Beating the (dis)measure: psychoanalysis and free jazz

Abstract

This paper deals with the concept of measure by relating it to the issues of desire and care. If the symptom can be considered as a paradoxical defense from the excesses of desire, can we really quantify these excesses? Or can we try to describe the rhythm on which to drive the cure?
Borrowing from the universe of music, in particular of free jazz, the terminology related to the scanning of time, is the author proposed to read the symptom not within the framework of cadence, but in the spectrum of rhythm, a construction that can be irregular, yet not without measure.