Difference between revisions of "Return to Freud"

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The whole of [[Lacan]]'s work can only be understood within the context of the intellectual and theoretical legacy of [[Sigmund Freud]] (1856-1939, the founder of [[psychoanalysis]].
 
 
[[Lacan]] first trained as a [[psychoanalyst]] within the [[International Psychoanalytical Association]] ([[IPA]]), the organization founded by [[Freud]] which presented itself as the sole legitimate heir to the Freudian legacy.
 
 
However, [[Lacan]] gradually began to develop a radical critique of the way that most [[analyst]]s in the [[IPA]] had interpreted [[Freud]].
 
 
After being expelled from the [[IPA]] in 1953, [[Lacan]] developed his polemic further, arguing that [[Freud]]'s radical insights had been universally betrayed by the three major [[school]]s of [[psychoanalysis]] within the [[IPA]]: [[ego-psychology]], [[Kleinian psychoanalysis]], and [[object-relations theory]].
 
 
To remedy this situation, [[Lacan]] proposed to lead a 'return to Freud', both in the sense of a renewed attention to the actual texts of Freud himself, and a return to the essence of Freud's work which had been betrayed by the [[IPA]].
 
 
Reading [[Freud]] in the original German allowed [[Lacan]] to discover elements which had been obscured by poor translation and ignored by other commentators.
 
 
Thus much of [[Lacan]]'s work is taken up with detailed textual commentaries on specific works by [[Freud]], and by numerous references to the work of other analysts whose ideas [[Lacan]] refutes.
 
 
To understand [[Lacan]]'s work, therefore, it is necessary both to have a detailed understanding of [[Freud]]'s ideas and also a grasp of the way these ideas were developed and modified by the other analysts (the 'post-Freudians') whom Lacan criticizes.
 
 
These ideas are the background against which [[Lacan]] develops his own "return to Freud."
 
 
<Blockquote>What such a return [to Freud] involves for me is not a return of the repressed, but rather taking the antithesis constituted by the phase in the history of the psychoanalytic movement since the death of Freud, showing what psychoanalysis is not, and seeking with you the means of revitalizing that which has continued to sustain it, even in deviation...<ref>{{E}} p.116</ref></Blockquote>
 
 
However, [[Lacan]]'s work itself puts in question the narrative of a return to orthodoxy implicit in the expression 'return to Freud,' for Lacan's way of reading Freud and his style of presentation are so original that they seem to belie his modest claims to be a mere commentator.
 
 
Furthermore, while it is true that [[Lacan]] returns to specific aspects of the Freudian conceptual legacy, privileging Lacan is no more 'faithful' to Freud's work than the post-Freudians whom he criticizes for having betrayed Freud's message; like them, [[Lacan]] selects and develops certain themes in [[Freud]]'s work and neglects or reinterprets others.
 
 
Lacanian psychoanalysis might therefore be described as a 'post-Freudian' form of psychoanalysis, along with [[ego-psychology]], [[Kleinian psychoanalysis]] and [[object-relations theory]].
 
 
However, this is not the way [[Lacan]] sees his work.
 
 
[[Lacan]] argues that there is a deeper logic at work in [[Freud]]'s texts, a logic which endows those texts with a consistency despite the apparent contradictions.
 
 
[[Lacan]] claims that his reading of [[Freud]], and his alone, brings out this logic, and shows us that "the different stages and changes in direction" in Freud's work "are governed by Freud's inflexibly effective concern to maintain it in its primary rigour."<ref>{{E}} p.116</ref>
 
 
In other words, while [[Lacan]]'s reading of [[Freud]] may be as partial as any other in the sense that it privileges particular aspects of [[Freud]]'s work, that is not, in Lacan's view, justification for regarding all interpretations of [[Freud]] as equally valid.
 
 
Thus [[Lacan]]'s declarations of loyalty and accusations of betrayal cannot be seen as a mere rhetorical strategy.
 
 
Certainly, they do have a rhetorico-political function, in that presenting himself as 'more Freudian' than anyone else allowed [[Lacan]] to challenge the effective monopoly on the Freudian legacy that the [[IPA]] still enjoyed in the 1950s.
 
 
However, [[Lacan]]'s statements are also an explicit claim to have teased out a coherent logic if [[Freud]]'s writings that no one else had perceived before.
 
 
==See Also==
 
 
==References==
 
<references/>
 
 
[[Category:Dictionary]]
 
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
 
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
 
[[Category:Freudian psychology]]
 

Revision as of 04:44, 8 August 2006