A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis Quotes

“For once desire is articulated in words it does not sit still, but displaces, drifting metonymically from one thing to the next. Desire is a product of language and cannot be satisfied with an object.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Desire is an end in itself: it seeks only more desire, not fixation on a specific object.29”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“It is when patients begin to throw such things into question-when the what, why, and who of their utterances become problematic to them-that they are genuinely engaged in analysis.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“("Desire is a remedy for anxiety," as Lacan says in Seminar VIII, 430).”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Desire springs from lack.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“The very foundation of interhuman discourse is misunderstanding.
-Lacan, Seminar III, 184”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Patients do not spontaneously home in on the subjects that are most important, psychoanalytically speaking; they spontaneously avoid them, for the most part. Even if they recognize that sexuality should be dwelt upon, for example, they nevertheless tend to avoid associating to the elements in dreams and fantasies that are the most sexually charged.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Lacan even goes so far as to classify ignorance as a passion greater than love or hate: a passion not to know.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Insofar as interpretation hits the real, it does not so much hit the truth as create it. For truth exists only within language (it is a property of statements), and thus there is no truth of that which cannot yet be said. Truth is not so much "found" or "uncovered" by interpretation, as created by it.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Whenever we force ourselves to conform to our ideals at the expense of our own satisfaction, we assure the Other's jouissance.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Fantasy provides the pleasure peculiar to desire.
-Lacan, Ecrits, 773”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“In Freudian terms, the neurotic's concern to discern his or her parents' demands is related to the formation of the ego-ideal (Ichideal), the ideals one sets for oneself and against which one measures one's own (usually inadequate) performance. Freud equates the ego-ideal with the superego, and talks about it as "an individual's first and most important identification, his identification with the [parents]" (SE XIX, 31).24”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“The neurotic's desire is not his or her "own" in the first place, for it has never been subjectified. Subjectfication is the goal of analysis: subjectification of the cause-that is, of the Other's desire as cause.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Satisfaction buries desires,”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“Neurotics are only too eager to figure out what other people want from them so they can fulfill or thwart those other people's desires.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

“given the amount of material Freud provides in the case study, but one point which seems amply clear is that all of the Rat Man's problems are intimately related to his father.”
― Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique