Select Page

“I don’t stop; I start again.” The position of the analyst in ‘long term care’

by | Vol 35 (4) 2017

From a lacanian orientation, the relation between ‘treatment’, ‘coaching’ and ‘care’ is questioned in case of what one calls ‘long term care’. This question is approached from the perspective of a case study. A young man accuses himself constantly of not adapting enough to society and even of attacking society. His attempts to find a solution though, are situated both in his failure and his singular answers to this failing, as well as in his self-incrimination about his failure. Indeed, the real problem is neither the lack of adaptation nor the self-incrimination, but the feminine enjoyment that he is confronted with, over and over again. Theoretically, Lacan’s conceptualization of the symptom as a knotting element forms the framework.

Related articles

  • Residential Work within Special Youth Care

    Based on personal experience in a residential setting for adolescent boys within special youth care, the author connects the ‘being difficult to guide’ label of some youngsters, which often results in exclusion from care, to a ‘not wanting’ on the one hand and a ‘being different’ on the other. From within a psychoanalytic perspective both aspects are linked through two clinical fagments with, respectively, an ignorance of the primary function of a residential institution, and, the exclusion of the subjective…

  • Safety first: The Focus on the Body in Psychological Care

    This paper was written on the occasion of the third edition of the "Prize for humane mental health care", organized by the psychiatric hospital in Sleidinge. It is an account of my first year as a social worker in mental health care, in which I focus on the struggle one can experience while working within the rules set up to ensure "quality care". This set of rules has a profound effect on the bodily and psychological wellbeing of the patients.…

  • Che vuoi: About the "Desire of the Analyst"

    This article investigates the Lacanian notion of the "desire of the analyst". Several topics are discussed concerning this enigmatic desire. First of all, the author argues against the conception that the analyst has no desire to cure. Also discussed is the notion that the views of the analyst about "health" have ethical and technical consequences. The author conceives health here as a matter of wanting to know about one's own unconscious. One of the crucial paths towards this knowledge is…