by Veroniek Knockaert | Full text, Vol 19 (3) 2001
Taking Kierkegaard, i.e. one of Lacan’s main references with respect to the notion of repetition, as a starting point, the author firstly situates this reference in Lacan’s seminar. It is argued that Lacan confronts Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition with the Platonic idea of reminiscence. Further it is shown that according to Lacan it is repetition rather than reminiscence that structures human experience. Secondly the author revisists Kierkegaard’s On repetition (1843) and argues that a sharp distinction should be drawn between Kierkegaard’s conception of repetition and the Greek one. Finally it is shown that Kierkegaard’s philosophical insights were at odds with the very way in which he faced life (Regine) and death (father).
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by Josée Roymans | Vol 19 (3) 2001
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 via transference, as the encounter between two supposed knowing subjects. The ways in which the transference is evoked, its relationship to love, the paths it follows, its ending and modalities of interpretation are discussed.
by Antonio Di Ciaccia | Vol 19 (3) 2001
The formation of the psychoanalyst is not the formation of the psychotherapist. On the one side psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are different. On the other side psychoanalysis includes a therapeutical side. But then that the State can see psychoanalysis as a form of psychotherapy – as it is the case in Italy – in fact it is the psychotherapy who receives her place and her validity, as she is inserted by the power of the word, that the field of psychoanalysis defines and circumscribes.
by David Van Bunder | Vol 19 (1/2) 2001
This paper begins by outlining the debate at the beginning of the twentieth century between structuralist and functionalist psychology. We examine some of the consequences of emphasizing either the functional or the structural properties of the mental apparatus. The functional explanation finds its most extreme example in Watson’s behaviorism. Then we examine Freud’s notion of the mental apparatus. We find that in the metapsychology of 1915 Freud gives priority to a structural explanation of mental phenomena, while in the metapsychology of 1923 he constructs the mental apparatus as being divided into functional units.
by Hubert Van Hoorde | Full text, Vol 19 (1/2) 2001
This article addresses the problem of the impossibility of a psychoanalytic Weltanschauung through a reading of Freud’s texts on war, death and transience and with reference to Freud’s membership of the B’nai B’rith. The link with clinical material leads the author to conclude that Freud’s insight into human nature, while enthusiastic, lacks optimism.
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