allows us to understand that the analytic work begins before the word, in the way

the subject is located in the lived space and in the way this space affects him. The clinic, therefore,

remains a place where the subject can ﬁ nally ﬁ nd a form for what has not yet found language – and

where language, when it comes, can be supported by an inscription that precedes it.

As affect operates topologically, then, clinical space – physical or digital – remains a ﬁ eld

of forces where subjective positions are produced – spatiality does not disappear; it reconﬁ gures

itself. The canvas, the distance, the framing, the domestic environment, the circulation, movements

in this space, and the silences make up the new ﬁ eld of inscription. The topology of affect allows us

to understand that, even without physical sharing of space, there is a spatial organization of what is

experienced: the subject positions himself, exposes himself, withdraws, moves – there is no suspension

of space: the clinic, it reinvents him.

Finally, the clinic is seen as a space that makes it possible to explain when the language

has not yet arrived, where something can be inscribed before what is said. Language, therefore, can

come about organizing silent affective operations, expressed in the clinic. This is, therefore, the space

where the subject ﬁ nds a form – minimal, provisional, topological – for that which has not yet been

symbolized. It is a way of making the clinic not a place, but a space in which the symbolic can

ﬂ ourish: a space that is present for when language has not yet arrived.

And even so, one can ask: space in psychoanalysis? Yes, you could say. It is where the space

is made possible for the subject to dive into his own history and that no matter how big the waves

that rise in front of him may be, he can have space to spread and, like the mangroves, doing so can

deal with their remains, tidal variations and their uniqueness, in a space where desire can come to be

articulated, inhabiting – the house gives a meaning, but the word will give meaning to everything

else already announced.

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