Lacanian theory gave a great impetus to clinical work in various fields, including institutional settings, analysis with people with limited language, working with homelessness, and community care. In each of these areas, Lacanian theory has proven to give a solid compass to both making a space to listen to the dividedness of patients and structuring the collective outlines in which this listening can take place (for example thinking how an institution can look like). This approach brings us back to Lacan’s distinction between applied and pure psychoanalysis. In this presentation, we will explore this distinction in the contemporary context and reflect on what working in these diverse fields teaches us about what psychoanalysis is about.

Lacan does not focus on specific techniques to define psychoanalysis. Instead, he conceptualises psychoanalysis as a specific discourse, as outlined in seminar XVII. Once the analytic discourse, rather than specific techniques, is considered the cornerstone it becomes perfectly sensible to work in a broad clinical field and with a wide range of individuals. Moreover, we observe that Lacanian psychoanalysts often work with patients – both within and outside institutions – who are no longer accepted by conventional mental health services. It appears that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the field par excellence that listens to what is excluded, to the waste of the master discourse. We will explore this through the logic of sexuation as Lacan theorised in seminar XX.

Psychoanalysis engages with the limits of regular mental health care and in doing so, is brought to its own limits time and time again, in these fields where psychoanalysis always has to ‘be there where it is not expected to be’ (as transference is sometimes described), and thus psychoanalysis transforms. The reading will end with a case study.

Evi Verbeke is a visiting Professor at the University of Ghent, department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting. She also works at De Wadi, an assisted living facility in Merelbeke, for people with persistent mental suffering, and has a private practice for psychoanalysis in Ghent.