In this episode, I cover the first chapter in Lacan's Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Those concepts are: (1) the unconscious, (2) repetition, (3) transference, & (4) the drive.
Ladies and gentlemen, In this lecture , I shall be talking to you about the funmentals of psycho-analysis (p. 1). [...] All this concerns the base, [...] of my teaching (p. 2). I ask the question --What are the fundamentals, in the broad sense of the term, of psychoanalysis? Which amounts to saying --What grounds it as a practice? (p. 6).
I am, in the present circumstances, still asking [...] what is psychoanalysis? (p. 3).
What is a praxis? [...] It is in the broadest term to designate a concerted human action, whatever it may be, which places man [a psychoanalyst] in a position to treat the real by [through] the symbolic. The fact that in doing so he encounters the imaginary to a greater or lesser degree is only of secondary importance here (p.6)
What is the analyst's desire?
What must there be in the analyst's desire for it to operate in a corect way? (p. 9) [T]he training analysis has no other purose than to bring the analyst to the point I designate in my algebra as the analyst's desire.
Analysis is not a matter of discovering in a particular case the differential feature of the theory and in doing so believe that one is explaining why [someone's] daugher is silent [...] the point at issue is to get her to speak. [...] Analysis consists precisely in getting her to speak (p. 11).
[W]hat conceptual status must we gie to the four of the terms introduced by Freud as fundamental concepts, namely the unconscious, repetition, the transference and the drive? (p. 12).
InForm: Seminar is an informal and (hopefully!) informative seminar delivered in a podcast format. The content of the seminar will focus on the ongoing process of the formation of an analyst, and on what it is like to live and work analytically. The seminar is delivered by Neil Gorman, who is a practicing Lacanian Analyst and an Associate Professor at the Aurora University School of Education & Social Work.
InForm: Seminar is a companion to the InForm: Podcast, which is a podcast of informal and informative conversations and interviews Neil Gorman does with other members of the analytic community.