So what is like, I mean, there are a couple of questions. So Lacan's psychoanalysis is that, I mean, what is the main difference to, let's say, Freud's psychoanalysis? And is it still something that is, I mean, you practice it, obviously, but is it something that is a common practice? I mean, can you go to Bochum or Berlin and find a Lacanian psychoanalyst? Is that still a vital therapeutic tool? And

what is it exactly? If you go to the United States, it would definitely not be as prevalent as other forms of psychoanalysis. The object relations, psychoanalysis, as well as relational or ego psychology, which grew from other thinkers like Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Winnicott, Beyond, etc. Lacan's school of psychoanalysis remains mainly in france and in south america surprisingly it's very popular in south america

oh wow yeah

yeah in argentina and brazil i have a lot of colleagues that do many many interesting things why is that come again why

is that why in south America? I don't

know. I have no idea. Some type of exportation of French culture, I would guess. I don't know, but it's unbelievable. You study psychology in Brazil or in Argentina, you study Lacan. Oh, wow. Okay. Quite amazing. While here in Germany, and I teach in one program for clinical psychology but most universities don't even have a seat of psychoanalysis in the psychology department right so yeah we we are in a crisis that's for sure and it's very important to make psychoanalysis relevant again and it's something we're working on here in berlin but yeah there's a group of young analysts very inspirational working under the lacanian orientation here in berlin and we do a lot of what

what is the lacanian orientation can you some give us a summary what what that is

yes of course um maybe a summary of a summary right

no. No, no, go ahead. Sure.

Well, Lacan is most notably known as calling for a return to Freud. So what we might call, and I'm using scare quotes, you see it, but I guess the listeners won't. So I'm using scare quotes here. The Lacanianism is in fact a reaction to the stepping away from the original thesis of Freud that we see in the School of Ego Psychology and Anna Freud, and we see in object relation theory where people become either post-Freudian, so going beyond Freud explicitly, saying, well, maybe that is ethically viable. But there's also a lot of people in the time of Lacan that were completely betraying Freud's major assumptions, but calling themselves Freudian. So Lacan's psychoanalysis is an attempt to go back to Freud, to go back to Freud's original ideas and abide by them as fully as possible. The technicalities of the analysis rely on the assumption that the unconscious is structured like a language. This is a very famous aporism from Lacombe. So for Lacanians, the unconscious is not this sort of hidden, irrational cave with scary feelings or whatever. It is a place that works, that computes information, that functions according to laws that, well, if we had no idea what they are, we would not be able to do analysis in a serious way. Yes. So Lacan is interested in the way the unconscious works like a language, like a set of linguistic laws and rules and the way these laws and rules manifest in what we call human suffering.

There is a misconception and I'm very glad that you pointed out it is like language. It is not language because the misconception that I know from German academia and philosophers is, you know, that consciousness is language, which is not. Right. It is like. So the rules and because as far as I, again, you might correct me as I understand what Lacan is saying, you can't have one idea or one term or one word without a topography of ideas and words and ideas that kind of inform each other. Right. And so, right.

This is his kind of what we might call his semiotic turn. He reads Freud and he's explicit about it. He says Freud was a semiotician, he just didn't know it. Freud was reciting the saussure without knowing it, he's saying. And this is the idea, yes, that the psyche, and you said consciousness, let's stick with that, with our conscious experience. I like psyche too,

so we can go with psyche as well.

Well, psyche would be a bit more wide than consciousness, as we know, right? Consciousness is not the aspect of the psyche, but consciousness is the experience that we have of our existence. And that this experience is not an experience that is reserved only to the level of meanings, as you would say, like an idea that is transparent to itself, that works by itself. It is always a network of interrelated, and I would say building blocks of representation that is at work. And this is why our conscious experience is many times invaded by elements that, well, we are not so sure where they come from. Right. And we consciously say, oh, I do not want that. You say, I don't want that. I want to get married, to have children. But whenever I meet someone I like, I immediately break up with them.

Why is

that? You know, this is a question that concerns a certain split. You said, I don't understand. I feel like I'm split. On the one hand, I want something. On the other hand, this thing, I keep doing this thing. And this question is a question that is the beginning of an analysis. This is what we start analysis with.

Right, right. This is a

peculiar division within our experience of ourselves.

Yeah, well, John Donne said nobody is an island, and that's the starting point. So we have to contend with the fact there are influences and causal momenta that kind of influence what we're doing. And especially if you have kind of, I don't mean this in a clinical sense, but we have so many different voices within ourselves that it's very hard sometimes to bring it all together and do stuff, do things that we don't want to do at some point.

It is in fact impossible to reduce the psyche to the conception that Descartes presents to us in modernity. This, you know, this self-reflective, transparent, rational thinking being that Descartes is speaking about. And I think that psychoanalysis in general, many aspects of it, somewhat relies on this notion of subjectivity. And Lacan goes a bit sort of further in reading Descartes' Meditation. you surely know the book and the argument there, because Descartes reaches this idea of a thinking being, yes, cogito ego sum, I think, therefore I am, but I am only a thinking being. I don't know, what about the outer world? I have no idea. Maybe it's a fabrication. What about other people? What about science? What about... He has to call God to assist him. He says, well, you know, I have all these ideas and they might be a lie, but there is a God and he surely is eternal and he surely will not lie to me because that is not perfection. Perfection is truth. So surely if I have this clear and distinct idea of the outer world, then it must be true and then the world all of a sudden comes into being. So I think Lacan is sort of Cartesian or modern in a deeper sense. He follows Descartes a bit more because for him analysis is not a process of self-understanding or of self-determination. It's not a place where you learn who you are and then you are able to make better decisions for yourself. The ego consciousness is a secondary construction in the psyche. The unconscious is what we speak of when we speak of subjectivity in the Lacanian orientation. And in this sense, analysis does not lead you towards a moment of self-clarity, no, but it actually leads you somewhere a bit more, I would say modest, a doing with the fact that you are split and there is nothing to do with

it. Well, okay, so that's a very interesting point because I always come back to this, the idea of the coherent self, you know? And so you have, you gave the example you you fall in love and everything is great and then there's a part of you that is afraid you know or whatever happened has some trauma and and and stops the relationship and that is obviously something that indicates that you know the volition or the the general you know behavior is not directed in a unified kind of way because what the client wants is to be behave according to his motivations you know and his conscious motivations let's say and so the idea of a coherent self where all the internal voices act in unisono towards a certain goal let's say which is obviously impossible in a kind of way because as we all know 99 or what how much percentage is this most of our behavior is unconscious and so the one two percent but then you have the the idea to act as if you could act as a coherent being so that is a way to integrate that which is not known that you know so so in that kind of direction so you can't know but you can act as if you know as if you can integrate um the parts that are kind of split and create a coherent self in that kind of sense. That is not Lacanian speak, by the way, but I presume that you get what I mean.

Yes, absolutely. And about this coherence, and it's a great word to use here, this coherence is what we call an erotic fantasy. Something that patients come with to the clinic, sort of asking you, I want coherence. But in a way, analysis for Lacan is a process, is a secular process. You slowly give up on this fantasy of a coherent self, of a self

that is coherent, is congruent. And you give place in your life. But isn't that, sorry to interrupt, but isn't that like a semantic kind of language game? Because if you give up on it, you it don't you why would you say that because if you give up on the illusion of a coherent self and let the split parts be split parts right in a kind of way you integrate them don't you isn't that the goal that by way of detaching you from, from design and all these kinds of things that you can, that you can rest them as they are, but you kind of integrate them. You live with them as, as a dark passenger, as something that is there. You don't have to touch it, but it's there.

Yeah. If I break up your argument, then I would then ask to use a different concept, a different term for your conclusion. So giving up coherence provides you with some type of, as you say, coherence, but we might call it different in a different term because A and B are not the same, right? illusion of coherence, the neurotic subject that acts as though they are self-sufficient, although they are capable of coherence. And then the subject in analysis that sort of gives up on this fantasy, but receives some type of footing in his life when he gives up on the fantasy. These are not identical states.

Right.