Lacan from the beginning relied on Freud to transmit what we later know as his teaching. A teaching that warns us that psychoanalysis - although it has, and should have therapeutic effects- is not reduced to psychotherapy, but rather implies something more.
In 1953 (in what we know as the “Rome Discourse”) Lacan presents a draft statute in the Psychoanalytic International (IPA) based on the program designed by Freud at the Budapest Congress in 1918.
I'm interested in broadcasting this here because it's remarkable how current this program is. And it gives us a clear picture of the ethical and political foundation of the statute that Lacan proposed at that time (as opposed to the proposal that Sacha Nacht proposed at that time). This is where Lacan's teaching proper begins; where he exposed the main elements of his system of thought, derived from structural linguistics and various philosophical and scientific influences, leading to his elaboration thatthe unconscious is structured like a language
But let's go back to Freud to review the particular context of the convening of the V International Congress of Psychoanalysis in 1918, in Budapest, even though the First World War had not yet ended when such an event took place. That work is almost the continuationfrom another that Freud himself had presented at Nuremberg in 1910.
This work is a program that deals with a policy of consolidation and expansion regarding the development of analytic therapy. This strategy adopted by Freud in such a unique context of history, was based on the coercion of three factors: internal progress; the increase in authority; and the general effect of psychoanalytic work as it was developing at that time.
Two aspects were discernible within what Freud called this first factor of “internal progress”: the epistemological progress, that related to psychoanalytic theory; and on the other hand, the progress of the technique,the development of the psychoanalytic technique.
Regarding this last point, it is what I am interested in taking up again here because of the clinical and therefore ethical issue that it entails: the progress of the technique psychoanalytic.
In the program presented by Freud, this was an aspect that basically focused on research, on recognizing and classifying resistance. And recognizing the counter-transference and the need for the anlaist to have his own analysis.
Another aspect of the program referred to the technical modifications that the analyst had to make taking into account the particular pathology in question.
It should be borne in mind that Government authorities, the military and the general public were present at that Congress. Something not very usual, by the way. That Congress was convenedaround a theme that caused: the so-called War Neurosis,and was closed by a lecture by Freud, very prepared, to the point that he reads it carefully in front of the public –something that Freud never did, I never read his work.
This talk by Freud is an excellent and combative text (embodied in “The paths of psychoanalytic therapy”) in which he somehow diagrams the situation of psychoanalytic technique back then, and at the same time develops a clear strategy to make it possible to create a “new therapy” thatcan be on a par with other psychic pathologies in addition to the classic hysteria, obsessions and phobias (pathologies to which the analytical technique was applied until then) A new therapy that encompasses the popular classes, since until then only the upper classes could afford such treatment economically. Enroll in public he alth systems that include he alth and social assistance.
A practice that imprints psychoanalysis on society,as another response to the malaise in the culture.
We can say: a whole social policy. The social implantation of psychoanalysis.
Currently, psychoanalysis, the psychoanalytic clinic faces new challenges; but it is more than clear that in order not to go astray when trying to adapt to the rapid pace of the times, we must maintain the ethical foundations that govern this practice.
