In “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” there are only two characters: Nancy, a fine vintage widow who has never experienced any form of sexual pleasure, and Leo, a young handsome man who wants to give her just that, and get paid for it.[1] The film explores their intimate encounters in the same hotel room, [...]
In Seminar 17, we find an appendix from 3 December 1969, called “Analyticon”, where Lacan addresses the students at Vincennes. Their shameless exhibitionism of jouissance is not opposed to power, but its mutation: “And the first to collaborate with this, right here at Vincennes, are you, for you fulfill the role of helot of the [...]
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’. [...]
