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Some reflections on urgency, crisis and psychiatry

Some reflections on urgency, psychiatry and the position of the analyst are the main themes of this article. First of all he takes an historical detour via the figure of Gia¬como Casanova. With his work Ma voisine, la postérité the author compares a medical emergency with the sort of crisis intervention inspired by psychoanalysis. In the second part of the article a crisis is viewed as a place of rime/rhyme – crisis as a frozen discourse of the subject, beyond the deceptive glitter. Concepts from Lacan’s seminar on transfer¬ence and from Winnicott are used to support this view. The goal of this article is to argue in favour of a place for the odd (anti-rhyme) in the work with subjects in crisis. This in¬fluences the position of the analyst.

Milan Kundera and the sorrow of Don Juan

The Czech author Milan Kundera, one of the most famous contemporary “literary analysts”, is recognized as a master story-teller of the relationship between men and women. In this article, Kundera’s perspective is compared with the Lacanian statement that “there is no such thing as a sexual relation”. In a critical way, some of Kundera’s protagonists (Tomas, Klíma, Martin and Havel) are confronted with the Freudo-Lacanian interpretation of the Don Juan character. Through a short historical review, the author examines how Don Juan has evolved through the centuries from vulgar libertine to romantic hero. Kundera’s characters are situated within this evolutionary continuum. Both from a phenomenological and a structural viewpoint, a clear distinction is made between the characters of Don Juan and Casanova. The question is whether Kundera’s characters are Don Juans or Casanovas.