In this podcast episode, I cover chapter 2 of Lacan's Seminar XI: The Four Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis.
When we read this chapter, we will see Lacan start to cover the unconscious in this chapter. The main focus is on talking about the Freudian unconscious, and some time is spent covering the unconscious that is "structured like a language" (i.e., the unconscious as Lacan thinks of it at this moment in his teaching).

Full show notes are available over at [S][J][P].

In this episode of InForm: Seminar, I respond to some listener questions and talk a bit more about the difference between psychoanalytic training v. psychoanalytic formation. I also say more about treating the real with the symbolic.

All this content will probably not make much sense if you have not listened to episode 003.

There is a lot in this session/chapter of the seminar. What stands out as essential to me during this reading is three related threads. In this podcast, what I hope to do is explain these main points to you in a way that helps you engage in your own reading of the seminar.

I'm not going to go into a lot of depth here. Rather, I'm going to try to point out what stands out to me as noteworthy and comment on these things.

In this reading, four things really stood out to me:

• The Fundamentals | The base of psychoanalytic practice.
• Psychoanalysis is a praxis | Theory is a compass, but a compass is a tool for moving/acting. The compass is not the action itself.
• Training/Formation of a psychoanalyst | Which is about desire.
• Psychoanalysis as a clinical practice | For Lacan, at this moment, all the above points come back to clinical practice.

(1) The Fundamentals:

In these quotes, there are a few terms I want to call your attention to:

• The Fundamentals – of psychoanalysis
• The Base – of Lacan's teaching
• What grounds – psychoanalysis as a practice.

(2) Psychoanalytic Praxis:

I love that Lacan is asking himself this! I think this is a question everyone interested in psychoanalysis should always be asking, in particular those who are practicing analysts.

Soon after this, Lacan says that psychoanalysis is a praxis.

(3) The Formation/Training of Psychoanalysts:

To start off, I want to tell you about a distinction that exists in my head when I read this. The difference between training and formation.

• Training is based on standards & rules, it has an end.
• Formation is based on principles, it is ongoing.

On page 9 of the text, Lacan says that he wants to focus on what a training analysis seeks...

This question is italicized in the text, so I suspect Lacan emphasized it when he spoke. He follows asking this question by saying,

This is a huge point.

(4) All of this has to do with the clinical practice of psychoanalysis

Throughout this chapter, I think there is an important claim being made, sometimes implicitly, but here I think Lacan makes it more explicit --while psychoanalysis can be studied as a theory, it was created to be a clinical practice.

After this, Lacan talks about how an understanding of theory is useful in this endeavor, but I think he is saying that psychoanalysis is the application of the theory to some sort of difficulty a person (a speaking subject) is having.

So it is not like theory is unimportant! It is important! But it is important because of how it can be used.

(5) The Four Fundamental Concepts (to be used)

And these are the concepts Lacan will be working through in this seminar.