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
The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that reality cannot be fully captured or represented through symbols or language.
Jacques Lacan's quote highlights the idea that the essence of reality is beyond what we can articulate or symbolize. He argues that our attempts to represent reality, whether through language or symbols, will always fall short, as true reality is something that cannot be completely encapsulated in our words or thoughts. This challenges us to reconsider the limitations of our understanding and the ways we express our experiences.
In practice
In a philosophy lecture discussing the limitations of language.
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.
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.
If psychoanalysis clarifies some facts of sexuality, it is not by aiming at them in their own reality, not in biological experience.
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.
The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom
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.
How does it come about that what an intelligent man expresses is much stupider than what remains inside him?
I do not mean to moralise but to those who do, I would give this advice : if you mean ultimately to deprive the best things and states of all all honour and worth then continue to talk about them as you have been doing!
The incomparable greatness of the religions of the East lies in their having been second to none in vibrating with the passion for unity. This note, which is essential to every form of mysticism, has even penetrated them so deeply that we find ourselves falling under a spell simply by uttering the names of their Gods.
I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor...I truly believe that when the rich meet the poor, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.
Beyond doubt, there was a certain splendor in pain, which bore a deep affinity to the splendor that lies hidden within strength.
The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people.
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