Sigmund Freud, who invented psychoanalysis, stated it is “the name 1) of a procedure for the investigation of mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, (2) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (3) of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a new scientific discipline.”[i]
Jacques Lacan defined psychoanalysis as a praxis, namely, “to treat the real by the symbolic,”[ii] and also as a discourse, a new form of “social bond.”[iii] The end of an analysis, both its logical ending and its aim, is determined by and accounts for what it produced in its experience.
In the Lacanian Orientation[iv], psychoanalysis is not psychotherapy. It is even the opposite to it. This does not mean that psychoanalysis is not applied in a variety of settings where its efficacy has been demonstrated. What is the mainspring of it? “What must there be in the analyst's desire for it to operate in a correct way?”[v]
This seminar will explore the clinical implications of Lacan’s teaching in his ‘return to Freud’ and also in his going beyond it.
[i] Freud, S., Two Encyclopaedia Articles, 1922.
[ii] Lacan, J., Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964, p. 6.
[iii] Lacan, J., Seminar XVII, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 1969.
[iv] Miller, J.-A., The Lacanian Orientation. Teaching delivered at the University of Paris 8. 1981-2011.
[v] Lacan, J., Seminar XI, op. cit., p. 9.
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