[Preliminary questions to a reflection on clinical impasses]

The definition of 'clinical impasse' depends not only on the clinician who-as the proposed argument suggests-would be faced to his powerlessness in specific situations, but this definition is tributary to the clinical and theoretical field inscribed within this clinician's practice. Thus, for example, the practice of psychotherapy and the practice of psychoanalysis implies very different if not opposed positions of the clinician, bringing on the patient's side, very specific difficulties and impasses. In the field of psychoanalysis conceived essentially as a practice of the ethical, one cannot address this notion of 'clinical impasse' without first questioning the position of the analyst, not as much in his rapport with theory and technique used but mainly by questioning the point and the locus within himself from which he directs the treatment. Likewise, for the analysed, can what entails impasse in the treatment be indissociable to the ethical position of the subject?