A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis
A clinician-focused account of Lacanian theory and technique.
Bruce Fink sets out how Lacan's ideas translate into what an analyst actually does across the course of a treatment, from the opening sessions through to termination. He works through the aims that guide intervention, the handling of speech and silence, and the shifting position the analyst occupies in relation to the patient's desire. Rather than surveying Lacan's writing, Fink stays with the consulting room, drawing on his own practice and on four extended case studies.
Much of the book turns on diagnosis. Fink presents Lacan's structural distinctions between neurosis, perversion, and psychosis as working categories that shape how one listens and responds, since the same intervention can steady a neurotic patient and destabilise a psychotic one. He is precise about technique: when to punctuate, when to withhold, how interpretation and the direction of the treatment differ.
For a clinician trained in another idiom, the book offers a usable account of concepts such as jouissance and the objet a, tied throughout to decisions made in session.
About the author
Bruce Fink
Bruce Fink is an American psychoanalyst and translator working in the Lacanian tradition. He trained in France for seven years and holds a doctorate in psychoanalysis from the University of Paris VIII, and he practices as a Lacanian analyst and supervisor affiliated with the Ecole de la Cause freudienne. He is known for translating Lacan's complete Ecrits and several of the Seminars into English, and for clinical and theoretical books including The Lacanian Subject and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. He taught psychology at Duquesne University.
Details
- 1997
- Harvard University Press
- Harvard University Press
- 320
- 9780674135369