What it means Lacanian psychoanalysis ? what it is Lacanian being What are the principles and differences between Lacan and Freud? How does the process of Lacanian analysis ?

Let's list some of the main characteristics of the Lacanian line. In some way, we present in this article a summary with principles and differences between the contributions of Lacan and Freud. Because, obviously, because of the problem of vocabulary, the teaching needs to make the establishment of differences (not variable and not symmetrical), in this case, of the new work (Lacan) with its influence (Freud).

In his trajectory, Lacan dialogued with the thought of important philosophers such as Freud, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Kojève, and Sartre. As "heirs," he influenced Derrida, Badiou, and Zizek, some of the illustrious Lacanians.

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1. to be Lacanian is to emphasize the analyst and the symbolic structure

Author Miller suggests the emphasis on the analyst (his posture, his words, his conducting) and the symbolic structure involved in the process of analysis as distinctive features of Lacanism.

A Lacanian does not seek absolute truths from the analyst. What matters is the way the analisand perceives his psychic reality. In this sense, it is common for Lacanian analysts to defend that psychoanalysis is to implicate the analyzing subject in what he says. For example, if an analyzing subject says "I have depression", a Lacanian psychoanalyst will be able to give him/her back in the form of a question, potentiating thereflection: "what is it for you to have depression?", or "what does it mean for you to feel depressed?".

2 To be Lacanian is to emphasize the centrality of language

Lacan elaborated a "linguistic psychoanalysis," we can say. In this sense, Lacan aligned himself with the linguistic structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure.

For Lacan, words are not transparencies. That is, words are not just ways of communicating or expressing things. Words are, too, the things themselves In this sense, Lacan often started from one word to reflect what the dismemberment of these words might suggest, as he did with the term "perversion", which he read as "père-version".

Learn more about the concept of perversion and père-version in psychoanalysis and in Lacan.

Another example is the concept of foreclosure.

Lacanian psychoanalysis adopts an alternative nomenclature to Freudian

Lacan offered an alternative, using other terms and concepts distinct from Freud's. It is a different vocabulary, an attempt to update, let's say, Lacan's updates of Freud's work.

Lacan proposed several new terms, as well as proposing the re-signification of terms from Freudian psychoanalysis.

The way the analyst and the analisand understand the error is one way of thinking about the correlation between language and psychoanalysis.

See also this other text in which we listed some similarities and differences between Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis.

4. lacanian psychoanalysis emphasizes the Subject and the Other

Lacan's work has the Other with a capital letter as its subject. The "Other" (of the unconscious, of the intrapersonal) is distinguished from the "other" (of other people, of interpersonal relationships).

In this sense, Lacan's reflection about desire is relevant. For Lacan, desire is also the desire for another person's affection. When we ask something from someone, we are mainly asking for the other's affection, not simply for the thing requested.

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We can understand:

• o another or others as the people we relate to; and
• o Another as an unconscious dimension of ourselves that we struggle to know.

Otherness is the ability to understand the position of the other / the Other. Lacan's contribution presupposes that we are able to escape from rigid truths and self-truths, to think about how ideas/words are understood and valued.

See also our article on Lacan's Mirror Stadium.

5. lacanian psychoanalysis has a practice of clinical care somewhat distinct from freudian psychoanalysis

Freud's practice was apparently a sequence of six one-hour sessions per week for each patient. The Anglo-Saxons adopted five fifty-five minute sessions, while the French adopted three or four forty-five or even half-hour sessions.

In turn, Lacan was recognized for offering an alternative to Freud's prescribed psychoanalytic practice, with less rigid temporality and techniques such as his short or ultra-short sessions.

The essential thing is that you read Lacan's Seminars, or at least start with a book by a commentator, such as Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis Meanwhile, you can read some excerpts and phrases from Lacan that help you understand the author's vision.

6. the emphasis of Lacanian psychoanalysis on the role of the psychoanalyst

The analyst is a great Other, an omnipotent man, who does not respond to any norm, who is not subject to any higher law. He has come to see the analyzer in the most direct way possible.

We speak of the desire of the analisand, but we must also think about the desire of the analyst, which, in principle, is the desire to uncover and "cure" his analisand. However, the analyst who does not reflect on the countertransference will unconsciously desire dictate its analyzer, that is, to impose oneself on him.

The transferential and countertransferential relations were also thought by Lacan, following the centrality that Freud attributed to these elements. In the same way, the concept of resistance for Lacan, a concept also very dear to Freud.

7. to be Lacanian is to open psychoanalysis to modernity

The psychoanalysis of the 21st century is very different from what Freud initially proposed. Man, father, son, lover, wife, mother, daughter, the loved ones are others. And the possibilities of inter-relationships are expanded, with mechanisms that facilitate face-to-face and virtual contact. The world is no longer the same: advances in science and communication have brought new solutions and reformulated the questions of the beingsPeople no longer get sick in the same way, they are no longer happy or unhappy in the same way as before.

Lacan's orientation gave Freudian psychoanalysis a new hermeneutic field, preparing it for the treatment of this post-modern subject, characterized by the lack of ideal paradigms, of rigid complexes such as Oedipus. The subject is potentially irresponsible in his subjectivity. Lacan was fundamental in broadening the thematic range of psychoanalysis.

Lacanian psychoanalysis uses psychoanalytic techniques, but without being dogmatic

Because of the previous item, the clinical analyst today, much under Lacan's influence, focuses on the relationship of the person with his pleasure, with his fears, and does not stick to any fixed ideological or procedural pattern. Again, we have Lacan's contribution, who had a non-dogmatic approach.

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In this sense, it is essential to understand what Lacan called supposed-knowing or subject-supposed-knowing. This is a very relevant contribution for thinking about the place of the analyst, the analyzed and the relation analyst-analyzed in the analytic setting.

9 Being Lacanian is, at bottom, a form of being Freudian

Despite the differences, Lacan promotes his debates from the terrain of psychoanalysis, having Freudian psychoanalysis as a starting point. Therefore, to be Lacanian is to be in the process of being Freudian, but going beyond and testing the limits of Freud's first contributions.

To go deeper into Freud's work is an invitation made by Lacan. That is why it is very rich to know Lacan: in his life, work and main concepts. And it can be said that for a long time it was possible to think that being a Lacanian was no longer the Freudian, obviously, for not being an "authentic Freudian".