Helen Sheehan : The imagos of Freud and Lacan: Towards understanding structure.

         Brendan Behan a Dublin playwright once said “The first item on the agenda of any newly formed group in Ireland, is the split”.

 

         At this stage over 40 years since Cormac Gallagher brought the “plague of psychoanalysis” (as Freud called it) to our shores, there have been so many splits and repleating and restitching that very soon none of us will have anything to wear.

 

         And, perhaps that may not be so bad after all, because the prêt a porter of the psychoanalyst is much easier to don than the especially fabricated – the “be-spoke” tailor made, as they say in all the best circles.  This prêt a’porter of the phantasy seems to be spreading its wings.  As Lacan remarks “Is it not true that in our era psychoanalysis is everywhere and psychoanalysts everywhere.

It seems to be a matter of “have mobile will travel” but is it not fair to say that this is evidence of some discord – even if it is true that psychoanalysts themselves are poorly situated to judge the ills in which they are immersed but one source of this going astray is that the imagos discovered by both Freud and Lacan have been rendered totally banal.

 

         The remnants may cover an initial unease, dis-ease at the heart of some of us but Lacan’s schema L will help to clarify our ideas and orient our soul for those of us who are lost in these ideas. 

 

         As he explains, our very condition as subjects (neurotic or otherwise) depends on what unfolds in the Autre, in the big Other, as it has been translated into English.

 

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