Lacan a Beginner's Guide
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An "Authentic Wholeness" Synthesis of Jungian and Existential Analysis
Modern Psychological Studies Volume 5 Number 2 Article 3 1997 An "authentic wholeness" synthesis of Jungian and existential analysis Samuel Minier Wittenberg University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.utc.edu/mps Part of the Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Minier, Samuel (1997) "An "authentic wholeness" synthesis of Jungian and existential analysis," Modern Psychological Studies: Vol. 5 : No. 2 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholar.utc.edu/mps/vol5/iss2/3 This articles is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals, Magazines, and Newsletters at UTC Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Modern Psychological Studies by an authorized editor of UTC Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An "Authentic Wholeness" Synthesis of Jungian and Existential Analysis Samuel Minier Wittenberg University Eclectic approaches to psychotherapy often lack cohesion due to the focus on technique and procedure rather than theory and wholeness of both the person and of the therapy. A synthesis of Jungian and existential therapies overcomes this trend by demonstrating how two theories may be meaningfully integrated The consolidation of the shared ideas among these theories reveals a notion of "authentic wholeness' that may be able to stand on its own as a therapeutic objective. Reviews of both analytical and existential psychology are given. Differences between the two are discussed, and possible reconciliation are offered. After noting common elements in these shared approaches to psychotherapy, a hypothetical therapy based in authentic wholeness is explored. Weaknesses and further possibilities conclude the proposal In the last thirty years, so-called "pop Van Dusen (1962) cautions that the differences among psychology" approaches to psychotherapy have existential theorists are vital to the understanding of effectively demonstrated the dangers of combining existentialism, that "[when] existential philosophy has disparate therapeutic elements. -
Imaginary Democracy
Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol. 33 (1998), 31-54 IMAGINARY DEMOCRACY 0JVIND LARSEN Copenhagen Business School The imaginary democracy theory should be of equal interest to sociology and the study of politics. The task of sociology is to interpret the imaginary as it comes to expression in the symbolic order of social institutions. Just as the task of psychoanalysis is to discover the suppressed pathological traits of the soul, the task of sociology is to uncover the sup- pressed pathological traits of institutions. The role of the study of politics in this theory is to come to a fundamental understanding of the political as an imaginary relationship. Introduction Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, very few people looked at what characterizes democracy itself. Democracy was first and foremost understood as the opposite of the totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe. This is no longer the case. Today there is no other form of rule which competes with democracy. It is therefore quite natural that a great interest has arisen in finding out what it is then that characterizes democracy. In this context, there is a danger that de- mocracy simply becomes identified with the particular historical form it has taken for us. By making such an identification, there is a risk that we will never come to an understanding of democracy itself, but merely confuse it with a particular historical form. There is, in other words, need for an understanding of democracy through which we have the opportunity to relate to the historical forms which democracy has taken not just in our time, but throughout history. -
Objet Petit A,” Once Socialist-Modernist City Square Into a Theatrical Backdrop
She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you? – Norman Bates in Psycho This essay is an galma dedicated to the Macedonian government’s project “Skopje 2014,” 01/09 which recently turned Skopje, the capital of the Republic, into a memorial park of “false memories.”1 Over the last five years, a series of unskillfully casted figurative monuments have appeared throughout Skopje, installed over the night, as if brought into public space by the animated hand from the opening credits of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.2 Figures from the Suzana Milevska national past (some relevant, some marginal), buildings with obvious references to Westernized aesthetic regimes (mere imitations of styles from çgalma: The periods atypical for the local architecture), and sexist public sculptures have transformed the ‟Objet Petit a,” once socialist-modernist city square into a theatrical backdrop. Alexander the ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMore than ninety years ago, in a kind of a manifesto of anti-monumental architectural and artistic revolution, Vladimir Tatlin challenged 4 Great, and 1 both the “bourgeois” Eiffel Tower and the Statue 0 2 of Liberty with his unbuilt tower Monument to the e j p Third International (1919–25). Since then, Other Excesses o k S discourses on contemporary monuments have f o flourished elsewhere in Europe (“anti- s of Skopje 2014 e monuments,” “counter-monuments,” “low- s s e budget monuments,” “invisible monuments,” c x E “monument in waiting,” “participatory r 3 e monuments” ) but this debate has completely h t O a bypassed the Macedonian establishment. k d s n v ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe government’s promise that the Skopje a e l , i t 2014 project would attract tourists and a M e a r journalists to Macedonia has been realized, but n G a e z for all the wrong reasons – in many articles, h u t S r Ê Skopje’s city center is depicted as a kind of e 4 d 1 “theme park,” and some of the newly built n 0 a 2 x r museums are referred to as “chambers of e l e 4 b A horrors.” In short, Skopje 2014 has become a m ” , e a t laughing stock for the foreign press. -
Mirrors of Culture1
Mirrors of Culture1 Carla Freccero In 1936 and again, in revised form, in 1949, Jacques Lacan delivered a lecture resonant in its arguments with some of the mirror neuron findings (and applications)—including the neurocultural ramifications—of “How Stories Make Us Feel” and “Literary Biomimesis.” That lecture, presented at the Sixteenth International Congress of Psychoanalysis, was what we’ve come to call “The Mirror Stage,” “Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je telle qu’elle nous est révélée dans l’expérience psychanalytique” (1966, 93-100; translated in 2002, 3-9). There he argued that young animals of the homo sapiens sapiens subspecies first understand their objectal future being—that is, first identify as human—by viewing an image of themselves in a mirror and watching as the image moves—fluidly, seamlessly, perfectly and holistically, so it seems to the young animal— in correspondence with and contrast to his own chaotic and triumphant flailing as he is supported by maternal arms or some other prosthetic device (a “trotte bébé” in French: the translators call it a “walker”). In a breathtaking—and breathless—sentence, Lacan sums up what, for him, is the consequence, for humans, of the formative effects of mimetic identification with a Gestalt: This development is experienced as a temporal dialectic that decisively projects the individual’s formation into history: the mirror stage is a drama whose internal pressure pushes precipitously from insufficiency to anticipation—and, for the subject caught up in the lure of spatial identification, turns out fantasies that proceed from the fragmented image of the body to what I will call an “orthopedic” form of its totality—and to the finally donned armor of an alienating identity that will mark his entire mental development with its rigid structure. -
Lacan's Objet Petit a Between Visibility and Invisibility
Cont Philos Rev (2013) 46:251–269 DOI 10.1007/s11007-013-9263-z ‘‘The object in the mirror of genetic transcendentalism: Lacan’s objet petit a between visibility and invisibility,’’ Adrian Johnston Published online: 4 June 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract One of the more superficially perplexing features of Lacan’s notion of objet petit a is the fact that he simultaneously characterizes it as both non-specu- larizable (i.e., incapable of being captured in spatio-temporal representations) and specular (i.e., incarnated in visible avatars). This assignment of the apparently contradictory attributes of visibility and invisibility to object a is a reflection of this object’s strange position at the intersection of transcendental and empirical dimensions. Indeed, this object, which Lacan holds up as his central psychoanalytic discovery, raises important philosophical questions about the transcendental- empirical distinction, arguably short-circuiting in interesting, productive ways this dichotomy and many of its permutations. This article seeks to achieve two aims: one, to clarify how and why Lacan situates object a between the specular and the non-specular; and, two, to extract from the results of this clarification a preliminary sketch of a post-Lacanian transcendentalism that is also thoroughly materialist. Keywords Lacan Á Mirror stage Á Object a Á Transcendentalism Á Materialism Á Hegel The object of Jacques Lacan’s thirteenth seminar of 1965–1966, entitled ‘‘The Object of Psychoanalysis,’’ is, unsurprisingly, none other than his (in)famous objet petit a, the object for which he takes the credit of discovering.1 In the opening session of this academic year, a session written-up and published separately as the e´crit ‘‘Science and Truth,’’ Lacan establishes a sharp contrast between scientific 1 Lacan (1973–1974, April 9th, 1974). -
Enantiodromia 1
Enantiodromia 1 Anna Mlasowsky University of Washington A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Fine Arts University of Washington 2016 Committee: Ellen Garvens Doug Jeck Scott Lawrimore Jamie Walker Program Authorized to Offer Degree: School of Art 1 ©Copyright 2016 Anna Mlasowsky 2 University of Washington Abstract Enantiodromia Anna Mlasowsky Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Doug Jeck School of Art Multiplicity 2 and the bridging of opposing realities is a central theme in my work. This multiplicity speaks to a physical disconnection between places as well as to a mental state of disassociation. Through process I enable likewise contradiction and unification. I use materials to reconcile the opposite ends of a spectrum of transformation. Documentation allows me to extract and distill the essence of an action performed in my studio. I use the body in the same way I use materials. I watch its influence on a space, situation and condition and force it to enter interim stages somewhere between pleasure and pain. The resulting pieces capture a metaphysical quest into metamorphic zones that show our interconnectivity to all reality, visible and invisible. The Body 3 In my practice moments of anxiety, discomfort, fear and risk have found a central place. While frightening, they have also been pleasurable. Control through restraint and direction seems to be an allowance for unrestricted and fearless pleasure. In “The Well” (fall 2015, fig. 1) a body is slowly submerging into an undefined depth of water. While submerged in water, the body becomes the only known, the only orientation and place. -
Psychoanalysis: the Impossible Profession
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE IMPOSSIBLE PROFESSION by Janet Malcollll A JASON ARONSON BOOK ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK A JASON ARONSON BOOK ROWMAN & LITILEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom THE MASTER WORK SERIES CopyriJht o 1980, 1981 by Janet Malcolm Published by arranaement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Most of this book was fust published in The New Yorker. All riahts reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Jason Aronson Inc. except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. ISBN: 1-56821-342-S ISBN 978-1-5682-1342-2 Library of CODJI'CSS Cataloa Card Number: 94-72518 Manufactured in the United States of America. Jason Aronson Inc. offers books and cassettes. For information and cataloa write to Jason Aronson Inc., 230 Livinpton Street, Northvale, New Jersey 07647. To my father It almost looks as if analysis were the third of those "im possible" professions in which one can be sure beforehand of achieving unsatisfying results. Tho other two, which have been known much longer, are education and government. -SIGMUND FREUD, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937) As psychoanalysts, we are only too aware that our profession is not only impossible but also extremely difllcult. -
Syllabus PT 154 Comparative Psychoanalysis T. Morgan Fall 2018
Syllabus PT 154 Comparative Psychoanalysis T. Morgan Fall 2018 Wed. 3:30-5:30 CMPS: 30 Clock Hours NYGSP: 2 Credits Course Description This semester’s work will familiarize candidates with the motifs, idioms and preoccupations of a not- exhaustive list of schools of psychoanalysis as well as field influencers who fall between the theoretical cracks. We will aim to traverse a cross-section of meta-psychologies, diverse understandings of the human subject, unique concepts of cure, and (to the degree that ways of working are made apparent), various clinical techniques. Modern candidates will have the opportunity to prepare to interact with the ideas of many psychoanalytic tribes. Toward that end we will whet our appetites for Kleinian, Relational, Contemporary Freudian, Lacanian, Intersubjective, Feminist, and Interpersonal points of view. Objectives The candidate will be able to: • think historically about the genesis of transformations and developments in the field of psychoanalysis; • identify themes germane to discrete schools of psychoanalytic thought; and • employ psychoanalytic terminology such as “repression, conflict, dissociation, co-construction, thirdness, drive derivatives, internalized objects, regression, self-states, symbolization, “not-me”, trauma, wish, projective identification, introject, adaptation, ego defense, enigmatic messages, object a, attacks on linking, and more. Requirements *Reading requirements will, on average, tally about 50 pages a week. Pay attention to feelings aroused by the readings. *Come to class prepared to share what you loved and hated about the readings. *Submit, every other class, a 2-3 page, double-spaced written exploration of the last two week’s readings. Find what interests you and elaborate upon it. Email it to the instructor at [email protected] by Sunday before 6 pm the class before it is due if you want written commentary. -
The Apres-Coup, Apres Coup: Concerning Jean Laplanche Problématiques VI
The Apres-Coup, Apres Coup: Concerning Jean Laplanche Problématiques VI. L’Après-Coup1 Sergio Benvenuto Italian Council for Scientific Research Abstract Here the author examines the question of après-coup (afterwardsness) in psychoanalysis, commenting in particular on Jean Laplanche’s book, Après-Coup. The author appreciates Laplanche’s determination to avoid either a positivist interpretation of après-coup (as a “delay-action bomb”, as simply a delayed psychic effect) or an hermeneutic interpretation that makes of it a post-factum re-signification of past events. Yet at the same time, the author shows that Laplanche’s solution— which assumes an initial trauma to the subject, who must “translate” an ambiguous and enigmatic message originating from an adult other—ends up being, in effect, a clever combination of the two approaches, positivist and hermeneutic, that Laplanche was trying to avoid. Laplanche advances a much too linear theory, placing “the other” (that is, the desire of the adult) at the beginning of the process, while Lacan’s approach to après-coup opens up far more complex and disturbing perspectives for psychoanalysis. The author, having shown the limitations of Laplanche’s result (“the primacy of the other”), proposes his own interpretation of après-coup, wherein it would connect, in a unique way, the cause and the sense of the psychic world: a subsequent event in some way makes the sense of a preceding event to function as the cause of later psychic phenomena or symptoms. Introduction In time, later, we realize that the question of nachträglich – après-coup in French – is one of the central knots of psychoanalysis. -
Psycho-Analysis
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS VOLUME X II OCTOBER 1931 PART 4 ORIGINAL PAPERS THE THERAPEUTIC EFFECT OF INEXACT INTERPRETATION : A CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEORY OF SUGGESTION BY EDWARD GLOVER LONDON Psycho-analytic interest in theories of cure is naturally directed for the most part to the curative processes occurring in analytic treatment : the therapeutic effect of other methods is, nowadays at any rate, more a matter of general psychological interest. In earlier times, of course, it was necessary to pay special attention to the theoretical significance of non-analytic psychotherapy. Statements were frequently bandied about that psycho-analysis was nothing more than camouflaged suggestion : moreover, the fact that analytic method was based on experiences derived from situations of rapport between physician and patient, as for example, in hypnosis, made some theoretical differentia tion desirable. Most discussions of the ‘ resolution of transference ’ can be regarded as contributions to this problem, affording a rough but serviceable distinction between analytic and other therapeutic methods. And the special studies of Freud (1) on group psychology, Ferenczi (2) on transference, Ernest Jones (3) on suggestion and auto-suggestion, Abraham (4) on Couéism and an unfinished study by Radö (5) on the processes of cure, have given a broader theoretical basis to this differentiation. Nevertheless we are periodically stimulated to reconsider the relations between different forms of psychotherapy, more particularly when any advance is made in analytic knowledge. When such advances occur we are bound to ask ourselves, ' what happened to our cases before we were in a position to turn this fresh knowledge to advantage ? ' Admittedly we would not be under this obligation had we not previously used terms such as ‘ cure ', ' thorough analysis etc., etc. -
Lacan and Foulkes1
Volume 1 (Issue 2), 2012 GROUP ACTS AND MISSED ENCOUNTER: LACAN AND FOULKES1 Erica Burman Prologue The theme of action outside speech typically does not gain positive treatment in psychoanalytical contexts, with all such action vulnerable to being designated “acting out”, or at best “acting in”. But the question “how to act” transcends such false oppositions between acting and not acting, to topicalise instead ethical responsibility and social engagement. In this paper these themes are explored in terms of the relations between Lacanian psychoanalytic and Foulkesian group analytic ideas. The assertion of the priority of one model over the other, or the assimilation of one to the other is not aimed at here, but rather this paper seeks to highlight, and perhaps indicate, some potential evaluations of how each approach attempts to engage with the question of action. While Lacanian psychoanalysis often draws a strong boundary around the analytic space, resisting the generalization of psychoanalytic phenomena outside the clinic, the social model of the psyche to which group analysts are committed, means that no such absolute distinctions can be maintained. Paradoxically, group analysts seem rather more reluctant than Lacanians to discuss questions of ethics, preferring to talk about questions of democracy, although both models share an understanding of analytical process in terms of the 1 This article is a version of a paper delivered at APPI’s 17th Annual Congress (2010) entitled; How to Act – Ethics and the Psychoanalytic Clinic in a Culture of Suppression and Demand. 22 23 Lacunae promotion of (if also the impossibility of) free speech. The challenge therefore, is to find ways of both analyzing and intervening in, the contexts that give rise to analysis. -
British Psychoanalysis
British Psychoanalysis British Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives in the Independent Tradition is a new and extended edition of The British School of Psychoanalysis: The Independent Tradition, which explored the successes and failures of the early environment; transference and counter-transference in the psychoanalytic encounter; regression in the situation of treatment, and female sexuality. Published in the mid-1980s, it had an important influence on the development of psychoanalysis both in Great Britain and abroad, was translated into several languages and became a central textbook in academic and professional courses. This new, updated book includes not only many of the original papers, but also new chapters written for this volume by Hannah Browne, Josh Cohen, Steven Groarke, Gregorio Kohon, Rosine Perelberg and Megan Virtue. Addressing and reflecting on the four main themes of the first collection, the new papers discuss such subjects as: • a new focus on earliest infancy • new directions in Independent clinical thinking • the question of therapeutic regression • the centrality of sexual difference in Freud. They also highlight the connections between and the mutual influence of British and French psychoanalysis, now a critical subject in contem- porary psychoanalytic debates. British Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives in the Independent Tradition will be important not only to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psycho- therapists and the full spectrum of professionals involved in mental health. It will be of great value in psychotherapy and counselling training and an important resource for teaching and academic activities. Gregorio Kohon is a Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. His psychoanalytic publications include Reflections on the Aesthetic Experience: Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny, published by Routledge in 2016.