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Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners
An introduction to psychoanalytic technique from a Lacanian perspective.
What does it mean to practice psychoanalysis as Jacques Lacan did? How did Lacan translate his original theoretical insights into moment-to-moment psychoanalytic technique? And what makes a Lacanian approach to treatment different from other approaches? These are among the questions that Bruce Fink, a leading translator and expositor of Lacan's work, addresses in Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique by describing and amply exemplifying the innovative techniques (such as punctuation, scansion, and oracular interpretation) developed by Lacan to uncover unconscious desire, lift repression, and bring about change.Unlike any other writer on Lacan to date, Fink illustrates his Lacanian approach to listening, questioning, punctuating, scanding, and interpreting with dozens of actual clinical examples. He clearly outlines the fundamentals of working with dreams, daydreams, and fantasies, discussing numerous anxiety dreams, nightmares, and fantasies told to him by his own patients. By examining transference and countertransference in detail through the use of clinical vignettes, Fink lays out the major differences (regarding transference interpretation, self-disclosure, projective identification, and the therapeutic frame) between mainstream psychoanalytic practice and Lacanian practice. He critiques the ever more prevalent normalizing attitude in psychoanalysis today and presents crucial facets of Lacan's approach to the treatment of neurosis, as well as of his entirely different approach to the treatment of psychosis.Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique is an introduction to psychoanalytic technique from a Lacanian perspective that is based on Fink's many years of experience working as an analyst and supervising clinicians, including graduate students in clinical psychology, social workers, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts. Designed for a wide range of practitioners and requiring no previous knowledge of Lacan's work, this primer is accessible to therapists of many different persuasions with diverse degrees of clinical experience, from novices to seasoned analysts.Fink's goal throughout is to present the implications of Lacan's highly novel work for psychoanalytic technique across a broad spectrum of interventions. The techniques covered (all of which are designed to get at the unconscious, repression, and repetition compulsion) can be helpful to a wide variety of practitioners, often transforming their practices radically in a few short months.
What does it mean to practice psychoanalysis as Jacques Lacan did? How did Lacan translate his original theoretical insights into moment-to-moment psychoanalytic technique? And what makes a Lacanian approach to treatment different from other approaches? These are among the questions that Bruce Fink, a leading translator and expositor of Lacan's work, addresses in Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique by describing and amply exemplifying the innovative techniques (such as punctuation, scansion, and oracular interpretation) developed by Lacan to uncover unconscious desire, lift repression, and bring about change.Unlike any other writer on Lacan to date, Fink illustrates his Lacanian approach to listening, questioning, punctuating, scanding, and interpreting with dozens of actual clinical examples. He clearly outlines the fundamentals of working with dreams, daydreams, and fantasies, discussing numerous anxiety dreams, nightmares, and fantasies told to him by his own patients. By examining transference and countertransference in detail through the use of clinical vignettes, Fink lays out the major differences (regarding transference interpretation, self-disclosure, projective identification, and the therapeutic frame) between mainstream psychoanalytic practice and Lacanian practice. He critiques the ever more prevalent normalizing attitude in psychoanalysis today and presents crucial facets of Lacan's approach to the treatment of neurosis, as well as of his entirely different approach to the treatment of psychosis.Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique is an introduction to psychoanalytic technique from a Lacanian perspective that is based on Fink's many years of experience working as an analyst and supervising clinicians, including graduate students in clinical psychology, social workers, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts. Designed for a wide range of practitioners and requiring no previous knowledge of Lacan's work, this primer is accessible to therapists of many different persuasions with diverse degrees of clinical experience, from novices to seasoned analysts.Fink's goal throughout is to present the implications of Lacan's highly novel work for psychoanalytic technique across a broad spectrum of interventions. The techniques covered (all of which are designed to get at the unconscious, repression, and repetition compulsion) can be helpful to a wide variety of practitioners, often transforming their practices radically in a few short months.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 15, 2007
81 people are currently reading
395 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Fink
59 books161 followersBruce Fink is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor. He trained as a psychoanalyst in France for seven years with and is now a member of the psychoanalytic institute Jacques Lacan created shortly before his death, the École de la Cause freudienne in Paris, and obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII (Saint-Denis). He served as Professor of Psychology from 1993 to 2013 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is currently an affiliated member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center.
Dr. Fink is the author of six books on Lacan (which have been translated into many different languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese):
• The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
• A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997)
• Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)
• Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2007)
• Against Understanding: Commentary, Cases, and Critique in a Lacanian Key, 2 volumes (London: Routledge, 2013-2014)
He has translated several of Lacan’s works, including:
• The Seminar, Book XX (1972-1973): Encore, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge (New York: Norton, 1998)
• Écrits: A Selection (New York: Norton, 2002)
• Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (New York: Norton, 2006), for which he received the 2007 nonfiction translation prize from the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation
• On the Names-of-the-Father (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Triumph of Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Seminar, Book VIII: Transference (Cambridge: Polity Press, forthcoming)
He is also the coeditor of three collections on Lacan’s work published by SUNY Press:
• Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1995)
• Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (1996)
• Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality (2002)
He has presented his theoretical and clinical work at close to a hundred different conferences, psychoanalytic institutes, and universities in the U.S. and abroad since 1986.
In recent years, he has authored mysteries involving a character based on Jacques Lacan: The Adventures of Inspector Canal (London: Karnac, 2010, and translated into Finnish). A second volume, Death by Analysis, was published by Karnac in 2013, to be followed by two further mysteries in 2014 (The Purloined Love and Odor di Murderer).
Dr. Fink is the author of six books on Lacan (which have been translated into many different languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese):
• The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
• A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997)
• Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)
• Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2007)
• Against Understanding: Commentary, Cases, and Critique in a Lacanian Key, 2 volumes (London: Routledge, 2013-2014)
He has translated several of Lacan’s works, including:
• The Seminar, Book XX (1972-1973): Encore, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge (New York: Norton, 1998)
• Écrits: A Selection (New York: Norton, 2002)
• Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (New York: Norton, 2006), for which he received the 2007 nonfiction translation prize from the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation
• On the Names-of-the-Father (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Triumph of Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Seminar, Book VIII: Transference (Cambridge: Polity Press, forthcoming)
He is also the coeditor of three collections on Lacan’s work published by SUNY Press:
• Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1995)
• Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (1996)
• Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality (2002)
He has presented his theoretical and clinical work at close to a hundred different conferences, psychoanalytic institutes, and universities in the U.S. and abroad since 1986.
In recent years, he has authored mysteries involving a character based on Jacques Lacan: The Adventures of Inspector Canal (London: Karnac, 2010, and translated into Finnish). A second volume, Death by Analysis, was published by Karnac in 2013, to be followed by two further mysteries in 2014 (The Purloined Love and Odor di Murderer).
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 27, 2025
Nós temos grandes comentadores de Lacan no Brasil, mas o Brasil é um país psicanalítico por natureza, por isso me espanta o Bruce Fink saído dos EUA, um país corportamentalista em essência, ser essa sumidade absoluta no em ensino de Lacan. Como pode ser tão didático e apaixonante?
No último ano li Lacan on love dele (ainda sem tradução no Brasil), como ele é perspicaz em decifrar o Seminário 8, anteriormente já tinha lido O Sujeito Lacaniano e Introdução à Clinica e Psicanálise Lacaniana, que são livros obrigatórios para a clínica e agora outro grande tratado clínico que é esse Fundamentos da técnica psicanalítica, um catatau de 500 páginas que atravessa o abc de como adentrar o processo de análise a partir das técnicas analíticas francesas.
Na verdade esse livro tem quase 10 anos de publicado no Brasil, mas foi publicado há quase 20 anos nos EUA (antes do DSM 5), tem muita coisa que fica anacrônica como era o caso do capítulo sobre análise por telefone, quando agora todo mundo faz online.
Enfim, livraço para deixar o tempo todo debaixo do braço e todo anotado e grifado porque temos que aprender sempre mais e mais.
No último ano li Lacan on love dele (ainda sem tradução no Brasil), como ele é perspicaz em decifrar o Seminário 8, anteriormente já tinha lido O Sujeito Lacaniano e Introdução à Clinica e Psicanálise Lacaniana, que são livros obrigatórios para a clínica e agora outro grande tratado clínico que é esse Fundamentos da técnica psicanalítica, um catatau de 500 páginas que atravessa o abc de como adentrar o processo de análise a partir das técnicas analíticas francesas.
Na verdade esse livro tem quase 10 anos de publicado no Brasil, mas foi publicado há quase 20 anos nos EUA (antes do DSM 5), tem muita coisa que fica anacrônica como era o caso do capítulo sobre análise por telefone, quando agora todo mundo faz online.
Enfim, livraço para deixar o tempo todo debaixo do braço e todo anotado e grifado porque temos que aprender sempre mais e mais.
December 29, 2008
Another essential Fink text. This one-- like "A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice" also by Bruce Fink-- focuses on the clinical side of Lacanian analysis, which makes it truly unqiue amongst the books about Lacan on the market. This does not mean that only practicing analyists should read it. Anyone even remotely interested in Lacanian analysis should make this book-- and all the others by Bruce Fink-- a top priority, for no one has explicated Lacanian theory in a more sucinct, lucid manner than Fink. This text talks at length about such fascinating issues as dream and fantasy interpretation, transference, scansion, and how to "practically" gain access to the unconscious. Read all his footnotes- if you don't you're only getting half the book. A superb text which really opens up Lacanian theory in clear and startling ways. If you are interested in Lacan, do yourself a favor-- put down the Zizek for a second and pick up the Fink; you'll be glad you did.
October 27, 2016
Overall really helpful primer on analytic techniques, and an especially great section on transference and counter-transference. I appreciated that he talked through how to respond to/make use of a wide range of transference reactions from the positive to the extremely negative. He also explained very convincingly why making transference interpretations is a doomed endeavour from the start (the analysand cannot step outside the transference to objectively look at what they are enacting).
I wasn't expecting such a scathing critique of the notion of projective identification (in the sense of the analyst being able to experience what the analysand is not able experience/ has "split off") but I have to say I agree with him that it's an unnecessarily cumbersome and "spooky" concept.
I wasn't expecting such a scathing critique of the notion of projective identification (in the sense of the analyst being able to experience what the analysand is not able experience/ has "split off") but I have to say I agree with him that it's an unnecessarily cumbersome and "spooky" concept.
May 12, 2025
4,5 ⭐️
excelente guia pra iniciantes da psicanálise lacaniana!!! vou voltar pra esse livro várias vezes nos próximos anos. bruce fink praticamente pega na sua mão e diz o que você deve fazer e aquilo que você não pode de jeito nenhum fazer enquanto psicanalista. achei a discussão sobre identificação projetiva um pouco cansativa, mas nada que estrague a experiência como um todo. muito bom.
excelente guia pra iniciantes da psicanálise lacaniana!!! vou voltar pra esse livro várias vezes nos próximos anos. bruce fink praticamente pega na sua mão e diz o que você deve fazer e aquilo que você não pode de jeito nenhum fazer enquanto psicanalista. achei a discussão sobre identificação projetiva um pouco cansativa, mas nada que estrague a experiência como um todo. muito bom.
June 29, 2022
I'm more interested in psychoanalytic thought as lens through which one can view culture, but this provided a lot of useful clarification on key concepts (transference, scansion, etc.) given that Lacan is generally very difficult to understand.
Interesting Concepts/Quotes/Observations:
Insistence that not only are humans bound by Law, but they insist on being bound by Law, and someone who isn’t bound by Law will flail around desperately looking for some Law to be bound by, until they end up with horses or buttons or whatever else was at hand.
How travel decreases the directional confidence/weighting of our Worldview:
"We ourselves may fall into the trap of thinking that we simply need to broaden our horizons, travel far and wide, and learn about other peoples, languages, religions, classes, and cultures in order to better understand a wider variety of analysands. However, if acquiring a fuller knowledge of the world is in fact helpful,^^ it is probably not so much because we have come to understand "how the other half lives" or how other people truly operate, but because we have stopped comparing everyone with ourselves to the same degree: Our frame of reference has shifted and we no longer immediately size everyone else up in terms of our own way of seeing and doing things."
"The goal is not to get him to substitute the analyst's understandings for his own under standings (that is, to internalize her point of view) but rather to get him to
become suspicious of all meanings and understandings insofar as they partake
of rationalization and fantasy."
Interesting Concepts/Quotes/Observations:
Insistence that not only are humans bound by Law, but they insist on being bound by Law, and someone who isn’t bound by Law will flail around desperately looking for some Law to be bound by, until they end up with horses or buttons or whatever else was at hand.
How travel decreases the directional confidence/weighting of our Worldview:
"We ourselves may fall into the trap of thinking that we simply need to broaden our horizons, travel far and wide, and learn about other peoples, languages, religions, classes, and cultures in order to better understand a wider variety of analysands. However, if acquiring a fuller knowledge of the world is in fact helpful,^^ it is probably not so much because we have come to understand "how the other half lives" or how other people truly operate, but because we have stopped comparing everyone with ourselves to the same degree: Our frame of reference has shifted and we no longer immediately size everyone else up in terms of our own way of seeing and doing things."
"The goal is not to get him to substitute the analyst's understandings for his own under standings (that is, to internalize her point of view) but rather to get him to
become suspicious of all meanings and understandings insofar as they partake
of rationalization and fantasy."
July 22, 2024
Ótimo pra quem procura está no início do percurso clínico em psicanálise e procura um manual que dê apoio ao trabalho. Interessante que não se esgote nele e seja consultado como um manual mesmo, mais de uma vez. Embora ache que alguns temas tratados tenham sido desnecessários (como a questão da identificação projetiva e a análise por telefone), ainda assim considero de leitura interessante e não exaustiva a quem busca praticar psicanálise.
May 7, 2023
A direct continuation of his previous book.
While it is elucidating, it still has some contradictions and redundancy. I guess this is bound to happen when talking about lacanian theory.
Nevertheless, if one wants to penetrate the seminaries and the Écrits, you should totally read this.
While it is elucidating, it still has some contradictions and redundancy. I guess this is bound to happen when talking about lacanian theory.
Nevertheless, if one wants to penetrate the seminaries and the Écrits, you should totally read this.
Read
January 24, 2025That is enough Lacan for now
April 6, 2025
A tour de force as a practical primer on the Lacanian approach and a countervailing force to English-American infused psychoanalytic thinking that has come to dominate the USA.
July 2, 2019
Good read
In a healthy counterbalance to our current skew towards relationally, Lacans takes us back to an alert focus on the text of our clients speech.
In a healthy counterbalance to our current skew towards relationally, Lacans takes us back to an alert focus on the text of our clients speech.
December 30, 2012
This book presents valuable discussions exploring the transference, counter transference, dream interpretation, and Lacanian analysis as non-normalising therapy. In a Western country of which normalisation is forced down the throats of those experiencing issues with existence, the chapter regarding normalisation came as refreshing and strengthening. Strengthening, I think, perhaps because it's heartening to see that not all groups that are involved in helping others with their anguish are simply medicalising, agents of moralisation.
Fink also presents a swift gutting of the psychoanalytic concept of Projective Identification, and portrays it as nothing more than a disavowing of the counter transference, which leaves the analysand to blame for everything the analyst feels throughout the therapeutic process.
Projective Identification, according to Fink, is simply another means of normalisation, which implicitly and covertly states, that the ways in which an analyst reacts to the analysand's story is the way in which the analysand should react to that particular (potentially traumatic) experience. So, for example, if I were an analyst, and I react to an analysand's tale of child-loss with grief and dismay (but the analysand is not showing these particular reactions, but is in fact apathetic), it is postulated that those feelings that I (the analyst) am feeling are simply split off from the analysand, and have somehow, magically, transported into myself to experience. These reactions are then taken as normal reactions on the analyst's behalf, and any experience or socially constructed reason for the analysand in feeling apathy towards the death of her child is thrown to the wind.
Projective Identification therefore posits that there are absolute ways in which an individual will and must react to a particular situation, and any other way of reacting is unthinkable, or 'abnormal'. With Projective Identification, the analyst sits in the position a Master, of sorts - a Master that knows what is normal and what is 'abnormal.'
The book also contains a valuable and highly interesting chapter that examines the analysis of psychotics, and how it differs from analysis with neurotics. Fink states that the delusions that psychotics experience are not 'part of a disease', but are a part of the healing process. Delusions are the means of which a psychotic attempts to find a place for themselves within society. A place of which they have previously been excluded and deprived of, due to a reaction against the Symbolic. I found this particular chapter moving at times, as I couldn't help but think and feel awful regarding how many psychotic individuals are simply dismissed as being crazy, thrown away into institutions, and forced to take medication - a medication that may potentially wrench away their delusions, leaving the individual bereft of a place - a place that makes them feel important and necessary.
Along with The Lacanian Subject, and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Analysis, this book helps to cement Fink as a guiding light for those that want to explore Lacanian psychoanalytic theory.
Fink also presents a swift gutting of the psychoanalytic concept of Projective Identification, and portrays it as nothing more than a disavowing of the counter transference, which leaves the analysand to blame for everything the analyst feels throughout the therapeutic process.
Projective Identification, according to Fink, is simply another means of normalisation, which implicitly and covertly states, that the ways in which an analyst reacts to the analysand's story is the way in which the analysand should react to that particular (potentially traumatic) experience. So, for example, if I were an analyst, and I react to an analysand's tale of child-loss with grief and dismay (but the analysand is not showing these particular reactions, but is in fact apathetic), it is postulated that those feelings that I (the analyst) am feeling are simply split off from the analysand, and have somehow, magically, transported into myself to experience. These reactions are then taken as normal reactions on the analyst's behalf, and any experience or socially constructed reason for the analysand in feeling apathy towards the death of her child is thrown to the wind.
Projective Identification therefore posits that there are absolute ways in which an individual will and must react to a particular situation, and any other way of reacting is unthinkable, or 'abnormal'. With Projective Identification, the analyst sits in the position a Master, of sorts - a Master that knows what is normal and what is 'abnormal.'
The book also contains a valuable and highly interesting chapter that examines the analysis of psychotics, and how it differs from analysis with neurotics. Fink states that the delusions that psychotics experience are not 'part of a disease', but are a part of the healing process. Delusions are the means of which a psychotic attempts to find a place for themselves within society. A place of which they have previously been excluded and deprived of, due to a reaction against the Symbolic. I found this particular chapter moving at times, as I couldn't help but think and feel awful regarding how many psychotic individuals are simply dismissed as being crazy, thrown away into institutions, and forced to take medication - a medication that may potentially wrench away their delusions, leaving the individual bereft of a place - a place that makes them feel important and necessary.
Along with The Lacanian Subject, and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Analysis, this book helps to cement Fink as a guiding light for those that want to explore Lacanian psychoanalytic theory.
October 18, 2012
Ever since I opened this book after spotting it on the shelf at HBS I've been DEVOURING it... well, actually I've been rationing it and savoring it. I have never more enjoyed a non-narrative text of any kind. I'm rarely this excited by any kind of book, in fact. I've truly never been so excited about ideas.
Read
April 5, 2016A good introduction to Lacan's method of psychoanalysis and theoretical perspective. There are a lot of case vignettes to help demonstrate concepts and make the practice of psychoanalysis easier to understand. This is not a light read, but it's helpful for anyone thinking of doing therapy.
October 18, 2008
The interloping footnotes will drive you batty!
September 19, 2012
Poorly titled, but gives a good, in-depth intro to the world of the usually cryptic and incomprehensible Lacan.
December 31, 2016
Didn't read the entire thing, but it has some interesting ideas.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews