Situation in Time and Place of This Exercise

Abstract

This chapter is an explication of the first section (“Situation in Time and Place of this Exercise”) of “The Freudian Thing.” Lacan opens his 1955 écrit by employing references to the location of its original presentation, Vienna, so as to reflect upon the position of Freud in relation to European history and culture. In so doing, Lacan brings to light the revolutionary and subversive facets of Freud’s epoch-making discovery of the unconscious. He then sharply contrasts these thus-illuminated facets with the bastardizations and betrayals Freud suffers at the hands of the post-Freudians of the International Psychoanalytic Association. The ego psychology dominant in the English-speaking analytic world comes in for special criticism as a dangerous pseudo-Freudianism.