Unikum 09 November Web

social dimension of our lives: our customs, common rituals, etc..
Today, Lacanian psychoanalysts and post-Lacanian philosophers
claim that the symbolic is disintegrating. I don’t think this is
an unreasonable claim, and I think we see the result of this in
widespread loneliness and the lack of customs and common
rituals. How do we respond to this? I think we should be wary
about being too hasty to conclude with action, but I do believe
that thinking about these problems will help.
Therapist “vs.” patient
Why does Lacanian psychoanalysis bring a more nuanced
perspective for psychiatry/psychology? Because the subfield has
a more nuanced perspective on ontology; on the study of our
being; who we are as a species. In effect, Lacanian psychoanalysis
has a nuanced perspective on madness. I believe Lacanian
psychoanalysis does not have the same top-down, dichotomic
perspective that “those who are mad” are somehow some other
types of beings, like mainstream psychiatry and psychology can
seem to assume. According to Lacanian psychoanalysis, we are
all more or less mad. It is language that tries to bind this madness.
What this nuanced perspective on madness brings is a humbler
approach as a therapist. Like mental health professional Eliot
Rosenstock argues in Zizek in the Clinic (2019):
“
The therapist, therefore, is not a subject-supposed-to-know as
in the result, but instead is one who knows there is a process
of modification that the client seeks, that must be mutually
determined through the signifiers presented in the session.
(p. 28, emphasis added)
I emphasized the word that is important because I think this
one important aspect that separates Lacanian psychoanalysis
from psychiatry and psychology. Through avoiding the all too
”
top-down attitude of the therapist, and rather emphasizing
more mutual work, Lacanian psychoanalysis offers something
new in the field of the psychiatric/psychological clinic. Though
this doesn’t mean that the therapist is entirely devoid of offering
help, like Rosenstock points at with the knowledge of the process
of modification. It points to the fact that the patient shouldn’t
just be served knowledge/truth, but find it, with some guidance
from the therapist.
An allergy
There is one typical allergy to Lacanian psychoanalysis, and
the allergic reaction is usually that (Lacanian) psychoanalysis
is non-falsifiable. This means that it is not really possible to
critique the theories of psychoanalysis. And that is because the
theories are allegedly too “all-inclusive” and become, allegedly,
a theory of “everything”. If one puts a little goodwill into it and
skips the hard skepticism, one will realize that this is not the
case. I will argue further than slight mockery.
What this critique assumes is that empiricism is the only way
to approach knowledge, truth and reality. Empiricism is the
philosophy of (sensual) experience; that we can only know
something, or declare something true or real, through our
experience. The usual “rationalist” objection is: “what about
our thoughts/cognition?”. And it is this same objection that can
be raised against the critique of the alleged non-falsifiability
of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis. Because both empiricism and
rationalism rely on the same philosophical premise: that there
is a gap between our being and our thought, producing the
questions: how do we know things? How is something true? How
is something real?
The fact that we can ask these questions are a testament to
the fact that every approach to anything is philosophical/
theoretical. In effect, this means that the critique of (Lacanian)
psychoanalysis that it is non-falsifiable is false. Because it is
philosophically/theoretically falsifiable, but not empirically.
And as I tried to show, there is more to knowledge/truth/reality
than what empiricism can account for.
NOVEMBER 2022 UNIKUM NR 9 19