The otherness of Lacan, fifty years après the coup, an essay on: Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners

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Notes

1. Here's an echo, as Fink tars American psychoanalysis with the broad brush of capitalism: “&practitioners seem to have adopted the goal of helping the patient perform better in the society of goods, in our present form of global capitalism. The patient, they feel, must be helped to overcome obstacles standing in the way of his improved concentration in the work arena, in the way of getting along with his superiors, subordinates, and colleagues, and thus in the way of his getting a bigger piece of the pie for himself” (p. 220).

2. Some assertions seemed absurd and need fact checking: “On average, Americans move every 18 to 24 months & [which is] difficult to fathom – analysts in America are faced with a thorny problem: how to sustain long‐term psychoanalytic work with analysands” (p. 189). Though noting a highly mobile population, these are not the findings of the latest US Census Bureau (blogs.censu.gov/2012/12/10: ‘Random Samplings: The Official Blog of the US Census Bureau: America: A Nation on the Move’), which documents that the one year rate of migration is 12.5% rate, a number much skewed by individuals in their 20s, college and university students, renters, etc. (and no doubt reflected in Fink's practice in a university setting).

3. Within American psychoanalysis and philosophy, Roy Schafer (1976) and Stanley Cavell (2002) have contributed greatly to our understanding of the significance of speech as action.

4. And so Fink can ask: “What is it about physical presence that is so crucial? What is it that is supposedly missing from phone analysis?” (pp. 193–4). And then he answers: “[A]nalytic work by phone does not present challenges of its own” (p. 199). To me, analytic work by phone often presents challenges to dyadic personal presence – and necessitates modifications.