How do Institutions deal with the Impossibility in Assistance?

by | Vol 20 (1) 2002

In this paper the author considers the central problem in therapeutic assistance: the powerlessness of the therapist. Lacans discours-theory is used to illuminate this problem. Next the author considers the statute of the ego-ideal as a proposed solution to man’s impotence. In considering how institutions deal with this impossibility, several strategies are situated: denying the relationship, standardising interactions, passing on responsibility, elevating details and using medication as a resort. Last but not least a possible psychoanalytic alternative is proposed.

Related articles

  • A case of erotomania

    Psychiatric classification of erotomania yields a variety of possibilities, situating erotomania along a continuum with personality disorders on one end and the schizophrenic disorders at the other end. The "Postulat Fondamental" of de Clérambault breaks with this tradition. With Freud and Lacan it gives rise to a structural analysis. In considering the relation to the Other, it facilitates the differentiation between erotomanic (psychotic) and neurotic (hysterical) structures. In this case special attention is given to the fragile libidinal balance, a…

  • Freud and the Haizmann Affair

    In 1923 Freud published an essay on the application of psychoanalysis to a case of demonic possession and liberation through exorcism in baroque Austria. For the psychoanalyst working with archival material, it is a matter of rediscovering neurotic ailments under a different rubric. According to Freud, the story of Christoph Haizmann clearly contains a truth which is dear to him, namely, the father conceived as devil. In this polemical text, aimed at Charcot's heirs, exorcists from the 17th century emerge…

  • Oedipus. Myth and Tragedy

    It is argued that, originally, archaic desire for the mother and hate for the father, i.e., the feelings referred to by Freudian psychoanalysis in its theory of the Oedipus complex, were not implied in the Greek myth. Having defined (i) the latter as a complex and historically derived conglomerate of variants of one and the same narrative, and (ii) tragedy as such, an overview is sketched of the principal variants of the Oedipus myth. Moreover, several interpretations are confronted and…