For Part I click here  The psychoanalyst as incarnation of object a The shift from Seminar X Around the time of Seminar X in 1963 there is a big shift in how Lacan interprets Freud’s major contribution on the question of the end of a psychoanalysis, Analysis Terminable and Interminable. By this time Lacan is no longer focused on the idea

  Introductory Remarks The first question we have to confront is a terminological one: in what sense do we mean the ‘end of a psychoanalysis’? This phrase could refer simply to the final session, regardless of whether a ‘psychoanalysis proper’ has been undertaken prior to this moment. Or it could refer to the conclusion of an analytic work, the end

The picture above shows Lacan posing alongside numerous other European intellectuals of the 1930s, including Picasso and Satre. At the time this photograph was taken Lacan was busy refining his theories of the deceptive and disruptive capabilities of the image. He stands on the far left, shaking his head so as to distort the camera’s depiction.   On 20th November

  Where does resistance come from? The first question we have to ask about resistance is a very simple one: where exactly does resistance come from? In 1953, at the start of what were to become yearly seminars, Lacan pursues a close reading of Freud’s work on psychoanalytic technique. From the earliest days of his therapeutic clinic, Freud had noted

We might begin by asking how it is that ‘acting out’ has come to be given the status of a concept in psychoanalysis? This is a valid question to start with because, if we turn to the Index of Stratchey’s Standard Edition of Freud’s complete work, it might surprise us that we find only two references to acting out listed

Most people without an interest in psychoanalysis do not know what it is. To the man in the street, psychoanalysis – indeed, anything carrying the prefix psy-  - denotes something in the field of psychology, and so this is the closest reference most people have. To the uninitiated psychoanalysis is sometimes looked upon as a form of psychotherapy, and this

This is the first of two articles looking at the theory of the mirror stage in Lacan’s work. This first part looks at the presentation of the mirror stage as we find it in the Ecrits, specifically in the 1949 paper, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’. This is usually

The Lacanian maxims that psychoanalysis is a practice based on speech, and that the unconscious is structured like a language, are now so classical that they are almost boring. Elsewhere on this site these maxims are explored and their implications discussed. This post however is specifically about Lacan’s references to rhetoric. As Fink notes in his excellent Lacan to the Letter (p.72) Lacan’s

“That there are in the unconscious signifying chains which subsist as such, and which from there structure, act on the organism, influence what appears from the outside as a symptom, this is the whole basis of analytic experience” (Seminar V, 21.05.58., p.7). In this post I wanted to look at several passages from Lacan’s work that I think are particularly

The context – a lack of theoretical work on affects by the post-Freudians Most Lacanian writers commenting on affect note the fact that Lacan is often criticised by other theorists and schools for neglecting the dimension of affects. The issue of whether Lacan has a theory of affects – or gives enough place to affects in his theory – has