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The Letter, Issue 7, Summer 1996, Pages 1 - 11 TEACHING PSYCHOANALYSIS: A DOUBLE IMPOSSIBILITY Paul Verhaeghe There is a well-known saying that informs us about the two great tragedies in human life. The first one is not getting what you want. The second one is getting what you want. During my student days, I longed to become a psychoanalyst and I marvelled at the wisdom of some of my teachers. Twenty years later, I find myself back in the position of a psychoanalyst, and, to complete the disaster, I have been nominated professor at the state university of Ghent. Hence, not only do I practise psychoanalysis, I even have to teach it. In Freudian terms, this means that I have to face the combination of two impossible professions, and it is about this double impossibility that I would like to talk today. The central question concerns the status of this impossibility. For example, for Clement, it comes down to a question of exhaustion, and she expresses this loud and clear in the title of her book: Les fils de Freud sont Fatigues, The weary sons of Freud. [1] She describes a scene in which she herself, being a psychoanalyst and a teacher, stands at the blackboard trying to explain to her students some freudo-lacanian subtlety, when she is suddenly caught by the utter impossibility, even absurdity of her effort. The way in which she describes her feelings of exhaustion and burn-out, together with the typical Parisian scenery, lends the whole thing a certain tragic ring.

The Letter, Issue 4, Summer 1995, Pages i - iii

The Letter, Issue 3, Spring 1995, Pages i - iv

The Letter, Issue 2, Autumn 1994, Pages i - iii

The Letter, Issue 1, Summer 1994, Pages i - iii

The Letter, Issue 25/26, Summer/Autumn 2002, Pages i - iii

The Letter, Issue 38, Autumn 2006, Pages 57 - 63 THE FREUDIAN UNDERSTANDING OF THE SYMPTOM Bernard Kennedy For my doctoral thesis with the School of Psychotherapy I am examining the writings and clinical backdrop and validity to Freud's understanding of the symptom, and will be, in that context, showing how his theory of the Symptom is a text from the unconscious, a text whose expression is the Symptom but behind which, if unravelled, like a knot of coagulated affect, arising from trauma, and, confected from the social cultural deposits, is an agreement between the Ego and the Id in a context, brought about through Repression. In today's presentation I will discuss how Freud, and Psychoanalysis, understood in a Freudian context, understands the symptom as it may present to the clinician in the mental health services and that to ignore the Freudian understanding is to be palliative, comparative or temporary in treatment. It may therefore avoid the relationship between Subject and symptom and symptom and the Other with whose engagement the symptom presents. In talking of symptoms we can locate our naming within the neuroses, psychoses, and their clinical manifestations including phobias, depression, anxiety and many symptoms, which can be somatically referenced where upon the body the text is written. We might begin with a Freudian definition of a symptom:

The Letter, Issue 12, Spring 1998, Pages i - ii

Perversion and Neurosis: Two Sides of the Same Coin [1] Stephanie Metcalfe If analysis has made any positive discovery about libidinal development, it is that the child is a pervert, even a polymorphous pervert . [2] Lacan reminds us that Freud’s contention that the germs of perversion inherent in all subjects remains one of the most important, if widely refuted discoveries of psychoanalysis. This paper aims to interrogate in more detail the oft-quoted phrase ‘neuroses are, so to say, the negative of perversions.’ [3] An in-depth examination of the analytic perspective allows us to understand this statement more fully and to grasp how the development of sexuality relates to the emergence of a neurotic position. Keywords: Freud; Neurosis; Perversion; Infantile Sexuality; Civilisation Infantile Sexuality Freud recognised infantile sexuality from his extensive work with neurotic patients as far back as the late 1800s and throughout the whole of his work he was unwavering in his conviction that what is laid down at this very early stage for the child has a determining effect on their later sexual development and the emergence of neurotic symptoms. In a paper entitled Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neurosis Freud appeals to his contemporaries and the wider public in relation to their ability to speak about sexual matters, stating: …a place must be created in public opinion for the discussion of the problems of sexual life. It will have to become possible to talk about these things without being stamped as a troublemaker…And so here, too, there is enough work left to do for the next hundred years – in which our civilization will have to learn to come to terms with the claims of our sexuality. [4] I wonder in relation to this statementwhether we have, indeed one hundred and twenty years later, in our so called sexually liberated society, come to terms with sexual matters. Indeed, have we even developed an ability to speak about them? It is important to remember that Freud parted ways with many of his peers and colleagues, Breuer [5] and Jung, [6] to name two, as they were not willing to remain as steadfast in their belief in the importance of the theory of sexuality. In light of this, it is not surprising that Freud would make such an appeal and the question remains regarding what progress we have made. Where are we today in relation to sex?