Remarks on Freud’s Lecture on “Weltanschauung”

Abstract

In his lecture on ‘world view’ from his New Introductory Lectures, Freud resolutely opposes psychoanalysis to Weltanschauung, as for him psychoanalysis sides with science. Lacan does not idealize science as Freud did, but there are nevertheless many common accentuations regarding these points with Freud in his work. On the other hand, Lacan consistently opposes psychoanalysis and religion. He simultaneously exposed the ethics of psychoanalysis, which for him represents the praxis of its theory and is dependent upon the discourse as a social bond. Every discourse concerns a definite field where the discourse of the analyst elucidates the other discourses in their common function – to tame the enjoyment. When Lacan in his seminar Encore points out that he has re-extracted the ethics of psychoanalysis again, this does not mean that this ethics is extracted from the Freudian field of desire, but from the Lacanian field of enjoyment.