Lacanian psychoanalysis

Theory of change

The person changes when they cease to be captured by the master signifiers, the imaginary identifications and the modes of jouissance that sustained their symptom, and can take up another position with respect to their desire and to the lack that causes it.

Core ideas

1. The unconscious is structured like a language

   Lacan reformulates the Freudian unconscious by asserting that it functions according to the laws of the signifier: metaphor (condensation) and metonymy (displacement). It is neither a store of repressed contents nor an instinctual depth, but a signifying structure that manifests itself in slips, equivocations, dreams, jokes and symptoms. The clinic therefore listens to how the subject speaks rather than interpreting psychologically what they say, situating the work at the level of the signifier and not of the narrative ego. (Lacan, 1957, Écrits, 'The Instance of the Letter'; Lacan, 1964, Seminar 11).

2. The ego is imaginary; the subject of the unconscious is divided

   From the mirror stage onwards, the ego (moi) is constituted through identification with an image and functions as a defensive construction oriented towards coherence, mastery and misrecognition. The subject of the unconscious ($), by contrast, is an effect of language, divided, barred and decentred with respect to itself. Analysis does not strengthen the ego — that would reinforce alienation — but allows the division to become thinkable and operable. (Lacan, 1949, Écrits, 'The Mirror Stage'; Lacan, 1960, 'Subversion of the Subject').

3. Desire is caused by lack and is the desire of the Other

   Desire is not oriented towards an object that would satisfy it: it is structurally marked by a lack and is articulated in relation to the Other — the subject desires what they suppose the Other desires, and their desire is never filled. The clinic moves from the satisfaction of needs to the interrogation of the subject's position with respect to desire, avoiding responses in the form of objects, ideals or relationships that would plug the lack. (Lacan, 1958, 'The Signification of the Phallus'; Lacan, 1959-1960, Seminar 7).

4. Real, Symbolic and Imaginary are irreducible registers that had better not be confused

   The Imaginary refers to the image and to the ego; the Symbolic to language, law and the signifier; the Real to what is impossible to symbolise and returns as excess or trauma. Many clinical impasses arise from confusing registers: moralising the Real, intellectualising what is affective, or repairing with an image what demands structure. Distinguishing them — and, in the late teaching, thinking their Borromean knotting — orders the intervention. (Lacan, 1953, 'The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real'; Lacan, 1974-1975, Seminar 22).

5. The symptom is a signifying formation bound to jouissance

   The symptom is neither dysfunctional behaviour nor a deficit, but a formation of the unconscious with the structure of a metaphor, carrying a subjective truth and knotting a jouissance. That paradoxical satisfaction, which exceeds the pleasure principle, explains its resistance to change: the symptom does not yield to rational understanding. The treatment does not seek to suppress it, but to modify the subject's relation to their jouissance and to the meaning the symptom embodies. (Lacan, 1957, Écrits; Lacan, 1969-1970, Seminar 17).

6. Transference is a relation to the Other and is sustained by the subject supposed to know

   Transference is neither a real emotional bond nor an empathic alliance, but the enactment of the subject's relation to the Other, activated when the analysand supposes a knowledge in the analyst. Demands, idealisations and resistances are read as effects of discourse, not as needs to be satisfied. The analyst preserves the function by avoiding imaginary gratification and by holding themselves as cause of desire. (Lacan, 1964, Seminar 11; Lacan, 1960-1961, Seminar 8).

7. Diagnosis is structural and orients the direction of the treatment

   What defines a subject is not the manifest symptom but their relation to the signifier and to the law: neurosis rests on repression and on a question about desire; psychosis on the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father and the return in the Real; perversion on the disavowal of lack. This differentiation is decisive, since the handling of transference and of interpretation changes radically between structures. (Lacan, 1955-1956, Seminar 3; Lacan, 1958, 'On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis').

8. The intervention is punctual: a cut, a silence or an equivocation that produces an effect

   Instead of constructing long, explanatory interpretations, the analyst operates with minimal interventions that displace meaning: a cut at just the right point, a silence that does not cover over the lack, an equivocation that opens another reading. Interpretation aims at the signifying chain and at its effect, not at pedagogy or suggestion. (Lacan, 1958, 'The Direction of the Treatment'; Lacan, 1964, Seminar 11).

9. The end of analysis involves traversing the fantasy and rectifying the subjective position

   Change is measured neither by adaptation nor by immediate well-being, but by a subjective rectification: a shift in the subject's position with respect to their desire, their history and their jouissance. The traversing of the fantasy reconfigures the relation to object a and to lack, while the subject supposed to know declines; the subject assumes their saying and repetition loosens. (Lacan, 1964, Seminar 11; Lacan, 1967, 'Proposition on the Psychoanalyst of the School').

10. There is no sexual relation: sexuation, phallic jouissance and Other jouissance

    In his late teaching Lacan formalises the claim that 'there is no sexual relation' that can be written: man and woman are not complementary but two modes of inscription with respect to the phallic function. He distinguishes a phallic jouissance, tied to the signifier and to lack, from an Other or feminine jouissance that is not-all phallic. This reorients the clinic of love, of the symptom and of the partner beyond every ideal of complementarity. (Lacan, 1972-1973, Seminar 20, Encore).

Influences

• Freudian psychoanalysis
• Structural linguistics
• Structural anthropology
• Philosophy (Hegel, Kojève, Heidegger)
• Phenomenology / Hermeneutics
• Logic and mathematical topology

Key references

• Lacan, J. (2009). Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (B. Fink, Trad.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original 1966).
• Lacan, J. (1953). Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse (Discurso de Roma). En Écrits.
• Lacan, J. (1975). Le Séminaire, Livre I: Les écrits techniques de Freud (1953-1954). Paris: Seuil.
• Lacan, J. (1978). Le Séminaire, Livre II: Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse (1954-1955). Paris: Seuil.
• Lacan, J. (1981). Le Séminaire, Livre III: Les psychoses (1955-1956). Paris: Seuil.
• Lacan, J. (1986). Le Séminaire, Livre VII: L'éthique de la psychanalyse (1959-1960). Paris: Seuil.
• Lacan, J. (1991). Le Séminaire, Livre VIII: Le transfert (1960-1961). Paris: Seuil.
• Lacan, J. (1962-1963). Le Séminaire, Livre X: L'angoisse. Paris: Seuil (2004).
• Lacan, J. (1973). Le Séminaire, Livre XI: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse (1964). Paris: Seuil.
• Lacan, J. (1991). Le Séminaire, Livre XVII: L'envers de la psychanalyse (1969-1970). Paris: Seuil.
• Lacan, J. (1975). Le Séminaire, Livre XX: Encore (1972-1973). Paris: Seuil.
• Lacan, J. (1974-1975). Le Séminaire, Livre XXII: R.S.I. (inédito/establecimientos).
• Lacan, J. (2005). Le Séminaire, Livre XXIII: Le sinthome (1975-1976). Paris: Seuil.
• Fink, B. (1997). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Dor, J. (1985). Introduction à la lecture de Lacan. Paris: Denoël.
• Evans, D. (1996). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.
• Miller, J.-A. (1987). Interpretation in Reverse / Los signos del goce (cursos de la orientación lacaniana).