Sitting There Saying Nothing. What is Involved in the Psychoanalytic Act?

This paper explores what is at stake when speaking about the Psychoanalytic Act - this with reference to Lacan’s ‘67-’68 seminar of the same name. The central place of Freud’s repetition compulsion as a given of discourse is emphasized. Questions related to what it means to practice as a psychoanalyst, including the interrogation of Being, the end of analysis and the function of psychoanalytic societies, are also raised. To arrive at a preliminary definition of the Psychoanalytic Act[2] as described by Lacan in his seminar of 1967-1968 we have to begin by coming to terms with endings, with all their equivocations.…