Lacanian Psychoanalysis

I see patients in Lacanian psychoanalysis. If you are interested in exploring the option of analysis, we will meet for a few preliminary sessions to orient you to this mode of treatment and to ascertain if this method is a good fit for what you are looking for.

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was a French psychoanalyst who sought to return psychoanalytic treatment to the Freudian emphasis on the unconscious, speech and language.

Lacan elaborated a theory and practice, a praxis, that confronts each patient, the analysand, with the most radical dimension of his or her being. Through speech, language and formations of the unconscious, psychoanalysis enables each person to uncover the repressed truth about his or her being-in-the-world. It is the uniqueness of each analysand’s truth-in-being that shapes his or her reality. As this self-constructed reality emerges from repression over the course of an analysis, the analysand begins to be able to assume responsibility for his or her own life, to take up his or her desire, to choose, live, become.

The goal of psychoanalytic treatment is to bring the patient to confront the most basic coordinates of his or her own self-constructed reality as that which blocks his or her desire.

A Lacanian psychoanalysis is an intensive treatment of two to three sessions per week. The sessions are of a variable length and the direction, pace, and duration of the treatment are guided by the formations of the patient’s unconscious.

The Lacanian sojourn requires curiosity, patience, a commitment of time, and an acceptance that there exists within us an unconscious knowledge about one’s own suffering.

(adapted from Fernando Castrillon, PhD)