by Rafael Holmberg | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: In the last century, a misleading opposition has emerged between freedom and restriction, or more properly between individual desire and social structures. Deleuze, and the anti-psychiatric movement more generally, defended the notion of a ‘free desire’ liberated from the oppressive authority of social rituals. The problem with this opposition is that it misrecognizes the basic coordinates of desiring. The Lacanian perspective offers a different account: where social limits are removed, desire itself disappears. Free desire is for Lacan an oxymoron, insofar as desire constitutively operates in relation to the Other, and according to the signifying logic of the social. In other words, the biggest obstacle to desire is desire itself. What, then, is to be made of freedom, if freedom is its own limitation? In this paper, I argue firstly that the false opposition between desire and restriction must be rethought, that the ideology of a de-socialized, liberated desire is in fact the most enslaved form of desiring, directly in the service of the Other. I argue more specifically that freedom for Lacan emerges in a parallax act of recognition, by reframing the very position from which we speak of freedom.
by Dewi Dynoodt | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: This paper explores the concept of the gaze as object a, as elaborated by Lacan in his 11th seminar, with a particular emphasis on the split between the eye and the gaze. It also examines the functions of the stain, trompe l’oeil, and dompte-regard within this framework. These theoretical constructs will then be applied to a case study of a 60-year- old man who suffers from panic attacks triggered by the gaze. By implementing the concepts of the stain and dompte-regard, the paper illustrates how Lacanian theory can be used in clinical practice and how it can guide therapeutic interventions.
by Oliver Cutler | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: In this article, we present a reading of the desire staged in the British science fiction film Under the Skin (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2013, UK). We argue that the dark lair in which the central character (an alluring alien played by Scarlett Johansson) dwells, is analogous to Lacan’s (1959-60 [2008]) revision of the Freudian ‘Thing’ (das Ding). Like other filmic representations of the monstrous, the alien illuminates the (ostensibly) contradictory movements of desire and disgust associated with the ‘monstrous feminine.’ Lacanian psychoanalysis is no stranger to this dynamic, and it provides a framework to understand the critique of patriarchist fantasy and sexualised violence the film presents. In the era of ‘consent culture’ and changing sexual attitudes and etiquette, the film is especially salient. Like the idealized Lady of courtly love, the alien is nothing, always veiled, and elevated to avoid the horrific encounter with das Ding. The alien’s body as limit, therefore, reveals how the Law, prohibition and desire operate and how the ‘lad’s mag’ trope of female sexuality indicates little more than the deficiency of patriarchist fantasy.
by Laura Chernaik | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: In my practice, I often say to patients and supervisees, “what isn’t processed in the psyche is expressed in the body and in action”. But, in what ways is this psychic processing different to or related to expression in the body and in action? How do we move between these levels? I argue that a way of meaning is bound to particular words. If once bound, sometimes, in hearing differently, it unbinds. In what ways do we work with binding and unbinding in the process of analysis? Binding and unbinding, as process, is played out in identification, as Freud argues in ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. Both Laplanche and Abraham and Torok, drawing on Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia, give us helpful ways to think about the difference between a focus on identities and a focus on identification as process. This is very useful when thinking about our work with bereaved and traumatised patients. And, for me, it is James Baldwin who best describes this kind of mourning identification in beautiful, sometimes harrowing, prose.
by Jonas Borer | Vol 43 (1/2) 2025
Abstract: Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s thoughts on the perverse Discourse of the University and Slavoj Žižek’s conception of the Sublime Object of Ideology, I attempt to develop a materialist understanding of authority. This paper presents parts of the conceptual approach of my dissertation for discussion.
