Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research Library – serie

Has Jacques Lacan's impact on psychoanalysis really been assessed? His formulation that the Freudian unconscious is "structured like a language" is well-known, but this was only the beginning. There was then the radically new thesis of the "real unconscious". Why this step?Searching for the Ariadne's thread that runs throughout Lacan's ever-evolving teaching, this book illuminates the questions implicit in each step, and sheds new light on his revisions and renewals of psychoanalytic concepts. In tracing these, Colette Soler brings out their consequences for the clinic, and in particular, for the subject, for symptoms, for affects, and for the aims of treatment itself. The last section of the book examines the political import of these developments.If many analysts since Freud have dreamt of reinventing psychoanalysis, Colette Soler shows the ways in which Lacan succeeded in this reinvention.

Hysteria, one of the most diagnosed conditions in human history, is also one of the most problematic. Can it even be said to exist at all? Since the earliest medical texts people have had something to say about 'feminine complaints'. Over the centuries, theorisations of the root causes have lurched from the physiological to the psychological to the socio-political. Thanks to its dual association with femininity and with fakery, the notion of hysteria inevitably provokes questions about women, men, sex, bodies, minds, culture, happiness and unhappiness.To some, it may seem extraordinary that such a contested diagnosis could continue to merit any mention whatsoever. Surely we all now know better. Nonetheless, after being discarded by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952, it has continued to make its appearance, not least in later editions of the DSM, in the form of 'hysterical neurosis (conversion type)' or craftily rebranded as 'histrionic personality disorder'. In contrast with the old-fashioned cliche of the cantankerous malingerer, Jacques Lacan has associated the hysteric with the scientist and seeker after truth. Hysteria Today is a collection of essays whose purpose is to reopen the case for hysteria and to see what relevance, if any, the term may have within contemporary clinical practice.Contributors include Vincent Dachy, Anouchka Grose, Darian Leader, Genevieve Morel, Leonardo S. Rodriguez, Colette Soler, and Anne Worthington.

Lacan developed his theory and practice of psychoanalysis on the basis of Freud's original work. In his "return to Freud" he not only elaborated and revised some of Freud's innovative ideas, but turned to important questions and problems in Freud's theory that had remained obscure and unresolved, and provided a new way of articulating these issues and their implication for psychoanalytic theory and practice.This book offers a selection of chapters about some of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. The authors aim to explore the trajectory of the development of these concepts from their original basis in Freud's work to their elaboration by Lacan.The book will be of interest to readers from different backgrounds, including the clinical and academic field, social and cultural studies and the arts, for whom psychoanalytic ideas may be a relatively new field to explore, or who are looking for new perspectives to develop their ideas about psychoanalysis.

If advances in medical technology now allow babies to be born earlier and survive premature birth, what of the psychical impact of this emergence into the world? What consequences can premature birth have for babies, for their families, and for the medical staff around them?In this exciting and inspiring study, psychoanalyst Catherine Vanier describes the work she has undertaken over the past twenty years in a neonatal intensive care unit. She shows how a sensitivity to the subjective experience of all concerned can have dramatic effects, and how a psychoanalytic ear can allow us to understand both the problems and the progress of prematurely born babies in a new way.

Despite the important place it occupies in both Freudian and Lacanian nosology, obsessional neurosis has received far less attention than its erstwhile companion hysteria. This volume of essays aims to elaborate and deepen research into the question of obsession, going beyond the usual cliches which reduce obsession to the question 'Am I alive or dead?', and providing rigorous discussion of some of the following themes: the creation of the category of obsessional neurosis and of OCD, act and action in obsession, debt and guilt, aggression and solicitude, distinguishing the symptomology of obsessional neurosis from OCD phenomena, and clinical questions of work with obsessional subjects.

Is someone radically different after an analysis? Since Freud, psychoanalysis has been questioned about what the psychoanalytic experience can change in someone's life beyond shedding light on symptoms. Drawing on literature, philosophy and a range of psychoanalytic theorists and practitioners, Luis Izcovich addresses the effects of psychoanalysis on the individual who has the desire and the courage to enter an analytic treatment and take it to its endpoint. The subject bears the marks of his childhood and these have repercussions on the choices that he makes in life. Do these marks determine him or does he have a choice in making his destiny? How do the transformations brought about in the transference change the subject? And does the analysis leave a distinguishing and locatable mark? Luis Izcovich attempts to answer these questions from a Lacanian perspective.

How does one become a man or a woman? Psychoanalysis shows that this is never an easy task and that each of us tackles it in our own, unique way. In this important and original study, Genevieve Morel focuses on what analytic work with psychotic subjects can teach us about the different solutions human beings can construct to the question of sexual identity.Through a careful exposition of Lacanian theory, Morel argues that classical gender theory is misguided in its notion of 'gender identity' and that Lacan's concept of 'sexuation' is more precise. Clinical case studies illustrate how sexuation occurs and the ambiguities that may surround it. In psychosis, these ambiguities are often central, and Morel explores how they may or may not be resolved thanks to the individual's own constructions. This book is not only a major contribution to gender studies but also an invaluable aid to the clinician dealing with questions of sexual identity.

Freud's invention of psychoanalysis was based on his own desire to know something about the unconscious, but what have been the effects of this original desire on psychoanalysis ever since? How has Freud's desire created symptoms in the history of psychoanalysis? Has it helped or hindered its transmission?Exploring these questions brings Serge Cottet to Lacan's concept of the psychoanalyst's desire: less a particular desire like Freud's and more a function, this is what allows analysts to operate in their practice. It emerges during analysis and is crucial in enabling the analysand to begin working with the unconscious of others when they take on the position of analyst themselves. What is this function and how can it be traced in Freud's work?Cottet's book, first published in 1982 and revised in 1996, is a classic of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is not only a scholarly study of Freud and Lacan, but a thought-provoking introduction to the key issues of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

If psychoanalysis, for Freud, was an impossible profession, what consequences would this have for psychoanalytic training? And if one's own personal analysis lay at the heart of psychoanalytic training, how could what one had learnt from this be transmitted, let alone taught?In this groundbreaking book, Annie Tardits explores the many attempts that analysts have made to think through the problems of psychoanalytic training. Moving from Freud and his first students through to Lacan and his invention of the 'pass', Tardits charts the changing conceptions of psychoanalytic training. With clarity and elegance, she shows how different ideas of what psychoanalysis is will have effects on how training is understood.If psychoanalysis involves each person's unique unravelling of the unconscious and of sexuality, what kind of training would be appropriate, or even possible?