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[[Freud]]'s own career was punctuated by a series of breaks with colleagues to whom he had once been close, and the history of the psychoanalytic movement is one of splits and schisms as well as of international expansion. All the major tendencies within contemporary psychoanalysis claim a [[Freudian]] ancestry, but take as their stating-point different periods in his work or different aspects of his theories. Very schematically, the main post-Freudian currents within [[psychoanalysi]] are [[ego-psychology]], [[Kleinian psychoanalysis]], [[object-relations theory]] and [[Lacanian psychoanalysis]].
==Jacques Lacan==
[[Lacan]] trained initially as a [[psychiatrist]], and turned to [[psychoanalysis]] to help him with his [[psychiatric]] research. This then led [[Lacan]] to train as a [[psychoanalyst]] himself in the 1930s. From then on, until his [[death]] in 1981, he dedicated himself to practicing as an [[analyst]] and developing [[psychoanalytic theory]]. In the process, [[Lacan]] constructed a highly original way of discussing [[psychoanalysis]] which both reflected and determined an original way of conducting the [[treatment]]; in this sense it is thus possible to speak of a specifically [[Lacanian]] form of [[psychoanalytic treatment]]. However, [[Lacan]] never admits that he has created a distinctive "[[Lacanian]]" form of [[psychoanalysis]]. On the contrary, when he describes his own approach to [[psychoanalysis]], he speaks only of "[[psychoanalysis]]," thus implying that his own approach is the only authentic form of [[psychoanalysis]], the only one which is truly in line with [[Freud]]'s approach. Thus the three major non-[[Lacanian]] [[school]]s of [[psychoanalytic theory]] ([[Kleinian psychoanalysis]], [[Ego-psychology]], [[Object-relations theory]]) are all, in [[Lacan]]'s view, deviations from authentic [[psychoanalysis]] whose errors his own [[return to Freud]] is designed to correct.
From the very beginning, [[Lacan]] argues that [[psychoanalytic theory]] is a [[scientific]] rather than a [[religious]] mode of [[discourse]], with a specific object. Attempts to apply concepts developed in psychoanalytic theory to other objects cannot claim to be doing "applied psychoanalysis," since [[psychoanalytic theory]] is not a general master discourse but the theory of a specific situation.{{Ec}} p. 747</ref> [[Psychoanalysis]] is an autonomous discipline; it may borrow concepts from many other disciplines, but this doe snotmeant that it is dependent on any of them, since it reworks these concepts in a unique way. Thus psychoanalysis is not a brance of [[psychology]], nor of medicine, nor of [[philosophy]], nor of [[linguistics]], and it is certainly not a form of psychotherapy, since its aim is not to "cure" but to articulate truth.
==See Also==
{{See}}
* [[Psychology]]
* [[Unconscious]]
{{Also}}
==References==
<references/>
[[Category:Dictionary]]
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