Exploring psychoanalysis through the work of Jacques Lacan
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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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How would you answer the question ‘What is psychoanalysis?’ For anyone interested in psychoanalysis, having to explain concisely what psychoanalysis is and what it involves can elicit more than a little uncertainty and perhaps even some dread. If someone who knew something about psychoanalysis was asked this question in polite company how should they respond? […]
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This documentary was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the autumn of 2000 to mark the centenary of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. As Freud scholars often remind us, this work was actually published first in 1899, but Freud had the publisher print the date as 1900, perhaps so as to not make the book […]
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Seminar II – The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954 – 1955 Chapter XIII – The Dream of Irma’s Injection (All quotations refer to The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954 -1955, Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, translated by Sylvana Tomaselli, […]
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The Unconscious 1915 Standard Edition Volume XIV Before going into depth on this important paper we can note the fact that at the very outset Freud differentiates between two different kinds of unconscious. He tells us that although what is repressed is unconscious, the unconscious is not simply the sum of the repressed: “The repressed […]
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On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love II) 1912 Standard Edition Volume XI Despite the huge volume of psychoanalytic work that deals with questions of sex, sexuality, and more recently sexuation, an interesting remark by Lacan in the late sixties suggests that in dealing with […]
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Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence 1896 Standard Edition Volume III The central thesis of the 1894 paper The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence restated: that it is possible to distinguish mechanisms in hysteria, obsession and hallucinatory psychosis which are not conscious but which serve to defend against an idea that is incompatible with the ego. The […]
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The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence 1894 Standard Edition Volume III Freud’s point of departure in this paper is the contemporary agreement between he, Breuer and Janet, on the idea that in hysteria there is a ‘splitting of consciousness’. Janet’s view is that the split is the result of constitutional weakness, degeneracy, which Janet believes is innate; […]
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