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 Marc De Cuyper | Vol 19 (3) 2001
The recognition of the prevalence of incest and sexual abuse, coincides with a new focus on the seduction theory. The person and the work of Freud are vehemently attacked, first and above all by the Incest Recovery Movement. As a rule, their criticisms are embedded in a purely political discourse and consist, for the better part, of personal attacks on Freud. They also fail to recognise the revolutionary character of his discovery: the importance of fantasy in psychic reality, and the phantasmal nature of the working?through of traumatic events. Every notion of fantasy and unconscious conflict is vehemently rejected. The subject is left with no possibility to act and to question his own subjective implication. Here one can only oppose this with the psychoanalytic ethic, which stresses the dimension of speaking well.
by Christian Demoulin | Vol 19 (1/2) 2001
The death-drive runs as a red thread through a reading of Lacan. Starting from a clinic of suicide, Lacan proposes a theory whih is based on a split that is present at every level of the human structure: the real (biological), the imaginary (narcissistic), the symbolic (linguistic), up to and including the fantasma (primordial masochism). We attempt to draw a lesson from this concerning the cure and the problematic field of mental health.
by Kris Pint | Vol 22 (2) 2004
Different approaches to literature in literary theory can often be reduced to Lacan’s four fundamental discourses. However, in his later work, Roland Barthes investi¬gates the possibility of another, alternative discourse, namely that of the lover. In this discourse, the Imaginary plays a key role. The Barthesian Imaginary functions as an active (in the Nietzschean sense of the word) and creative hermeneutic tool. Important here is the Phrase, a literary sentence supplied by the discourse of the Other, that almost “magically” helps us to name something of our desire. Barthes also closely links this Phrase to his interpretation of the fantasy as the moving force behind our reading. In this way, literature forces us, as subjects of desire, into confrontation with the deconstructed, but indestructible, sinthome of our love, our desire: our ego.
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by Antonie Ladan | Vol 23 (1) 2005
The author argues that there is a self evident relation between memory and fantasy. In the first part of the paper some fantasies about memory are brought to the fore. Also several factors that play a part in the availability of memories are discussed. Special consideration is given to conscious and unconscious repression. The second part concerns the inseparable interrelation of memory and fantasy, at which point the author explains the statement that every act of memory is also an act of imagination. Finally the vicissitudes of certain fantasies and their significance for implicit relational patterns are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the possible transition of a fantasy from the explicit to the implicit memory system.
