Paradoxes in Lacanian Psychoanalysis

✍ Scribed by Yehuda Israely

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 95
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book explores the nature of paradoxes in Lacanian psychoanalysis, how they can be approached in treatment and how they can be resolved.

Building on Freud’s and Lacan’s own work in resolving paradoxes, Yehuda Israely considers psychic distress, and its amelioration, by means of the study and clarification of the many life situations that can be described as paradoxical. Among the paradoxes examined in this book are the nature of longing (the object’s presence in its absence), the wholeness of the broken heart (the subject’s existence in relation to the lack that defines her or him), drives (the more you feed it, the hungrier it gets) and the pangs of conscience (the righteous suffer). Israely’s innovative approach considers several questions which can be used to orient treatment and focuses on shedding the erroneous beliefs and assumptions that can lead to dead ends. Paradoxes in Lacanian Psychoanalysis also explores those paradoxes – involving anxiety, perplexity, wonder and creativity – that cannot and are not meant to be resolved.

This fascinating book will be essential reading for Lacanian psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists of other theoretical backgrounds who are interested in understanding the nature of paradoxes.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover Page
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents Page
Figures Page
Introduction
Chapter 1 The paradox of existence
Petit a
Sexuality and love
Chapter 2 The paradox of being The subject exists under thecondition of its lack, or “There’s nothing more whole than a broken heart”
Subject without object
The subject relative to the signifier
Subject in relation to drive: “Man has a small limb, if he satiates it its craving will increase, but if he starves it, its hunger will be satisfied” (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sukkah 72:2)
The subject in relation to the ego: “If I don’t lack anything, then why do I suffer?”
Chapter 3 All is foreseen, and freedom of choice is grantedThe paradox of fate versus free choice (Babylonian Talmud, Pirkey Avot 15:3)
Chapter 4 Putting the subject into the picture
Chapter 5 Paradoxes resulting from choosing one physical paradigm which are solved by choosing another
From Freud’s drives model to Lacan’s cybernetic model
From quantum mechanics to superstring theory
Chapter 6 Dimensions
The dimensions of space
The point
Line
Getting rid of the Other on the condition of using him
Plane
Volume – body
The fourth dimension of space
Object/subject conversion
Lover and beloved
Conscious and unconscious
The superego and the id
Chapter 7 The dimension of time Afterwardsness
Interpretation
Emergence of the subject, unconscious and transference
Suffering as truth validation
Present produced as retrospective effect of the future: myths beyond death
The absence of points de capiton
Chapter 8 The paradox of the act
Chapter 9 Paradoxes without a solution
Index