Psychoanalysis

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    Psychoanalysis: a mapping out, turning the symbolic inside out
    (The School of Psychotherapy at SVUH, 2015) Ball, Terry
    This paper considers the notion of psychoanalysis as a ‘mapping out' which was put forward by Lacan in his 24th Seminar, L'insu que sait de l'une bévue s'aile à mourre. The implied synonyms for ‘mapping out', such as, ‘identifying with one s symptom' and ‘turning inside out', are highlighted so as to gain some insight into this notion. How one is to understand and situate the symbolic intervention of the analyst and interpretation as a cut are also explored, as are the notions of the symptom - a symbolic representation with an effect in the Real and the possibility of dissolving this effect. Lacan's toric depictions of these ideas are also presented.
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    Lacan and the Sophist - indications of the logic of the subject
    (Psychoanalytische Perspectieven, 2000) O'Donnell, Barry
    In the Seminar Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis Lacan suggests that the logical conditions for the subsistence of the subject are indicated in Plato’s Sophist. Lacan argues that the same conditions are necessary for there to be a signifier orientated with respect to another signifier as for there to be a subject. This amounts to saying that the subject is the effect of signifiers. This article sketches the conditions Lacan indicates as necessary for the operation of signifiers. This amounts to an account of the conditions for a logic. The article deals mostly with the implications of the discussion of being and not-being in Plato’s Sophist. A new status for not-being is established in the face of arguments proposed by the sophist and seemingly supported by Parmenides. Before the Sophist being and not-being were thought as contraries. Not-being by this account is problematic and ultimately unspeakable. Therefore, Parmenides could prohibit research into not-being. Plato’s dialogue situates not-being in the logical realm and suggests a relation between being and not-being which is marked by otherness and introduces a function of negation which allows what is not present to be presented. Lacan refers to the Sophist because something of the logical status of the subject, in so far as it is the effect of the operation of signifiers (in other words, the logic of the signifier), “overlaps” with the status of not-being established in Plato’s text. Author keywords: Logic, not-being, the subject
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    Love in Plato's Symposium and Lacan's Transference seminar
    (The School of Psychotherapy at SVUH, 2011) Ball, Terry
    This article focuses on Lacan’s eighth seminar on Transference, specifically his references to Plato’s Symposium, and more particularly the attention he pays therein to the interaction and dialogue between Alcibiades, Socrates and Agathon. Addressed will be Lacan’s specific take on the development of characters and plot as he outlines the dialectic of love. The interaction between the positions of ‘lover’ and ‘beloved’ will be examined as will the progression, according to the law of metaphorical substitution, which culminates in the birth of love. All of this, in an attempt to better appreciate the dynamics of the transference relationship in the psychoanalytic situation. Author keywords: Plato’s Symposium, transference, love, lover-beloved, dialectic, metaphor
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    Forging a new template : proposing a more effective way of working with drug users
    (Kilbarrack Coast Community Programme (KCCP), 2007) Byrne, Declan; Loose, Rik
    Addiction is characterised by a sense of urgency or immediacy and it concerns a need to feel good, to be without pain or even to acquire an ideal state of feeling. But are these needs not something that most people can identify with? Indeed, addiction is a very human phenomenon. However, what sets addicts apart from others is that they do not just want to feel a certain way, they also demand these feelings and, moreover, they have found something in the effect of alcohol and drugs that will give them these feelings (at least for a while). These chemical substances will provide addicts with the sought-after feeling because that is the effect they have on them. It is important not to forget the simple fact that drugs and alcohol do not affect everyone in the same way: for instance, addicts do not get the same effect from drugs as non-addicts do.
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    Toxicomania and psychoanalytic treatment: double trouble
    (JCFAR, 1997) Loose, Rik
    In Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious Freud analyses the technique of a joke about a dipsomaniac tutor. The joke goes as follows: ‘A man who had taken to the drink supported himself by tutoring in a small town. His vice became gradually known, however, and as a result he lost most of his pupils. A friend was commissioned to urge him to mend his ways. ‘Look, you could get the best tutoring in town if you would give up drinking. So do give it up!’ ‘Who do you think you are?’ was the indignant reply. ‘I do tutoring so I can drink. Am I to give up drinking so that I can get tutoring?’’ Freud writes that the technique of this joke is extremely scanty and therefore can not explain its effectiveness. It is not a displacement joke in which the psychical emphasis is shifted from one train of thought to another. The cynicism here is open and direct: ‘Drinking is the most important thing for me’. The joke depends on its form of expression in which, as Freud indicates, the same material is rearranged by reversing the relation of means and ends between drinking and work. This dipsomaniac tutor wants to work only to be able to pay for his drinking. This joke and Freud’s analysis of it touches upon a particular aspect of a certain kind of alcoholism: Work is usually one of the first aspects affected in the lives of alcoholics, but at the same time the aspect they most need to hold on to in order to be able to continue drinking.