QuoteProject
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 Lacan
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote warns against the misuse of psychoanalysis, suggesting that its prestige may lead to inappropriate applications.

Jacques Lacan highlights the dangers of treating psychoanalysis as a tool that can be applied for superficial or unintended purposes. The quote reflects a concern that as psychoanalysis gains recognition and prestige, there is a risk that practitioners may utilize it in ways that compromise its true purpose, thereby undermining its efficacy and integrity. Lacan emphasizes the need to respect the origins and intended functions of such a powerful instrument of psychological exploration.

Themes

PsychoanalysisMisuseRiskPrestigeIntegrity

In practice

Example use cases

In a therapy session when discussing the ethical use of psychoanalysis.

More from Jacques Lacan

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.
Jacques LacanRead
The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.
Jacques LacanRead
If psychoanalysis clarifies some facts of sexuality, it is not by aiming at them in their own reality, not in biological experience.
Jacques LacanRead
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.
Jacques LacanRead
The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom
Jacques LacanRead
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

Similar quotes

I can't help it when people are frightened," says Merricat. "I always want to frighten them more.
Shirley JacksonRead
One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.
Sigmund FreudRead
Neurotic behavior is quite predictable. Healthy behavior is unpredictable.
Carl RogersRead
The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.
Abraham MaslowRead
Part of my evolution has been to learn how painful most people's childhoods are. They grow up not liking themselves, not loving themselves. Ask people if they were lovable the minute they were born, and watch them sit back and have to think about it. One lady said, 'I suppose so.' That's painful.
Bernie SiegelRead
Behavioral scientists distinguish between fast thinking and slow thinking. Fast thinking is represented in the mind's System 1: it is automatic, intuitive, and often emotional. Slow thinking, reflected in System 2, is deliberative and reflective; it likes statistics. It's hard to think of a purer System 1 candidate than Trump.
Cass SunsteinRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.