Understanding Lacan

Service Description

Jacques Lacan is considered by a significant portion of those who practice psychotherapy as not-me, as other or stranger, in light of the way he takes the meaning from Illu and transforms it according to himself. Indeed, instead of dealing with the self, Lacan is faithful to Freud's idea of the radical otherness of the unconscious. Everything that is included under the mechanism of the unconscious is that which is found in radical foreignness, far from me, and therefore it holds the potential to rescue us from the compulsion to repeat the symptom. The reading group will deal with basic concepts in Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic approach, while referring to the ways in which Lacan read and analyzed Freud's writings. The seminar will place Lacan within a variety of approaches within psychoanalysis, while discussing his similarities and differences from Freud and other theorists, and referring to his unique contributions. During the meetings, we will read selected texts, some by Lacan himself and some by theorists who wrote about Lacan, and we will try to connect the text to the clinic, with an emphasis on comparative thinking with other theorists from the field of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.