Much has been written about Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses. His idiosyncratic employment of the term ‘discourse’ itself, however, has gone generally unexplored. This article demonstrates how Lacan’s conception of discourse as a structure founded on language and determining modes of relation emerged not only out of psychoanalytic practice, but also by way of a long-running conversation with the French linguist Émile Benveniste. Indeed, Lacan’s conception of discourse cannot be adequately comprehended if Benveniste’s work on the same topic is not taken into consideration. While Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and others were also at work offering theorizations of discourse in the 1960s, Benveniste was the privileged source, interlocutor and foil for Lacan’s theorizations. Tracking the manner in which the psychoanalyst drew on but also distinguished his perspective from that of the linguist allows us to reconsider the specifically psychoanalytic conception of this too-familiar term.
It has long been customary to refer to Lacan's theory of the four discourses as a theory of four specific forms of social link. An understanding of each of the terms in question, however – both ‘discourse’ and ‘social link’ – must be developed in its own right in order to develop a fuller understanding of the meaning of this formula. In this essay, we will explore the employment of the term ‘social link’ in the work of Émile Durkheim and Ferdinand de Saussure, in an effort to better grasp the manner in which Lacan can be understood to have drawn from each. By clarifying the understanding of the term ‘social link ‘that was operative in Lacan's work, we can restore the centrality of the sociological influence upon Lacan, which has important implications both conceptually and clinically.
The present study aims at mapping and interpreting factors that stand out as being relevant to personal change through Lacanian-oriented psychoanalytic talking therapy, starting from accounts offered by Lacanian psychoanalysts of therapies they conducted. Using interview data on how these psychoanalysts perceived the therapeutic journey of their patients, we applied a thematic analysis to gain insight into what these psychoanalysts believed effectuated change that occurred for their patients. Second, we interpret the data within the context of Lacan's discourse theory, one of the models proposed by Lacan to grasp the process of psychoanalysis. We discerned three principal themes. Participants indicated that their patients entered therapy with an insisting question related to their own functioning, which was further provoked by the analysts. Second, by embodying the element of the unsaid, the analysts focused on the speech of their patients, creating a space to critically listen to what their patients were saying, so their patients were able to reflect on the motives that could have been influencing their words and actions. The psychoanalysts focused on the subjective logic of patients' functioning; the specific ways patients dealt with challenges in the subject-other relationship. Lacanian structural diagnoses served as a means of reorienting treatment toward a person-centered case construction. Third, the articulation of subjectively important symbolic material (master signifiers) was a key, allowing patients to "let go" of the repetitive impact these master signifiers had on their life. Remarkably, while positioned in the analytic discourse, analysts nonetheless used other discourses to incite further elaboration, intervening with surprising flashes.
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