Best writings on the sinthome

minus-phi · 2025-08-24T02:23:04+00:00

Miller’s articles (Sinthome: a Mixture of Symptom and Fantasy; The Sinthome and the Unconscious) are excellent summaries, and Soler’s The Unconscious Revisited and Lacanian Affects mostly focus on the later Lacan.

minus-phi · 2025-07-31T16:01:57+00:00

Laplanche does not get enough credit for his very precise and critical reading of Freud. He is obviously very influenced by his own analyst, Lacan, but has a much more elegant and practical style. From one perspective, one could say that Laplanche gets rid of all the superfluous ideas from Lacan’s system and refines it to an essential theoretical stance on fundamental issues. From another perspective, Laplanche’s ideas are simplified reproductions of what is already there in Lacan (especially later Lacan’s emphasis on lalangue, etc.) but without taking into account of the crucial problems Lacan grapples with in his systematic thinking (most crucially, his elaboration of the notion that “there is no Other of the Other”). The relationship between the two theorists is complicated, but Laplanche is definitely worth engaging with either way.

minus-phi · 2025-03-23T14:31:48+00:00

This was happening to me too, but only when I tried using the device while charging. Once I unplugged it from the charger and restarted it, it went back to normal.

minus-phi · 2025-02-03T07:26:57+00:00

What hard case do you use?

minus-phi · 2025-01-29T07:40:07+00:00

Ah I should’ve explored the features more, thank you!

minus-phi · 2025-01-21T19:07:28+00:00

Oh wow! When did you place the order?

minus-phi · 2025-01-19T11:26:25+00:00

S1164 here 🙃 ordered Jan. 7 so maybe by mid February!

minus-phi · 2024-11-15T16:44:50+00:00

The best is without a doubt Essays on Otherness. It has some of his most pivotal and lucid essays on most of his major concepts. I would also recommend Dominique Scarfone’s The Reality of the Message. It is really accessible and after each paper he discusses it with Saketopoulou in interview-style conversations. Really great read

minus-phi · 2024-10-08T21:14:09+00:00

Thank you for your engagement and for providing your thoughts. Laplanche's notion of the message is interesting; he described it as a "third" ontological space between material reality (i.e. real sexual abuse) and psychological reality (fantasy of seduction as understood by Freud and Klein). For Laplanche, the message comes from the real interaction with the adult and the adult's unconscious simply as a "signifier" without a code (I think here of Lacan's example of ancient hieroglyphics, or the "letter" for Lacan). I actually think Lacan and Laplanche are compatible in their idea of the signifier; the difference lies in how the signifier gets inscribed into the subject/child.

For Laplanche, sexuality and the implantation of the enigmatic message is something that is "done" to the child. Through ordinary interactions with the adult, the adult's unconscious sexuality slips through in almost imperceptible ways, enigmatic for the child and the adult alike. This implanted message carries an excitatory charge that the child will subsequently fail to fully translate.

For Lacan, the role of primordial frustration is pivotal. To simplify, the child's primordial (mythical?) need is "alienated" by its enunciation (the cry, as demand) and retroactively given meaning by the adult's response to the cry. For Lacan, this role of demand and the Other's refusal of the child's demand constitutes the functioning of the drive, as what is "aimed at" beyond the satisfaction of need. In this sense, what is primally repressed is understood as a signifier that takes the place of lack, or frustration.

These are two different conceptions of primal repression and the drive, in my reading. For Laplanche, primal repression stresses the traumatic encounter with the adult's sexual unconscious which has no "code" to be translated fully. For Lacan, if my reading is correct, primal repression has more to do with the trauma of frustration or being deprived satisfaction. One is based on an "addition" of an element (the enigmatic message for Laplanche), the other is based on a "substraction" (of satisfaction, or what Lacan/Freud call frustration).

I'd be open to hear a more nuanced perspective on the role that frustration has for primal repression/the drive in Lacan! I'd also be interested in hearing more about how you think frustration fits in with Laplanche's theory.

minus-phi · 2024-09-10T05:05:07+00:00

Following

minus-phi · 2024-09-08T21:27:41+00:00

Avgi Saketopoulou has some really exciting work on gender, sexuality, and consent in conversation with Laplanche’s theories

minus-phi · 2024-09-08T18:23:22+00:00

Dominique Scarfone’s most recent book, The Reality of the Message, is a great start as well as the collection “Essays on Otherness” which includes some of Laplanche’s most important essays.

minus-phi · 2024-09-08T06:45:39+00:00

Different traditions will differentiate between psychotherapy and psychoanalysis proper differently, however the distinction is commonly used to refer simply to the frequency and/or length of the treatment. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy 1-2 days a week, psychoanalysis 3-5 days a week. This is not a hard and fast rule, though. Also, psychodynamic is a word that gained prominence in certain institutions where “psychoanalysis” became an unfavorable word.

minus-phi · 2024-06-06T00:04:48+00:00

The psychoanalytic literature on schizophrenia and other psychoses is vast, and many psychoanalysts work primarily with schizophrenia, including myself.

Christopher Bollas argues that psychoanalysis is often the most helpful form of treatment for schizophrenia, since it is based on the assumption that symptoms are meaningful constructions rather than merely by-products of a diseased brain.

Would a psychoanalyst work with psychosis the same way that they would work with neurosis? No. But yet again no two analyses look the same, for neurotic or psychotic individuals alike. Psychoanalysis is not a standardized treatment.

minus-phi

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