Disambiguating Freud and Lacan: An Overview of Two Post-Structural Clinics

When French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, decided to revisit the works of Freud, focusing on their philosophical dimension and opening them up to previously unrelated fields of study, he and his followers were soon expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association. Come explore a realm of thought that, like Jung’s, led to a significant break from the Freudian paradigm. Lacan is principally thought of as a commentator on Freud’s work, but we will examine how irregularities in the transcriptions and translations of his lectures have led to the obscuring of an original thinker and psychological pioneer. Join us for a discussion of Lacan’s radically-revised notion of what constitutes a clinic, and what could be meant by “clinical”. We will explore how this notion differed from Freud’s, and the ways that post-structural thought influenced the diagnostic process.