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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Lacan emphasizes the symbolic nature of human experience, suggesting that our perceptions and actions are interpretations rather than direct engagements.
In this quote, Jacques Lacan refers to the psychoanalytic insights of Freud, indicating that our interactions with the world are mediated through symbols. He suggests that while we may try to understand or eliminate something, we can only do so in a symbolic form, meaning that our grasp of reality is inherently abstract and interpretative, influencing how we relate to loss, existence, and absence.
Themes
SymbolicFreudExperienceInterpretationAbsence
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophy class discussion about the nature of reality and symbols, this quote illustrates the importance of understanding our perceptions.
More from Jacques Lacan
All quotes →The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.
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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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Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers.
Jacques LacanRead
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