a personal account
video
excerpt
If my work with Lacan did not definitively deliver me from anguish, it changed my life. He allowed me to accept my origins, my biological sex and motherhood, thanks, on the one hand, to his interest, whose intensity I perceived, and, on the other hand, to his way of working, which is controversial even today. It is this precise point that I want to emphasize from my experience with him.
synopsis
Analysed by Lacan has in it Why Lacan and Goodbye Doctor. Why Lacan is the testimony of the author’s analysis with Lacan in the ‘70s. She wrote the testimony in order to show how Lacan worked. He did not interpret the speech of the analysand by attributing a meaning to it. He would cut the session at the moment when something that seemed essential had been said and then it was up to the analysand to interpret the reason for the cut. The analysis therefore continued after the session was over. Lacan’s way of working was based on the idea that the traditional way of interpreting provoked resistance.
Before writing the testimony, the author wrote a play inspired by her analysis, Good bye Doctor. It is structured around the sessions of Seriema with the Doctor. Seriema lives the drama of a Western descendant of people from the Middle East. Motherhood seems impossible for her. Is it because she cannot identify with the women in her family or is there some other reason? Through the analysis, she discovers why she cannot give birth, namely, an unconscious desire to satisfy the will of her father who didn’t authorize her to conceive. She ceases to be the victim of her unconscious, grasps the possibility of choosing a father for her child and thus becoming a mother. The way each session ends is always a function of what is said during it and the text clearly indicates this. Good bye Doctor has been adapted for film by the director Richard Ledes. The film is called Adieu Lacan and can be seen in https://vimeo.com/ondemand/adieulacan.
history
Why Lacan was first published in Brazil by Zahar (2021) then in France by érès (2021) and in Argentine Letraduciones (2022). Good bye Doctor was first published in Brazil by Giostri (2015) and then in France by érès (2023). Analyzed by Lacan: An Account was published by Bloomsbury (2023).
areas of interest
Literature and psychoanalysis.
critical reaction
Goodbye Doctor – On the couch with ‘the most controversial analyst since Freud’
Peter Salmon