by Jelica Sumic Riha | Vol 41 (2) 2023
Summary: It is not by chance that in Seminar Encore Lacan criticizes the reduction of the mystical jouissance to a substitute of the phallic relation. Indeed, what is aimed at in mysticism, in Lacan’s reading, is not the reduction of the Other to the One. It is rather a matter of knotting the phallic One to the real Other, which is outside the symbolic, but in such a way that the Other of language finds itself barred.
In showing us (rather than demonstrating it to us) that, beyond all that is, there is an ex- sistence, without name and without attributes, an ex-sistence in the face of which all that is, is devaluated, even erased, and which the mystics call God, mystical writing compel us to take up, with Lacan, the question of knowing to what kind of the real this relation to a being that cannot be known opens access.
by Glenn Strubbe | Vol 35 (4) 2017
From a lacanian orientation, the relation between ‘treatment’, ‘coaching’ and ‘care’ is questioned in case of what one calls ‘long term care’. This question is approached from the perspective of a case study. A young man accuses himself constantly of not adapting enough to society and even of attacking society. His attempts to find a solution though, are situated both in his failure and his singular answers to this failing, as well as in his self-incrimination about his failure. Indeed, the real problem is neither the lack of adaptation nor the self-incrimination, but the feminine enjoyment that he is confronted with, over and over again. Theoretically, Lacan’s conceptualization of the symptom as a knotting element forms the framework.
by Glenn Strubbe | Vol 34 (2) 2016
In the first part of this contribution on Sergei Pankejev (Freud’s Wolf Man), the author proposed the hypothesis that the Wolfman avoided a psychotic breakthrough via a series of (seemingly “neurotic”) symptoms. This article investigates the nature and topological logic of these symptoms. Three distinct groups of symptoms are identified. Each group is situated on another cutting point in the knot that links the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary. A recurring element is the extraction of the anal object a as an answer to the feminine jouissance, the exact status of which is examined in detail. This leads to the formulation of new hypotheses related to the triggering moments of psychosis in the case of Pankejev.
by Luc Moreels | Vol 19 (4) 2001
The recent term of Disorder of the autismspectrum makes clear that nowadays autism becomes more and more an all-embracing, even empty diagnosis. Beyond this problematic labeling, Psychoanalysis deals with the symptom of the subject as a particular solution for the problem of the desire and the enjoyment of the Other. The symptom of the child can be considered within the structural opposition formulated by Lacan: the symptom as a representation versus a realisation of the truth of the parents. In a case of a ten year old boy with autism a symptom is analyzed in terms of a pure materialisation of the object a. The psychoanalytic intervention, based on the technique of bricolage, attempt to make tolerable and accessible the pure signifier, full of enjoyment of the Other, for the subject.
by Jeroen Donckers | Vol 24 (2) 2006
This article deals with the question of violence within the context of a school. The central idea is that a tension exists between an experience and the language for that experience, an idea which is brought to the fore by both Freud and the Russian psychologist Vygotsky. Violence is considered as the expression of a missed meeting between experience and language. By means of a number of psychoanalytic concepts this idea is developed and illustrated with a clinical fragment.
