Interlude

Abstract

This chapter is an explication of the seventh section (“Interlude”) of “The Freudian Thing.” Lacan further embellishes upon his critique of ego psychology. He begins by expanding on his contentions that the ego psychologists, after relocating to the United States to escape the Second World War on the European Continent, distort and destroy Freudian psychoanalysis by adapting it to the socio-cultural demands of American capitalism. Lacan then proceeds to utilize a prosopopoeia featuring a talking lectern in order to undermine ego psychology’s load-bearing metapsychological theorizations regarding the ego. The fundamental thrust of Lacan’s critique is that, given the ego-psychological account of the ego, no sharp distinction can be maintained between this ego and an inanimate object (such as a lectern).