by Evi Verbeke | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: This article explores the contemporary relevance of Lacanian psychoanalysis within institutional settings. It argues that the distinction between applied and pure psychoanalysis has become less strict. When we think about analytical work in institutions, this kind of applied psychoanalysis can shed light on what psychoanalysis is really about. The author argues that this has nothing to do, in no setting, with technique or golden standard, but with the operation of the analytical discourse. Through clinical vignettes, particularly in the context of psychosis, the text illustrates how Lacanian psychoanalysis creates space for singular inventions. Rather than aiming for cure or coherence, psychoanalysis engages with the hors-sens and the limits of knowledge. This helps to explain why psychoanalysts often work with those people who are excluded from mental health care. A detailed case study demonstrates how handling transference within institutional contexts can produce transformative shifts for the subject.
by Mickaël Peoc’h | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: In 1958, Lacan considered that the end of Schreber’s delusion revealed the lines of efficacy of an ‘elegant solution’. Although it is relatively common in Lacanian psychoanalysis to use the term ‘subjective solution’, Lacan’s original proposal has been little developed. Yet it is an interesting approach for the clinical treatment of psychotic subjects, given the contributions of sinthome theory and, more recently, work on ordinary psychosis. Based on the symptoms of ordinary psychosis, Jacques-Alain Miller evokes three clinical signs: bodily, social and subjective externalities, which also correspond to the symptoms of extraordinary psychosis. Taking these hypotheses into account, it is possible to envisage (self-)therapeutic solutions that approach symptomatology from the angle of invention rather than deficit, as Freud did with Schreber’s delusions. In this way, we emphasize the dynamic nature of clinical work with psychotic subjects, insofar as it bears witness to the various subjective elaborations that the psychoanalyst can support in refining the symptom.
by Rishab Nathan | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: This paper reflects on the complex interplay between societal crises, practical solutions, and philosophical thought, questioning the prevailing approaches to addressing systemic issues. Engaging with thinkers of continental philosophy and the psychoanalytic tradition, this text critiques the endless pursuit of solutions, arguing that this practical drive may contribute to the persistence of societal problems. Instead, the essay advocates for a shift in focus: understanding the importance of theory, but paradoxically, only as a form of practice. By exploring the theory/practice divide, this paper attempts to reframe the duality into something new.
by Sophie Marret-Maleval | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: After trying to formalize the clinic of melancholy with Lacan’s latest teaching and showing how it can provide indicators as regards the diagnosis of ordinary psychosis, by pointing to the melancholic ground of all psychoses, I will illustrate, with the case of Alfred de Musset, how the most intimate joint of our sense of life can be affected. This leads us to an interpretation following Lacan’s latest teaching of his famous remark concerning Schreber.
by Pablo Lerner | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: This article revolves around the question of how the real should be conceptualized. More specifically, it argues that the real should be defined not solely vis-à-vis the symbolic, as that which resists symbolization, but equally vis-à-vis the imaginary, as that which resists imagination. This enables the author to distinguish between two forms in which the real may appear: the unnameable, which emerges correlative to the symbolic, and the unimaginable, which emerges correlative to the imaginary. Further, the author introduces a conceptual triad corresponding to internal voids inscribed within the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real, naming them silence, darkness, and emptiness. Using this triad, the author introduces a new way of conceptualizing the interrelations of the three orders, viewing them as relating to each other through their separations, to the extent that their internalized voids converge in the disjunction in-between them; for example, in the disjunction of the symbolic and the real, silence and emptiness converge. Lastly, it is postulated that there is a primordial void in the real which subsists outside and independent of the symbolic.
by Derek Hook | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: How might we read and apply Lacan’s under-utilized schema (or ‘graphicization’) from the eight session of Seminar XX? This paper draws on a series of reference-points in Freud’s work as a means of explaining both the three (R – I, I – S, and S – R) vectors in the schema and the three psychical objects (F, S(Ⱥ) and object a) that are produced at the midpoint of these vectors. Each such vector can be said to correspond to a particular type of challenge that occurs within the clinical work, such that what might be required is: 1) the Imaginarization of the Real, 2) the Symbolic reduction (or ‘signifierization’) of the Imaginary, and 3) the ‘Real-ization’ of the Symbolic (or, a missed encounter with the Real).
