Some reflections on urgency, crisis and psychiatry

by | Vol 22 (3/4) 2004

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.

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