Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it.
Jacques LacanRead
As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights how psychoanalysis allows us to understand the symbolic aspects of human existence.
Jacques Lacan emphasizes the importance of psychoanalysis in uncovering the symbolic dimensions of human experience. He suggests that through this psychological approach, we can understand the deeper mechanisms at play in our lives, revealing how our identities and experiences are shaped by societal symbols and language.
Themes
PsychoanalysisSymbolismHuman ExperienceIdentityJacques Lacan
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on the impact of psychoanalysis on modern psychology, one might reference this quote to underline Lacan's perspective.
More from Jacques Lacan
All quotes →But what Freud showed us… was that nothing can be grasped, destroyed, or burnt, except in a symbolic way, as one says, in effigie, in absentia.
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If psychoanalysis clarifies some facts of sexuality, it is not by aiming at them in their own reality, not in biological experience.
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I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think.
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The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom
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