The Experience of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

To this very day some philosophers cannot forgive Lacan and psychoanalysis that it dares to transmit the lack – of total and unquestionable clarity, for example – without relying solely on the universality that in philosophy remains the main player. On the other hand, neither Freud nor Lacan trusted philosophy. Indeed, by overestimating knowledge, philosophers, they argue, strive to cover up the lack in being. Freud situated philosophy in the field of Weltanschauung, namely as a discipline and practice of presenting a picture of the self-contained world that is free from incoherence. Psychoanalysis, on the contrary, by allowing the unconscious to interpret thoughtlessly remains in the position of apensé. Thus instead of trying to account for philosophical error for the benefit of philosophy, psychoanalysis aims to show that a philosophical error – which consists in a paranoiac effect of causally linking being and thought, and making no room for illusion – can only be accounted for by the subject.