His sessions with his patients, for example, were often cut short before the usual fifty minutes were up; they could last any period of time that he saw fit and were sometimes as brief as ten minutes. This deliberate provocation to the medical establishment caused a great deal of scandal, setting off a chain reaction that shook the psychoanalytic community for years. (These sessions were also quite terrorizing for the patients, who could never be sure when Lacan would end them and so were forced to concentrate and make every moment count—all of which had great therapeutic value, according to
...more
