Questionnement sur le rapport entre psychanalyse et religion. Sous l'angle historique, l'ouvrage étudie trois courants, Freud, Jung, Lacan, chacun à partir d'une origine familiale différente : juive, protestante, catholique. L'auteur en déduit que la religion n'existe pas, mais qu'il existe des religions particulières s'incarnant dans le psychisme humain.

"Brilliant and innovative, Jacques Lacan's work lies at the epicenter of modern thought about otherness, subjectivity, sexual difference, the drives, the law, and enjoyment. This new translation of his complete works offers welcome, readable access to Lacan's seminal thinking on diverse subjects touched upon over the course of his inimitable intellectual career." This English edition is translated by Bruce Fink, in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg.

Introduction There are some exceptions, which we shall see below, but virtually all theories in psychology and cognitive science make use of the notion of representation. Arguably, folk psychology also traffics in representations, or is at least strongly suggestive of their existence. There are many different types of things discussed in the psychological and philosophical literature that are candidates for representation-hood. First, there are the propositional attitudes – beliefs, judgments, desires, hopes etc. (see Chapters 9 and 17 of this volume). (...) If the propositional attitudes are representations, they are person-level representations – the judgment that the sun is bright pertains to John, not a subpersonal part of John. By contrast, the representations of edges in V1 of the cerebral cortex that neuroscientists talk about and David Marr’s symbolic representations of “zero-crossings” in early vision (Marr 1982) are at the “sub-personal” level – they apply to parts or states of a person (e.g. neural parts or computational states of the visual system). Another important distinction is often made among perceptual, cognitive, and action-oriented representations (e.g. motor commands). Another contrast lies between “stored representations” (e.g. memories) and “active representations” (e.g. a current perceptual state). Related to this is the distinction between “dispositional representations” and “occurrent representations.” Beliefs that are not currently being entertained are dispositional, e.g. your belief that the United States is in North America - no doubt you had this belief two minutes ago, but you were not consciously accessing it until you read this sentence. Occurrent representations, by contrast, are active, conscious thoughts or perceptions. Which leads us to another important distinction: 1 between conscious and non-conscious mental representations, once a bizarre-sounding distinction that has become familiar since Freud (see Chapter 4 of this volume). I mention these distinctions at the outset to give you some idea of the range of phenomena we will be considering, and to set the stage for our central “problem of representation”: what is a mental representation, exactly, and how do we go about deciding whether there are any? We know there are public representations of various kinds: words, maps, and pictures, among others.. (shrink)

Connectionism—also known as parallel distributed processing, or neural network modeling—offers promise as a framework to unite clinical and cognitive psychology, and as a tool for studying conscious and unconscious mental activity. This paper describes a neural network model of the case study of Lucy R., from Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria. Though very simple in architecture, the network spontaneously displays analogues of repression and hallucination, corresponding to Lucy R.'s symptoms. Salient elements of Lucy's conscious experience are represented in the (...) model by the activations of neuronlike processors in a fully interconnected network, without hidden units. The model learns to associate elements of experience that were associated in Lucy's case history. Some of these configurations of elements were traumatic for Lucy; trauma is modeled in the network by "emphatic learning," learning accomplished at an abnormally high learning rate. The model suggests that changing associations among conscious elements are sufficient to generate the symptoms Freud observed: apparent repression, hallucination, and recovery through therapy. In the case of Lucy R., Freud's theoretical inference regarding active but unconscious thought is not required by his data. Instead, the unconscious can be understood as a set of complex dispositions embodied in connections between elements of conscious experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Searle and the ‘Deep Unconscious’”Dan Lloyd (bio)Can another person know my thoughts with better authority than I know them myself? With his affirmative answer to this question, Freud invented the twentieth-century human, a being whose mind is accessible to scrutiny from outside, and whose attempts at conscious self-explanation are at best partial and in many cases wrong. Even as Freud’s scientific influence wanes, the shift of authority (...) he inaugurated is still gathering strength. Now the mind is open to many outsiders. Not only psychoanalysts, but behaviorists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists are all striving to read my mind, and yours. Against this historical sea change stands the solitary John Searle, whose work is consistently animated by fierce adherence to first person authority and surly attacks of any theory that could be exploited to undermine that authority. To most readers Searle’s positions seem stubbornly anti-scientific and covertly dualistic, despite his insistence to the contrary. And since science is good and dualism is bad, Searle’s arguments have become standing obstacles for theorists to discuss, debate, or dismiss.Buttressing his insistence on first person authority, Searle defends a Cartesian view of mental representation or intentionality, holding that an intentional entity is a conscious entity, either in actuality or potentiality. Deeply unconscious representations are therefore impossible. Eric Gillett has joined the debate just here with a pointed critique of Searle’s argument (also discussed in Lloyd 1990). Gillett performs a double service by challenging Searle’s premises and offering some positive grounds for the deep unconscious. I agree with Gillett that establishing the existence of deeply unconscious representations requires a theory of intentionality that is independent of conscious awareness. Ruth Millikan’s evolutionary teleology is an excellent candidate, in its pursuit of real function and real content (vs. “as-if” interpretation) for mental items.Some questions remain. First, if deeply unconscious entities are clinically important, then in addition to a defense-in-principle of their existence we will need some method of identifying specific deep representations in particular cases. Millikan’s functionalism links content to broad biological and environmental contexts, and thereby seems to be an unwieldy tool for content ascription. If deeply unconscious representations get their content in the way Millikan describes, how can the clinician make use of them?Second, and more important, Millikan’s theory shares with many others the ambition to explain all intentional entities, conscious and unconscious alike. This leads to a new dualism of mental contents, a split between intentional content and conscious content, since the comprehensive theory of intentionality will assign mental content both [End Page 201] shallow and deep, irrespective of consciousness. This is a perplexity that transcends particular theories of intentionality, since what my mental states represent seems at least partly dependent on my environment or context, but my current state of consciousness is exclusively dependent on my brain. How, in theory, can these two concepts of content be reconciled?In sum, deeply unconscious representations do not come cheap. One way to escape the new dualism of content is to deny that the deep entities are representations. Instead, they might be dispositions or the “mechanisms, instinctual drives, structures, and energies which can never become conscious under any conditions,” as Gillett suggests. (In Lloyd 1994 I explore the possibility of a dispositional unconscious understood via connectionism.) On this view, mental content could remain within our first person authority, while the causal processes that manage that content remain out of sight. I wouldn’t have to guess what I’m thinking, but I would depend on the sciences of the mind to tell me how I come to think it.Related ArticlesFeature Article: Searle and the "Deep Unconscious"Commentary: Commentary by LloydDan Lloyd Dan Lloyd, Department of Philosophy, Trinity College, Hartford, CT 06106, U.S.A.ReferencesLloyd, D. 1990. Loose connections: Four problems with Searle’s argument for the ‘Connection Principle.’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13: 615–16. Google ScholarLloyd, D. 1994. Connectionist hysteria: Reducing a Freudian case study to a network model. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 1, no. 2: 69–88. Google ScholarCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 261-263 [Access article in PDF] The Philosophy of Evil Dan J. Stein Keywords philosophy, evil, self-deception, psychopathy, narcissism, sadism Kubarych (2005) first draws on Peck (1983) to suggest a distinction between psychopaths who have no conscience and therefore no need for self-deception, and evil narcissists who use self-deception to keep the emotional consequences of their crimes out of awareness. He then draws on (...) Davidson (1985) to emphasize a parallel between self-deception (or weakness of the warrant) where an irrational belief conflicts with the evidence, and akrasia (or weakness of the will) where an irrational intention is in conflict with one's values.Although self-deception has long been de-scribed and debated (Fingarette 2000; McLaughlin and Rorty 1988; Mele 2001), a cognitive-affective neuroscience of self-deception has become possible only recently. Such an approach includes several strands. First, contemporary information processing constructs (e.g., schemas) have been used to reframe the early insights of writers like Freud and James, and to emphasize how inattention to painful truths provide a shield against anxiety (Goleman 1997). Second, the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology has been used to emphasize the adaptive advantages of self-deception (Lockard and Delroy 1988). Third, functional brain imaging studies have noted increased activity in executive regions (e.g., prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices) during attempted deception but not during truthful responding, suggesting that the former requires active effort (Spence et al. 2004). The functional imaging of memory suppression suggests similar processes (Anderson et al. 2004). To date, however, there has been little functional imaging work on self-deception.Similarly, although evil has always been a key concern of philosophical thought, a cognitive-affective neuroscience of evil has emerged only in recent years (Stein 2000). Evil actions are not homogenous, and this area of research again comprises a number of different strands. First, there are actions where the primary aim is not necessarily to hurt, but where harm is in fact inflicted. (A contested, but perhaps useful example, is the battery-raising of animals for human consumption [Singer 2001]). Second, there are actions where the aim is to hurt, and where harm to the other may even be enjoyed. (During normal altruistic punishment, for example, reward circuitry is activated [de Quervain et al. 2004]). Third, there are actions characterized by impulsive aggression, and a relative absence of executive control. (There may be psychobiological distinctions between reactive aggression in response to frustration or threat, and instrumental aggression that is more goal directed [Blair 2004]).What are the implications of these two sets of cognitive-affective neuroscience literature for a philosophical consideration of evil and of narcissism? [End Page 261] It may be useful to differentiate healthy processes (e.g., having sufficient frontal cortical activity to be able to deceive others) from psychopathologic processes (e.g., not having the necessary frontal-amygdala circuitry required for empathic processing of emotions in social interaction). Similarly, it may be useful to differentiate between normal healthy narcissism (Taylor and Brown 1988) and pathologic malignant narcissism (Kernberg 1985), and between normal altruistic punishment (Hamilton 1963) and pathologic sadistic personality (Kaminer and Stein 2001). In addition, it is perhaps the case that some cognitive-affective processes that do not seem to involve psychopathology may nevertheless be seen as evil (e.g., arguably, the processes that allow a human to eat a battery-raised chicken), whereas some cognitive-affective processes that are clearly psychopathologic may not be viewed as evil (e.g., impulsive aggression in the context of a frontal lobe tumor may be viewed as excusable, as "mad" rather than "bad").Taken together with recent work on the cognitive-affective neuroscience of psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism, these considerations may lead to somewhat different approaches from those taken by Peck and Davidson. In his work on psychopathy, for example, Blair emphasizes a dysfunction in cognitive-affective processing resulting in abnormalities in the weighing up of social emotions (Blair 2004). This account is not inconsistent with a view that in psychopathy there is a disturbance in moral processing that is evil (contra Peck). Furthermore, this... (shrink)

Lacan fait régulièrement référence à Kierkegaard dans son enseignement et ce dernier occupe une place cruciale dans le retour à Freud. En analysant les écrits de Kierkegaard, l'auteur éclaire certains concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, remet en question le rapport de Lacan à Hegel et établit une nouvelle perspective entre psychanalyse et existentialisme.

Lacan, qui a prôné le "retour à Freud", qui s'est donc voulu le défenseur strict de la cause freudienne, ne s'est jamais réclamé que de la psychanalyse. Il a cependant beaucoup fréquenté les philosophes : non seulement Hegel à travers la lecture de Kojève, mais aussi et surtout Bataille et Heidegger, deux auteurs dont il a été, on le sait aujourd'hui, intellectuellement très proche. Cette profonde influence sur son oeuvre pose alors la question de savoir s'il serait possible de proposer (...) une interprétation philosophique de celle-ci. Pourrait-t-on développer une philosophie lacanienne? Ce livre s'efforce de montrer qu'une telle lecture de la pensée lacanienne est non seulement concevable, mais que la possibilité en a été indiquée par Lacan lui-même, en particulier dans le Séminaire VII, bien qu'il ne s'y soit jamais engagé pleinement. Il apparaîtra alors qu'une telle interprétation de Lacan, qui va au-delà de la lettre de sa pensée mais ne la trahit pas et qui est même autorisée par la richesse et la complexité de l'oeuvre, ouvre non seulement des perspectives nouvelles sur celle-ci, mais subvertit totalement les présupposés qui portent la philosophie traditionnelle depuis ses origines. Que pourrait être, finalement, le lacanisme en philosophie? Telle est donc la question à laquelle cet essai tente de répondre. (shrink)

Thus, we can see that Obeyesekere’s notion and usage of some psychoanalytic concepts is at variance with Freud’s formulations and with those of standard psychoanalytic theory. This divergence is also evident in Obeyesekere’s formulation of the concept of disconnection, which is arguably the most important construct in the first chapter of The work of culture. Space constraints prevent us taking-up this concept here. So let me now conclude this first part of the essay, and begin part 2 with an examination (...) of ‘disconnection’ in the context of a discussion of Obeyesekere’s accounts of two South Asian ecstatics. (shrink)

L’antiphilosophie de Lacan y est examinée, notamment comme l’interprétation analytique du discours universitaire, dans lequel le philosophe qui s’avance sous la bannière de la quête rationnelle de la vérité, ment sur ses fins, qui ne sont pas de vérité, mais qui touchent à la jouissance. Il s’agit de faire valoir, à partir des indications de Freud et de Lacan, une affinité de l’antiphilosophie avec la dévalorisation de la pensée. La deuxième partie de l’article interroge la critique lacanienne des théories philosophiques (...) de la perception. Suivant en cela la thèse de Lacan, l’auteur montre que le rapport à la réalité en général, et à la perception en particulier, tombe sous l’incidence de l’inconscient. (shrink)

Dès ses premiers écrits Lacan se pose en logicien, en quoi son séminaire sur « La lettre volée » reste paradigmatique. Il se désignait « Le dernier des kabbalistes chrétiens » ce qui l’autorisait de traiter le carré logique d’Aristote par les modalités du solve et coagula, jusque dans son projet d’arithmétisation de l’inconscient. Si bien qu’à la place de la « mythologie de la pulsion » freudienne il substituera le modèle de subjectivation que propose son « stade du miroir (...) ». Ici Lacan transcrit le « Jetzt-sehen » husserlien comme moment d’un retournement dialectique fondateur de l’altérité. Puis il inventera l’objet ‘a’ dont il dit que c’est « ce qui s’attrape au coincement du symbolique, de l’imaginaire et du réel comme nœud ». D’où une topologie qui s’engendre au grand dam de ses sectateurs, qui tendent d’en esquiver les conséquences en invoquant un improbable « retour à Freud ». Suit un long développement essentiellement historique censé exploiter le thème : « Psychanalyse et Logique », qui souligne les apories qui s’engendrent dès lors qu’on prend en compte l’ontologie implicite de la proposition : « ex falso seguitur quod libet ». Il y a là de quoi couper l’élan de plus d’un philosophe dans ses échappées vers la Vérité. (shrink)

This article assesses the contemporary relevance of Sade's work and thought by returning to Jacques Lacan's interpretation of it. It is argued that if the Sadean emphasis on sexual freedom has been co-opted by neoliberal capitalism, this is in part thanks to avant-garde intellectuals of the twentieth century who approached Sade through a simplistically libidinal reading of Freud. By contrast, the article argues that Lacan's more sophisticated reading of Freud enables him in turn to situate Sade amidst eighteenth-century (...) philosophical and political debates regarding, not sexual pleasure or revolutionary desire, but happiness. Lacan shows that Sade was already challenging the modern, and today market-based, notion of a ‘right to happiness’ with the ‘maxim for jouissance’ he asserted in La Philosophie dans le boudoir. This more troubling Sade, it is claimed, opens up the possibility of a perverse ethic distinct from the ‘polymorphous perversity’ characteristic of contemporary consumer culture and its related conceptions of happiness. (shrink)

La relation à l'ontologie et à la pensée de l'être, qui passe de la revendication au rejet, est au cœur de l'impossible rapport de Lacan à la philosophie. L'être joue un rôle décisif dans l'élaboration des catégories du symbolique, de l'imaginaire et du réel, qu'il concerne toutes les trois à des titres et à des moments divers, de même que pour nombre de signifiants majeurs du chemin de Lacan. Essentiel pour la rectification et l'innovation que comporte le retour à Freud, (...) il intéresse la spécificité de la psychanalyse dans sa pensée, son éthique, son expérience - son discours. C'est un recours précieux sinon indispensable pour la démarcation de ses fins d'avec celles de la psychologie, de la médecine et de toute thérapie sociale. Incontournable tant parce qu'il est dans nos langues que par ses élaborations philosophiques et théologiques, l'être sert à Lacan à cerner des points de l'expérience qui excèdent toute la terminologie psychanalytique ; ainsi l'amour, l'interprétation, la fin de l'analyse - le parlêtre enfin. On suivra ici une partie de ce chemin, dont chaque moment garde sa valeur, hors de tout système - il n'y a pas de système de Lacan -, localement, dans ses avancées, ses constantes et ses ruptures. (shrink)

C’est à l’aide de la distinction de L. Wittgenstein entre critères et symptômes dans une théorie, et de l’affirmation chez Freud de la conscience (Bewusstheit) comme symptôme pour la Métapsychologie, que nous posons la question de l’existence de symptômes dans la théorie lacanienne. Ne serait-ce pas alors sur la question du réel que nous retrouvons Lacan et Wittgenstein dans leur dialogue fictif ? La question du réel sera posée chez eux en lien avec celle de la nature mentale du corps, (...) puis d’une question commune sur l’objet du désir. Les apories rencontrées dans les tentatives de la pensée du réel mènent Wittgenstein à trouver une solution, la forme (logicalform). Pour Lacan la réponse sera dans l’introduction des n’uds pour la théorie analytique, y ajoutant, pour l’usage, une catégorie : celle du semblant. (shrink)

L' inconscient, présenté par Freud dans le discours de la science, conduit, parce que cet inconscient est l'Autre, à dépasser le discours de la science. Mais l' inconscient, proclamé comme l'Autre par Lacan, et comme Autre dont le discours propre est le discours de la psychanalyse, conduit de même, parce que ce discours ne peut s'assurer sa reconnaissance et existence sociale, à dépasser le discours de la psychanalyse. Toutefois l' inconscient ne peut être établi définitivement dans le monde social que (...) par le discours de la philosophie, ce discours trouvant, dans l'affirmation de l' inconscient, son accomplissement qui est alors, en même temps que celui de la justice, celui de la rédemption. The unconscious, as presented by Freud in the discourse of science, leads one to pass the discourse of science, since such an unconscious is the « Other ». But the unconscious, as hailed by Lacan as the « Other », as an « Other » whose discourse is that of psychoanalysis, also leads to pass the discourse of psychoanalysis, since it is in no way to be granted for sure of its social existence and acknowledgement. Yet the unconscious cannot be established in the social world but by the discourse of philosophy, such a discourse finding its accomplishment in the positive assertion of the unconscious, the latter being at the same time that of justice and redemption. (shrink)

Biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” by which he meant a unit of culture. Dan Dennett continued by defining a meme as a bunch of bits of information. This paper explores the “meme” and how it is semiotic, both in its technical sense and in its popular sense and explores how memes signify both in terms of classical semiotics and also in terms of post-structuralist thought.

Introduction - From the Illiad to the Studies on Hysteria: A chronology of the discovery of the unconscious mind - Freud's theories of the unconscious mind - Jung's collective unconscious - Lacan's linguistic paradigm.

The notion of love in Freud’s work and in lacan’s work is explored here in a preliminary fashion, and their many different attempts to discuss love are compared and contrasted. Concepts such as libido, narcissism, anaclisis, the ego-ideal, the ideal ego, ego-libido, object-libido, and the imaginary are brought to bear on Freud’s rather “obsessive” theory of love, and Lacan’s views of passion in his early work are given special attention.

With several never-before published writings, this volume gathers Althusser's major essays on psychoanalytic thought----documenting his intense and ambivalent relationship with Lacan, and dramatizing his intellectual journey and troubled ...

This book tries to bring together the work of Marx, Freud and Lacan. It does this not by enumerating what might stereotypically be considered to be the central theses of these authors and then proceeding to combine them – a method that is inevitably doomed to failure – but instead by confronting each one of their oeuvres with what might best be described as its extimate core. The work of Marx is confronted with a problematic that implicitly, and at times (...) even explicitly, runs throughout it: that of the splitting, dividing and doubling (or, perhaps better, knotting) of the (proletarian) subject. The work of Freud is confronted – following on from this analysis of Marx – with the hidden social and historical determination of its own most revolutionary insight, that »the nucleus of the ego is unconscious«; and this social and historical determination itself in turn allows for a reinscription of the three fundamental categories of Lacanian psychoanalysis: the symbolic, the imaginary and the real. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to explore the value of psychoanalysis in the early twenty-first century through reference to Freud, Lacan, and Stiegler’s work on computational madness. In the first section of the article I consider the original objectives of psychoanalysis through reference to what I call Freud’s ‘normalisation project’, before exploring the critique of this discourse concerned with the defence of oedipal law through a discussion of the post-modern ‘individualisation project’ set out by Deleuze and Guattari and others. (...) Tracking the development of ‘the individualisation project’ in history, I consider its connections with the cybernetic theories of Wiener and Shannon in the psycho-cyber-utopianism of the 1990s, before moving on to consider the other side of the psychoanalytic-cybernetic interaction through a discussion of Jacques Lacan’s rereading of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle in the second section of the article. In reading Lacan’s seminar on Freudian drive in terms of the cybernetic repression of death, I set up the conclusion to the article which involves a discussion of Bernard Stiegler’s ‘survival project’ that relies on a recognition of the limit of death in order to produce human significance and oppose the madness of our contemporary computational reality. (shrink)

Partiendo de la noción lacaniana de pasaje al acto se interpreta el proceso de la duda y los momentos clave de su superación en los términos de un pasaje al acto humano que dará lugar al cogito y un acto divino que dará lugar al orden inmutable de las verdades eternas. De ese modo se trata de explicar el modo en el que Descartes constituye el marco fantasmático de la ciencia. Si bien en el seguimiento del proceso de la duda (...) el texto de referencia será Meditaciones metafísicas, se indica cómo en dicho proceso es reconocible el eco de una experiencia onírica decisiva que Descartes tuvo a los 23 años, experiencia que ayuda a comprender tanto el impacto de angustia que hay detrás del giro metafísico cartesiano como el reverso pre-subjetivo desde el cual acontece el despertar a la conciencia de sí que tiene lugar en el cogito. La vía preferente que se emplea en la interpretación llevada a cabo es la del psicoanálisis tal y como es desarrollado por Lacan. (shrink)

Valérie Chevassus-Marchionni | : Après une étude de la notion de symptôme en psychanalyse chez Freud et chez Lacan, la paresse est envisagée précisément comme un symptôme. Mais quel peut être le sens de ce symptôme? Quelle est la nature du désir inconscient qui préside à son apparition? Après avoir considéré plusieurs causalités et élaboré quelques interprétations possibles, nous nous intéressons au cas particulier du personnage d’Oblomov dans le roman éponyme d’Ivan Gontcharov. Si la paresse d’Oblomov a un sens qu’il (...) est possible de déterminer à l’aide des outils de la psychanalyse, il est intéressant aussi de ne pas en chercher à tout prix la signification et de l’envisager davantage comme un sinthome au sens lacanien du terme : Oblomov ferait usage de sa paresse comme d’une véritable création visant à contourner son mal-être et à lui permettre de s’accommoder à sa manière des souffrances générées par son existence et sa sensibilité. En conclusion est présenté succinctement le cas de Svevo qui donne de la paresse une illustration bien différente. | : A study of the notion of symptom in psychoanalysis in Freud’s and Lacan’s work shows that laziness can be regarded exactly as a symptom. But what can be the significance of this symptom? What is the nature of the unconscious desire which presides over its appearance? Having considered several causalities and developed some possible interpretations, we’re concerned with the particular case of the character of Oblomov in Ivan Gontcharov’s eponym novel. If Oblomov’s laziness has a significance which it is possible to determine by means of the tools of psychoanalysis, it is also interesting not to look at all costs for the meaning and to envisage it more as a sinthome in the Lacanian sense of the term : Oblomov would make use of his laziness as a real creation to bypass his ill-being and to adapt, in his own way, to the sufferings generated by his existence and sensitivity. In conclusion is briefly presented the case of Svevo which gives of the laziness a very different illustration. (shrink)

With several never-before published writings, this volume gathers Althusser's major essays on psychoanalytic thought----documenting his intense and ambivalent relationship with Lacan, and dramatizing his intellectual journey and troubled personal life.

Philosophy had either ignored or attacked psychoanalysis: such responses are neither warranted nor helpful. One hundred years after its inception, isn't it time to find out what psychoanalysis has to offer us? In Passion in Theory Robyn Ferrell does just that, and returns with some surprising answers. Concentrating on the work of Freud and Lacan, Robyn Ferrell asks why their work had been so influential in European philosophy yet so marginal in the Anglo-American circles. Passion in Theory explores their conception (...) of the relationship between mind and body, and how it provides a key to many current philosophical questions. Passion in Theory is designed for students and researchers in psychoanalysis, traditional and continental philosophy. (shrink)

In Logique du Fantasme, Lacan argues that the compulsion to repeat does not obey the same discharge logic as homeostatic processes. Repetition installs a realm that is categorically different from the one related to homeostatic pleasure seeking, a properly subjective one, one in which the mark “stands for,” “takes the place of,” what we have ventured to call “an event,” and what only in the movement of return, in what Lacan calls a “thinking of repetition,” confirms and ever reconfirms this (...) point of no return, which is also a qualitative cut and a structural loss. The kind of “standing for” Lacan intends here with the concept of repetition is certainly not something like an image or a faithful description. No, what Lacan wishes to stress is that this mark is situated at another level, at another place, it is “entstellt,” and as such, it is punctually impinging upon the bodily dynamics without rendering the event, without having an external meta-point of view, but cutting across registers according to a logics that is not the homeostatic memory logics. This paper elaborates on this distinction on the basis of a confrontation with what Freud says about the pleasure principle and its beyond in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and also takes inspiration from Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology. We argue that Lacan’s theory of enjoyment takes up and generalizes what Freud was after in Beyond the Pleasure Principle with the Wiederholungszwang, and pushes Freud’s thoughts to a more articulated point: to the point where a subject is considered to speak only when it has allowed the other, through discourse, to have impacted and cut into his bodily pleasure dynamics. (shrink)

Uma leitura atenta de Para lá do Princípio de Prazer de Freud sugere que o mecanismo da repetição cega, a oposição a toda a mudança e uma vontade niilista em afirmar o seu próprio poder excessivo caracterizam todas as pulsões. O que distingue as pulsões de morte das outras pulsões deve ser procurado noutra coisa, tal como uma forma particular de prazer ou destruição agressiva. Apesar do seu regresso a Freud, Lacan dá conta de uma nova imagem do mecanismo de (...) repetição. Quer aquilo que se repete seja a expressão de um trauma quer seja de um desejo inconsciente, a repetição ameaça sempre o princípio de prazer e a sua gestão por um ego imaginário. Para Lacan, a repetição descontrolada apela insistentemente à instituição de um sujeito cujo desejo simbolicamente determinado se situa para lá do curso natural de um princípio de prazer. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo se propone, en primer lugar, contraponer la lectura fi losófi ca de Ricoeur sobre la interpretación en psicoanálisis con algunos desarrollos clave de Freud y Lacan al respecto. Luego, se mostrará desde la obra del fi lósofo esloveno Slavoj Žižek cómo este concepto psicoanalítico puede ser utilizado dentro del marco de la crítica de las ideologías. De esta manera, se intentará determinar y fundamentar, al menos de manera aproximada, si la interpretación en psicoanálisis constituye una exégesis o (...) desciframiento del símbolo, o si la estructura del discurso analítico mismo exige otra concepción que no se agota en una hermenéutica. (shrink)

Philosophy had either ignored or attacked psychoanalysis: such responses are neither warranted nor helpful. One hundred years after its inception, isn't it time to find out what psychoanalysis has to offer us? In _Passion in Theory_ Robyn Ferrell does just that, and returns with some surprising answers. Concentrating on the work of Freud and Lacan, Robyn Ferrell asks why their work had been so influential in European philosophy yet so marginal in the Anglo-American circles. _Passion in Theory_ explores their conception (...) of the relationship between mind and body, and how it provides a key to many current philosophical questions. _Passion in Theory_ is designed for students and researchers in psychoanalysis, traditional and continental philosophy. (shrink)

This dissertation reassesses the complex philosophical relationship between Sartre and psychoanalysis. Most scholarship on this topic focuses on Sartre’s criticisms of the unconscious as anathema both to his conception of the human psyche as devoid of any hidden depths or mental compartments and, correlatively, his account of human freedom. Many philosophers conclude that there is little common ground between Sartrean existentialism and psychoanalytic theory. I argue, on the contrary, that by shifting the emphasis from concerns about the nature of the (...) unconscious to questions about the role of imagination in psychical life, we can see that Sartre and Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalytic theory develop strikingly similar accounts of human subjectivity. After establishing the historical background of Sartre’s career-long engagement with psychoanalysis, I demonstrate the proximity of Sartre and Lacan on the nature of unconscious thought. I proceed to develop the claim that there is a homology between the concept of unconscious fantasy in psychoanalysis and the concept of the imaginary in Sartre’s philosophical corpus. Despite the concept of fantasy being one of the more structuralist-inspired aspects of Lacan’s metapsychology, I show that Sartre’s concept of the imaginary is likewise a structural feature of the psyche, one which establishes the coordinates within which the subject engages with the world. For Sartre, Freud, and Lacan fantasies form the core of subjectivity, giving form to the basic patterns of one’s character. Taken together, these three thinkers furnish a nuanced view of fantasy/the imaginary. On the one hand it is determining insofar as it is responsible for many of the psychopathologies met with in psychoanalysis. On the other hand, it is liberating insofar as the agency of the subject is implicated in the formation of fantasy. I thereby show that Sartre does not fit the caricatured picture of a radical voluntarist that is often attributed to him and that psychoanalysis can accommodate a conception of human freedom. (shrink)

Ian Parker has been a leading light in the fields of critical and discursive psychology for over 25 years. The Psychology After Critique series brings together for the first time his most important papers. Each volume in the series has been prepared by Ian Parker and presents a newly written introduction and focused overview of a key topic area. Psychology After the Unconscious is the fifth volume in the series and addresses three central questions: - Why is Freud's concept of (...) the unconscious important today? - Does language itself play a role in the creation of the unconscious? - How does Lacan radicalize Freud's notion of the unconscious in relation to cultural research? The book provides a clear explanation of Freudian and Lacanian accounts of the unconscious. It also highlights their role in offering a new way of describing, understanding and working with the human subject in clinical settings and in cultural research. Part One shows how the unconscious is elaborated in Freud's early case studies in Studies on Hysteria, while Part Two focuses on Lacan's re-working of the unconscious and its relationship to language and culture in his influential public seminars. The book also provides access to key debates currently occurring in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, exploring both the clinical dimension and the consequences for psychological and cultural research. Psychology After the Unconscious is essential reading for students and researchers in psychology, psychosocial studies, sociology, social anthropology and cultural studies, and to psychoanalysts of different traditions engaged in academic research. It will also introduce key ideas and debates within critical psychology to undergraduates and postgraduate students across the social sciences. (shrink)

The following article presents an analysis of the conflict that occurs between philosophy and psychoanalysis in both the works of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan; This conflict is conveyed from the alienated condition of the subject that arises from the thesis of the unconscious. The subject deconstructs himself as consciousness and reveals the impossibility of him in the very act in which he presents himself through his saying. In this way, language configures the Freudo-Lacanian idea of the unconscious in the (...) form of an act of performative iteration, not so much at the level of consultation, but as the founding cogito of philosophical and scientific reflection. (shrink)

In this paper a distinction is made between two conceptions of the ego in freudian metapsychology. According to the first conception, a conception which Freud never gave up, the ego is conceived as a specific function on the surface of the living organism ; it is the result of a progressive differentiation of the Id ('Es') under the driving power of internal stimuli and external reality. Fitted with specific neutral, i.e. non-conflictual functions as perception, memory, control of the bodily motions (...) and consciousness, the ego has to defend the individual as a biological living organism against the threats from without and within. In this conception the ego is treated as an instance that doesn't take part in the different psychic conflicts. We analyse the philosophical presuppositions and show the metapsychological disadvantages of this hypothesis that has been worked out especially in the American ego-psychology. According to the second conception, that takes into account important clinical pheno mena as identification, idealisation, narcissism, ideal of the ego, the ego is conceived as a metaphorical effect of a specific psychic act. With Lacan, we try to analyse and to interpret this specific act as an act that causes an infinite splitting in the ego : the ego is constituted as a subject that from its origin is separated from itself. Instead of being a biological function that lives in the immediate metonymical prolongiation of the living organism, it rather has to defend a certain representation of himself. This point of view doesn't exclude a purely functional description of the ego ; but the different functions have now to be interpreted differently because the ego is the effect of conflicts in which it takes part (consciousness is interlaced with unconsciousness, perception with denying...). In the last part of our study we show how Freud makes the philosophically important distinction between the ego as an object of the Id and the ego as a subject that has to speak in the first person ('I'). We try to give a Lacanian interpretation of the subject as act on the basis of the well-known Freudian formula 'Wo Es war soll Ich werden'. (shrink)

A comprehensive account of denial viewed not only psychoanalytically but also philosophically.