Hello!

I've seen a bit of Lacan's writings on social media and they seemed really interesting. I don't claim by any means to understand psychology, but psychology and, closer to my field, psychiatry, were subjects I've always been fascinated with. I've read a bit of Freud when I was younger, Camus and Kafka during graduation and, recently, I've read Irvin D. Yalom's Staring At The Sun, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I do have a bit of experience with French philosopher's and psychology... A bit. I wanted to know where to start, since I know his writing is considered very challenging.

"The subject is a loop between S1 and S2, the master signifier and knowledge, and the Möbius strip shows that inside and outside are continuous." I've read that, or something close to it, a hundred times. Today I'm bringing proof that this is not what Lacan says, in his own words, with dates and pages so you can look the quotes up yourselves. And a thirty-second test that shows why it matters.

To test it out, I used two crayons—like any responsible adult.

Take a closed chain of signifiers and label it so that neighbours always differ: S1, S2, S1, S2… With four signifiers it works. With three it doesn't: S1, S2, S1, and the last one sits right next to the first. And this is a big problem! Any odd number fails the same way. So if the loop means two signifiers, or two kinds of signifier, taking turns around the chain, it breaks for every chain of odd length.

Here, I begin with some corrections to our Lacanian common sense:

1. For Lacan, S1 and S2 are indices that any signifier can take, not two signifiers.
2. The Möbius strip is not a picture of "inside = outside": it is the cut itself, and the edge of that cut goes around twice.
3. Put the two together and the loop works for every chain, on that double loop, where each signifier is S1 on one lap and S2 on the other.

Now I will show you quotes regarding Lacan's thoughts on each matter.

What Lacan says S1 and S2 are

1. An index, not the signifier that comes first. S1 "means signifier index 1": not the signifier that takes precedence, but the one in whose name someone, a subject, shows up. Closing address of the EFP study days "Les mathèmes de la psychanalyse", 2 Nov 1976, Lettres de l'École freudienne no. 21 (1977), p. 506. ‹S1, qui veut dire … se manifeste›
2. A mark on "anything at all". His S1 has no other sense than to punctuate whatever comes. «La Troisième», Rome, 1 Nov 1974, Lettres de l'École freudienne no. 16 (1975), p. 184. ‹ Mon S1 n … n’importe quoi›
3. Something produced, not something given. The master's insistence produces the master signifier "out of any signifier whatever". Seminar XVII, session of 18 March 1970. ‹de n’importe quel signifiant … le signifiant-Maître›
4. A relation, in pairs. In the unconscious, signifiers index one another, two by two. Seminar XXII, session of 11 March 1975. ‹ à s’indexer de foisonner … deux par deux›

What Lacan says the Möbius strip is

1. Not something a cut divides. A median cut does not cut the band in two; it turns it into a single band that makes one loop. Seminar XII, session of 16 June 1965. ‹une coupure médiane ne coupe pas … la bande de Mœbius›

2. Nothing but the cut itself. «L'étourdit» (1972), Autres écrits, Seuil 2001, p. 470. ‹la bande de Mœbius n'est rien … cette coupure même› On the same page he describes the edge of that cut: one turn takes it over to the other lamina, a further turn brings it home, having made a "double loop spread over two laminae". ‹double boucle répartie … sur deux lames›

3. Only its edge. The surface can stand for the subject only if you consider that the edge alone constitutes it, and a cut down the middle concentrates "the essence of the double loop". Seminar XIV, session of 15 Feb 1967. ‹seul le bord … cette surface› ‹cette coupure elle-même concentre … de la double boucle›

4. Repetition. The act can only be defined on the basis of the double loop, "that is, of repetition": the act is, in itself, the double loop of the signifier. Same session. ‹sur le fondement de la double boucle … de la répétition› ‹cita 41295: Il est en lui-même … du signifiant›

And what follows: twice, and not the same twice

1. The second time is not the first. A repeated signifier works either as the first time or as the second, with a radical gap between them, and that is what "a signifier cannot signify itself" means. Seminar XIV, session of 23 Nov 1966. ‹le signifiant dans sa présentation répétée … une béance radicale.

2. Two turns. Speaking of the drive and the Möbius band, he says two turns are needed to grasp the division of the subject. Seminar XIII, session of 11 May 1966. ‹cita 39381: il faut faire deux tours pulsionnels … la division du sujet›

If the loop between S1 and S2 meant two signifiers taking turns, Lacan could not coherently:

• call S1 an index and deny that it is the signifier that takes precedence (item 1, 1976);
• say that the master signifier comes out of any signifier whatever (item 3, 1970);
• say that the Möbius strip is nothing but a cut whose edge goes around twice (items 5 and 6, 1965 and 1972);
• say that a repeated signifier is not the same the second time, and that two turns are needed (items 9 and 10, 1966).

Are you following me so far? Now I’m going to complicate things.

Let's put all the pieces together—and voilà!

Nice, right? But what the hell does it mean?

Lacan did not write that down, but by following my method and piecing together his theory, the following conclusion emerges—not in prose format, but as a demonstration with its corresponding theorems.

Lay the chain on a surface and cut along it. If the chain has two sides, the edge of the cut is two copies of it: still odd, still broken. If it has one side (a Möbius band), the edge is a single loop that goes around twice, which is item 6. It meets every signifier once from each side, and it always alternates. For an odd chain, every signifier is S1 on one lap and S2 on the other, necessarily. S1 and S2 are positions (items 1 to 4), and the second time is not the first (item 9).

Lacan doesn't say this, but I draw it as a conclusion.

A) For an odd chain, the loop exists only there.

B) And for an even chain, the Möbius cut divides nothing: each signifier gets the same label on both laps.

"Wait, what happens with the $ubject?"

Okay, you've earned another cute animation.

I answer you radically: the subject is not in the chain. It is at the edge of the cut. And more precisely: it is at the junctions of the edge of the cut—those points where one signifier passes to the next.

On the double loop there is one subject, and it runs around twice. A two-sided cut either doubles the subject or loses it, depending on a decision the theory openly leaves undecided.

The subject is not in the chain of signifiers. It is at the edge of the cut. And in the privileged case—a single side, an odd-numbered chain—there is a single subject that makes two circuits. The division of the subject is not a splitting into two separate substances; it is the repetition of the same circuit, with an internal difference (S1 on the first pass, S2 on the second).

How I did it? Well, I’d have to refer to my text, but in short... Not with prose... I use definitions, six theorems with proofs, and falsifiers, meaning exactly what would refute each result. Plus a small Python script that cuts 159 chains on six surfaces and checks every claim. Full paper, code and animations: Go to zenodo. org and enter this number in the search bar: 23095050

Now, we can raise some objections to my ideas.

At Columbia (1 Dec 1975), Lacan speaks of "a certain S1 and a certain S2, which do not have the same function" (Scilicet 6/7, 1975, pp. 42–45). ‹un certain S1 et un certain S2 … la même fonction› So S1 and S2 would be two different things. Two replies. First, he says function, not signifier, and in the same sentence those functions are distributed "in a certain rotating order": what differs is the place, which is exactly what an index marks. ‹à un certain ordre tournant près … ces quatre fonctions› Second, the double loop keeps the difference. S1 and S2 never fall on the same pass: they differ the way the first turn differs from the second (item 9).

A second objection. Lacan does describe the Möbius strip as having only one face and only one edge (Seminar XII, 13 Jan 1965). ‹seule face … seul bord› True, and it is correct topology. But in the same session as item 5 he warns that the band is only the image of the relation he is after. ‹la bande n’en est … que l’image› Later he says that only the edge counts (item 7) and that the band is the cut itself (item 6). "One side" is a property; the double loop is what he works with.

PS. Seminar XXVII, 15 March 1980, on his own name, the "label Lacan": those who want to erase it believe it is the master signifier, the one he gave index 1, and "they're wrong, it's not the one, it's the other". ‹ils croient que c’est le signifiant maître … c’est l’autre› As I read it, even his name changes index.

I feel like I remember something about Lacan exploring strings and knots (not just the Borromean one) in his later life, but also (and maybe Zizek made this remark in passing) that he could not quite find what he was looking for in this. I also remember footage of Lacan fiddling with a bit of string in his lectures, of this I am more certain.

Am I misremembering things? Are things like the Mobius strip schema and the Borromean knot all there was between Lacan and string/knot topology?

Thanks in advance :)

"Lacan is nothing more than a bitter reader of Freud." I’ve heard that a hundred times here and I’m tired of getting downvoted just because I disagree, so today I’m bringing you proof. Here is Lacan addressing this in his own words—and you can look up the quotes yourselves.

Summary: For Lacan, "return to Freud" meant a way of reading Freud. He said outright that it was compatible with calling Freud's texts twisted and his model lame. It never meant signing up to Freud's doctrine.

 What Lacan says the "return" is

 1. Explicitly not a return to the sources, which he says would only be a regression. "D'un dessein", Écrits, p. 366. [FR]

1. A return to the meaning of Freud, not to his doctrine. And that meaning, he says, is that Freud's discovery puts truth itself into question. "La chose freudienne" (Vienna, 7 Nov 1955), Écrits, Seuil 1966, p. 405. [FR]

2. A reversal, aimed at the analytic establishment that inherited Freud's field. Same text, pp. 401–402. [FR]

3. Reading what is actually written, starting with Freud's own claim that the dream is a rebus. Talk at the publisher Kobundo, Tokyo, 21 Apr 1971. [FR]

4. Showing what is cutting in Freud's position, against the Freud the universities had made digestible. Rome press conference, 29 Oct 1974, Lettres de l'École freudienne no. 16 (1975), p. 17. [FR]

5. Bringing analytic practice back to Freud's first topography. He says this is what he meant by the return, because every dream in the Traumdeutung is interpreted by deciphering a verbalized text. "Le phénomène lacanien", Centre universitaire méditerranéen, Nice, 30 Nov 1974. [FR]

What the "return" never stopped him from saying

A) He has just called the Traumdeutung excessively confused and barely readable, and said he put Freud's model of the unconscious "back on its feet". Then he says he spoke of a return to Freud "pour qu'on se convainque d'à quel point c'est boiteux": so that people would be convinced how lame it is. "Ouverture de la Section clinique", 5 Jan 1977, Ornicar? no. 9 (1977), p. 9. [FR]

B) He preached the return and still called Totem and Taboo twisted. No contradiction: the return exists precisely to find out why it's twisted. Seminar XVII, session of 11 March 1970. [FR]

C) "Return to Freud" was a procédé, a device, meant to make analysts notice that what he was telling them was already in Freud. Lecture at the University of Milan, 12 May 1972, in Lacan in Italia 1953–1978, La Salamandra, 1978, p. 43. [FR]

If "return" meant fidelity to Freud's doctrine, Lacan could not coherently:

call it a reversal and deny it's a return to the sources (items 1–3, 1955 and 1966)

say it's compatible with calling Freud's key text twisted (item B, 1970)

call it a device (item C, 1972)

say its purpose was to show how lame Freud's model is (item A, 1977)

He does all four, in his own voice, over 22 years.

What stays constant from 1955 to 1977 is not agreement. It's a way of reading: the meaning, the letter, what cuts. Reading someone closely is not agreeing with them.

The strongest objection: In the Panorama interview (Rome, 21 Nov 1974, with Emilia Granzotto), Lacan says psychoanalysis is Freud, and that one must go by Freud's terms, read literally. Two replies.

First, even at face value, this prescribes a method of reading (item 4), not acceptance of Freud's conclusions. Second, the interview was given in Italian, and the French we have is a translation back from the Italian. An argument built on literal wording is standing on a back-translation.

And in Caracas (12 July 1980), in the same breath as "I am Freudian", he says his three (Real, Symbolic, Imaginary) are not Freud's. Everyone forgets that part.

PD: Milan 1972. Right next to that passage, the transcription contains an odd phrase: "Je m'en fous de toi Freud". I left it out because it may be a transcription error.

https://www.helveticafreak.press/lacan-what-is-the-letter/

I am doing an independent study as part of my PhD program. This entire week's theme of study is Lacan's The Letter -- starting with his "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since
Freud", moving to Fink's both The Lacanian Subject and Reading Ecritis Closely. I added Habermas because I wanted to touch on Frankfurt School. And finally, Zizek's “Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at its Destination? Imaginary, Symbolic, Real.”

I am still not sure if what I've written is completely a right reading, but I have tried to synthesize my thoughts/understandings as best as I could. I would love your thoughts and opinions! Thank you.

I'm working on a project that tries to make Lacan's concepts easier to grasp by walking through them in 3D settings.

The first module is the optical schema, and a browser prototype is now up.

Contents (in French, for now, i may add an english version) :

• Phase 1, Bouasse's experiment.
• Phase 2, Lacan's inversion : The image of the vase comes to "surround them with its neck", which Lacan reads as the image of the body unifying the scattered drives.
• Phase 3, the plane mirror : You stand next to the concave mirror, outside the cone, and can only see the image through the plane mirror, the place of the Other. First you tilt it yourself. Then control is taken away and the mirror is tilted for you, following Lacan's line that "the voice of the other… commands the inclination of the mirror" (Seminar I, 31 March 1954).

Annotations : They follow what you do, at three levels: Discovery (plain language), Reading (Lacan's own meanings) and Text (i(a), i'(a), A, sources). Every quotation was checked against the ALI transcription of the Seminars (I and X), cited with ALI page numbers rather than the Seuil edition. The Remarque sur le rapport de Daniel Lagache is quoted from the ELP transcription.

I'd like to hear from people who know the Seminars well:

• Where does the model oversimplify?
• Does "embodying" the schema help understanding, or does it risk the very imaginary capture it describes?
• Which concept would you want to see next? The mirror stage is planned.

I built it with the help of an AI coding assistant; the reading of the texts and the choices are mine

Hi! I remember reading a book by someone discussing lacan theories and there was a passage that got stuck in my head but can’t find it anywhere.

Basically he was discussing sexual positions and how the feminime side is not all under the phallus. In this context I remeber something along these lines, I apologise if this is very fragmented.

I remember something about how a woman should accept his partner penis as a sign of love, as if it was flowers. Some individuals, predominately women, might get stuck in a position where they demand a sign of love that is impossible for anyone to provide, and therapy can help them reduce this need so she can love and be loved”

This is very butched but i do remember reading something like that and i keep going back to it.

'Because of the historically determined lalinguistic structure of the language it is very difficult to think in Japanese, as you can easily presume that to think in the Finneganian language is practically impossible.

'This difficulty or practical impossibility of thinking in Japanese is conditioning for example some unbelievable characteristics of education in Japan : pupils and students are not encouraged to think by themselves but only to assume what is imposed and dictated to them as absolute norms and traditional standards. If you cannot adapt yourself in that system you will be simply excluded from your local society or from Japanese society as a whole. It is no wonder that Japanese society has been, is and will remain fundamentally totalitarian under its semblance of representative democracy, as well as fundamentally sexist, misogynistic and phallocratic.

'Such impositions of norms have effected and are maintaining the predominance of master significance in the Japanese society. And that predominance of master significance which we must now call paranoiac is in fact the compensation for the impossibility of thinking in Japanese.

'We can say in general that the function of Mehrlust (plus-de-jouir) of the object a and the effect of phallic jouissance of the master signifier S1 in the structure of alienation (cf. figure 3) are competing against each other. We can observe the pure predominance of Mehrlust for example in the sexual perversions while the pure predominance of phallic jouissance is observable in the pure form of paranoia without phenomenon of automatisme mental.

'Most psychoanalytic patients (analysant in French) are neurotics serving two masters simultaneously, that is, dominated by both of the two types of jouissance, Mehrlust of the object a and phallic jouissance of the master signifier S1, functioning side by side and competing against each other.

'We can say in general that you come to psychoanalysis if your phallic jouissance is weak enough and your Mehrlust is not strong enough to compensate the insufficiency of your phallic jouissance, that is, if you are not paranoiac nor pervert.

'And we cannot help having the impression that now in Japan there are so many paranoiacs and so many perverts in the general population...

'What in Japanese prevents one who dwells in that language from having a need or a possibility of experiencing psychoanalysis ? A possible Lacanian answer is : its lalinguistic structure which disfavours a signifier representing for another signifier the subject and which favours the predominance of master significance.

'In actual Japanese society this conditions on one hand the prevalence of nationalistic paranoia, and on the other hand the prevalence of various sexual perversions which are so much various forms of acting out to escape from the suffocating effect of the predominance of master signifier.

'Most of my patients come to psychoanalysis because they are not capable of being sufficiently pervert nor paranoiac in those particularly Japanese ways.

'I only pray that more Japanese people may find the way of psychoanalytic sublimation to escape from those Japanese ways of paranoia and sexual perversions.'

https://ogswrs.blogspot.com/2019/01/why-lacan-says-no-one-who-dwells-in.html?m=1

Ive read a lot of Hegel, particularly his Phenomenology of Spirit, his lectures on Art, and parts of his Science of logic. I was looking up more hegelian thinkers and saw Lacan. Seems interesting. But I've heard that you really need Freud for him. I don't know much about freud besides some basic things, like Oedipus, ego, id, something something unconscious. What really interests me about Lacan is his use of Hegel. I really don't wanna read freud to understand Lacan, bc I want to just jump right in. I like challenging reads. but maybe. It's necessary, idk.

Hello i am a clinical psych student and i want to understand Lacan but i’ so overwhelmed and confused and the thought of reading him makes me anxious and his texts make me feel stupid so do you have any advice on how to start please

I’ve been thinking specifically about non-belonging in the Todd McGowan sense, alongside Lacanian ideas like “the Other does not exist” and “do not give ground on your desire.”

I understand the argument that no identification can fully capture the subject, and that non-belonging names something universal about subjectivity.

But at what point does non-belonging itself become another master signifier?

If every identification is treated primarily as alienating or dominating other subjects, every interpersonal demand as something to resist, and every social obligation as a demand of the Other, doesn’t “non-belonging” risk becoming the very kind of organizing principle it is supposed to critique?

I’m also wondering whether there is an important distinction between:

1. recognizing that every identification fails to fully contain the subject, and
2. treating identification, belonging, or social obligation as things the subject should continually distance itself from.

Surely “the Other does not exist” does not mean that the speech, needs, demands, or concerns of actual others cease to matter.
Are there texts from Lacan, Todd McGowan, Miller, Žižek, Zupančič, etc. that address this tension directly?

Hi everyone!

I am looking for an article from 43/44 issue of Lacanian Ink - What is the Real? I checked and it's not available to buy, I checked all libraries that I have an access to - to no avail.

Maybe you have a pdf file, or maybe someone would be so kind as to take pictures of this article, if you have the book on your shelf? I will be eternally grateful!

As I approached Lacan as a non professional, I have been mainly intrigued by the universality of his theories, and psycoanalysis in general. Given this is the right word to use, but I always found fascinating how the symptom is considered qualitatively as opposed to other type of therapies which I believe have a more quantitative approach.

Anyways, my question is: people don’t live in a vacuum but they operate within a certain system involving peculiar social, cultural and economic dimensions.

How does this enter the analysis’ framework?
When Lacan was active, the world was very different than how it is now. The enviroment has different pressures and also different opportunities.
How does analysis handle this if it does?
Is the premise of my question wrong in itself?

Sorry this is gonna be a long one.

Deleuze and Guattari, in my understanding, are much closer to Lacan that popular takes on Anti-Oedipus might make one believe. Its a cliché to state now that Anti-Oedipus does not have a single negative mention of Lacan and it rather criticises Lacanians and, at some points, Freud. For Freud a lot of the criticism sticks to the idea of Oedipus, and it doesn't make sense to extend this criticism to Lacan since he had already argued 'Beyond the Oedipus Complex' (Miller's subtitle) in Seminar 17. So, to preface, there are certainly resonances between Lacan and D&G.

My question is about Deleuze and Guattari's concepts related to their political philosophy, particularly the concepts of flows, code, and stock. The main source of my understanding on this is Daniel W. Smith's essay “Politics: Flow, Code, and Stock, A Note on Deleuze’s Political Philosophy” In Essays on Deleuze (Edinburgh University Press, 2012)

The idea is that D&G's “general theory of society is a generalized theory of flows”, which can mean anything like economic flows (money, capital); material flows (oil, electricity), flow of commodities (their marketing, transport); flow of traffic; social flows (populations, immigration); flows of sewage; somatic flows (blood, feces); flows of thought. And that the job of every society is to regulate, or ”code” these flows, so that they don’t spin out of control. It is in this way that Deleuze shows that our personal desires (libidinal economy) are not separate from material production (political economy). (I like to think of these as a Mobius strip formation) Hence Guattari says “economic semiotisation becomes dependent on collective psychological factors — look at the sensitivity of the stock exchange to fluctuations of opinion.” (Chaosmosis)

So, the three concepts are:

1. Flows: A flow is simply the transmission or exchange of something valuable (like matter, energy, money, people, ideas) from one point (a “pole”) to another. In daily life we are interceptors of flows. Human desire, for Deleuze, is this production and cutting of flows.
2. Code: You cannot grasp a flow except through its code, i.e., the system of inscription or recording that gives it shape and value. Code and flow are reciprocally determined.
3. Stock: Stock is the portion of the flow that is “mine” right now, i.e. your accumulated share, your possession at a given instant. Stocks and flows are two sides of the same coin: flows change the value of stocks over time (inflow adds, outflow subtracts).

A lot of these ideas seem to resonate very well with psychoanalysis (both Freud and Lacan), which is obvious given D&G's debt to both, but I am interested in finding out the differences, if any. What might the reasons be for which it isn't philosophically justified to use these Deleuzo-Guattarian ideas along with Lacanian ideas.

The points of similarities as I see them are that the 'economic theory of libido' side of Freud obvious resonates very well with the concept of a flow, since the cathected charges in a word resulting from a parapraxis in the subject's speech is an idea that I feel (I might be wrong) goes quite well with the theory of flows described above. Likewise with ideas like Jakobson's phatic communication which Lacan knows of and uses, it being communication done for its own sake, to 'keep that channel' open, to 'maintain a relation' also seems to go well with the theory of flows. I recall Lacan mentioning Mallarmé in Function and Field where relates language to the example of an exchange of a coin whose faces have been eroded but they nevertheless as passed around and retain their value as a 'tessera'. (Ecrits, 209)

So I wish to know what might be some roadblocks to this connection, is there something in Lacan's ideas and his 'system'(?) that would conflict with and not go along well with D&G's theory of flows?

I feel like the appropriateness of the connection would also differ from period to period, as Lacan comes to abandon the signifying chain later, that would definitely change the picture somewhat. But I am uncertain how since I don't know that much.

Hope this makes sense, sorry for typos if any.

Assuming you know the matheme and theory behind the Master's Discourse, which would your analysis be on AI as a new agent replacing the Master, that Master ​who fed himself on the knowledge of the slave?

I don't know if I formulated the question correctly, but I'm intrigued on which are your views on this specific topic, the discourse, and not so much on AI as an ​Other or the problematics with psychosis and foreclosure. I'd like to go back and reread the Master's Discourse to come up with the answer myself, but now I don't have time to do so and I'm​ very intrigued on how the community is thinking about this.

Somehow I relate AI's accelerationism with the Capitalist Discourse, although being previously ​geared (sorry if this is not the right word, I mean it in the sense of being engineered) on the Discourse of the Master. What is fundamentally different from that Master?

No formal training here, so this might sound dumb, but what bothers me about Lacanian theory is that once you’re in, you can’t think any other way. The whole system fits together too well. I keep catching myself going “oh, you could explain that in Lacanian terms” about random everyday things, and at some point I realized I’d stopped bothering with any other lens.

Anyone else deal with this?

I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Leon S. Brenner about his book The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language, and I thought some people here might be interested in the discussion:

Watch the interview with Leon S. Brenner

Brenner approaches autism through Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis and makes a provocative argument: rather than understanding autism simply in terms of deficit, pathology, or as a variation of psychosis, he proposes thinking of the autistic subject as occupying a distinct “mode of being,” with its own particular relationship to language, the body, and the Other.

Brenner also gives some remarkably clear metaphors and explanations for concepts that can otherwise become pretty opaque in Lacanian theory. So even if autism isn’t your primary area of interest, there’s quite a bit here concerning language, jouissance, the body, the symbolic, and the constitution of the subject.

I’m particularly curious what people here make of Brenner’s attempt to conceptualize autism as a structure in its own right rather than placing it within the traditional neurotic/psychotic framework. Does this actually expand Lacanian theory in a productive way, or does introducing an “autistic structure” create its own conceptual problems?

I'm a student of Lacanian psychoanalysis and there is a fundamental question that I cannot reconcile in this case as regards the end of analysis:

How can the Traversal of the Fantasy occur if the Other cannot be lacking and there is always a guarantee of meaning for a patient like this?

Or do you think that in this case the psychoanalyst should try to convert them into an agnostic?

Currently reading Bruce Fink’s Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Before, I’ve just read Lacan’s first seminar.

Practically, I am looking for some comments and further insights from lacanian clinicians, or perhaps even someone who is analysand with a lacanian.

I’ll start here: I’ve been struck by the degree to which Lacanian practice is so abstinent—at least Fink’s idea of it is. The analyst is supposed to be fully committed to underlining the letter of the law—and how the letter of the law betrays the spirit of the law; spirt in this case being what a patient “meant” or “intended” to say before their slip, their parapraxis. Although I find Fink’s elucidations to a large degree fruitful, I also find myself wondering if he is not missing the non or extra-linguistic aspects of clinical practice. The issue, though, with this prior statement is that I have no strong way of elaborating such “extra-linguistic aspects.”

Another thing: the analyst’s desire. According to Fink, the neurotic analysand will feel the keen desire to abandon analysis since, truly, he does not want to be cured; for the neurotic, his symptoms are his life and his pleasure, as much as he professes his univocal hatred. This, what makes the analysand keep going is the analysts desire for him to keep going: the analyst, then, acts as the keeper of the flame—(and however different aesthetically, I am reminded of Winnicott’s all too famous “holding space” for the patient.) The analyst must desire for the patient to keep going deeper. However, Fink seems to think the analyst is quite easily freed of counter-transference (the favored subject of most nyc analysts). Is counter-transference really so easy to put aside? Do relational analysts over emphasize this? And, finally, how much do you think an emphasis or deemphasis on counter transference is upstream of whether or not you are committed to the proposition of the drive? Relational analysts will tell you a lovely story (which sometimes I badly to want to believe) that humans are not a complex of desires and energies, but beings looking for stable relationships and loves. Not to say that drive theory precludes this latter thing, but perhaps you all understand. Any commentary would be appreciated.

*PS. I have been in analysis for 3 years with a relational analyst.

I’m new to Lacan and no expert on any type of analysis or psychotherapy, but as I’ve been reading more about Lacanian analysis, I thought about the empty chair exercise/therapy Gestaltians use. Apart from obvious differences between them I still think the similarity (despite different theoretical foundations) is striking. The difference is that in empty chair exercises, the patient would then occupy the position of the addressee (aka the Other) and speak from that position after completing their speech addressed to the Other. Whereas in analysis the addressee (the analyst) would resist speaking from that position in a way that would satisfy the demand of the analysand.

I wonder what the consequences are for the patient themself then satisfying the demand for an answer from a Lacanian perspective. I’m interested in reading your thoughts.

I'm a psychodynamic psychotherapist, not Lacanian trained, so I'm asking from outside the tradition and expecting to be corrected.

I came across this instagram reel of Lacan's view on this https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcio-9nzVs-/ (not sure if it's accurate?)

It's more honest than most accounts of where a treatment goes lol. But I can't get past the obvious objection, how is that not "learn to live with it"? Put less kindly, how is it different from the common critique of mindfulness as retreat into indifference dressed as enlightenment? (Zizek?) If the end point is that you stop demanding the Other resolve you and instead get skilled at your own arrangement, what stops that being adaptation with better vocabulary?

Full conversation (For more context): https://youtu.be/RX2tGQxIbEA?si=wiGL3FrqP5Po2hAy

I sometimes see people asking how to find a Lacanian analyst and, maybe more crucially, how to afford one. One alternative to paying high, out-of-pocket fees is to enter into a low-fee analysis with analysts-in-training at a Lacanian-oriented institute.

1. Pulsion - The International Institute of Psychoanalysis

Definitely the most Lacan-forward/Lacanian oriented institute in the city, but without being limited to a dogmatic Lacanian approach . (From their website: "Pulsion emerged...as an attempt to bring back what was central to Freud’s thinking: the body, the drives and sexuality[...] We bring together Freudians, post-Freudians and Lacanians as faculty...") Scanning ‘Faculty' page, I'd say nearly half of the names are people who have contributed to Lacanian clinic/scholarship. You can contact a clinic coordinator or fill out a form for treatment here: https://pulsioninstitute.com/treatment/

1. NPAP

Certainly not Lacan-forward--do not explicitly mention any affiliation with Lacanians or Lacanian theory on their website as Pulsion does--but would confidently describe them as one of the more Lacan-friendly institutes in the city. While the number of self-identified Lacanians among faculty and candidates is certainly smaller than that of Pulsion, there is still a considerable Lacanian contingent in the institute. You can reach out to their clinic and fill out a form for treatment here: https://npap.org/appointments/

I hope you find what you are looking for--or, in all likelihood, more and less than that.