A psychoanalyst’s first lesson on words: the signifier enters the signified. To illustrate this point Lacan replaced Saussure’s tree with his own example, two bathroom doors with signs affixed, Ladies—Gentlemen. The little diagram that offered psychoanalysis a new way to think about signifiers evoked a childhood memory: “A train arrives at a station. A little [...]
Science and religion are different domains. Science invokes reason and aims for a universal knowledge that can be applied to various fields. The imperative to universalize matters less than the deployment of reason. Politics was first established as a science. The Greeks used to refer to politics as the “Master Science” because “politics determines the [...]
Vienna is the place where Freud discovered the unconscious, it is the birth place of psychoanalysis. Also, it is the place where psychoanalysis was wiped out in 1938. What can be said about psychoanalysis in Vienna now? How did and do psychoanalysts work with this radical hole, a hole in a place that once was [...]
The recent controversy regarding the Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, might be elucidated by Jacques Lacan’s famous “woman does not exist”. Marin is the youngest PM in Finnish history, taking office at 34, and often seen as a symbol, also outside of Finland, of feminist achievement. In August 2022, two private videos were leaked, which [...]
She was happy with her life. She was pleased with the beauty and order that reigned in her house, as well as the way that she took to work every day, which brought her through the most beautiful part of the city. After a childhood full of misfortunes, she managed to build her own little [...]
"When the space of a lapsus no longer carries any meaning (or interpretation), then only is one sure that one is in the unconscious. One knows. But one has only to be aware of the fact to find oneself outside it. There is no friendship there, in that space that supports this unconscious. All I [...]
Some critics of psychoanalysis, in particular the supporters of cognitive-behavioral therapies, argue for having a scientific approach, as we could read in a recent brochure concerning the therapeutic care of autistic people[1]. Even if the question of whether psychoanalysis is a science or not remains open, it nevertheless seems important to me to point out [...]
I Joan, a play which opened at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London last month, shows Joan of Arc as a legendary leader who uses the pronouns, they/ them. Lest it be criticised for historical inaccuracy, the theatre was proactive in affixing a special note by its artistic director: “Theatres do not deal with ‘historical reality’. [...]
Three years ago in Vienna, the effects of a new, fresh discourse met us for the first time. Unprepared and up close. During the second Zadig Vienna Forum "Wir alle sind Exilanten“ (We are all exiles), organised by the Vienna Initiative, suddenly loud protests by some students of the University of Applied Arts Vienna aroused. [...]
“It is not from too great an indocility of individuals that the dangers for the future of humanity will come.”[1] This complex sentence was uttered by Jacques Lacan in 1945 on his return to France from a trip to England. He was talking to fellow psychiatrists about how psychoanalysis had been used by the British [...]
