
Riding in Cars with Jacques Lacan - tintinnabula
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/21/riding-in-cars-with-jacques-lacan/
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thanatropism
Lacan is very interesting.

I was suspicious about Freud since being a teenager and was told by two long-
term psychiatrists I've had that psychoanalysis is not-even-wrong-bullshit,
which it is -- but nevertheless, Lacan is just so interesting.

I heartily recommend Malcolm Bowie's biography titled "Lacan". Bowie engages
with Lacan work rather than life-of-lacan trivia and comes across both very
skeptical but very impressed of its scope and grandeur too.

I recently wrote this about Lacan:
[https://asemichorizon.wordpress.com/2019/08/18/jacquess-
prom...](https://asemichorizon.wordpress.com/2019/08/18/jacquess-promise/)

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staticautomatic
This is hilarious. You're accusing Freud of being bullshit compared to Lacan?

Lacan is practically the king of bullshit-- a textbook example. No one can
muster a non-bullshit explanation of what exactly the fuck Lacan is talking
about (I'm looking at you, Zizek, bless your heart).

In my experience, most people who are "suspicious" of Freudian psychoanalysis
don't understand how psychoanalysis began and evolved over time, and they
don't understand that some of it's stranger jargon refers in fact to very
straightforward concepts. It's true that Freudian analysts have overreached
and been wrong in various ways, but you're incorrect and you're throwing the
baby out with the bath water if you think that somehow invalidates all of the
revolutionary and important work that Sigmund/Anna did.

Also see
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261567941_The_Dark_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261567941_The_Dark_Side_of_the_Loon_Explaining_the_Temptations_of_Obscurantism)

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thanatropism
I don't think neither can be taken at face value as psychological theories.
Then, stricto sensu scientific psychology is undergoing an awesome crisis of
credibility with all the p-hacking and stuff.

I think Lacanian theory showcases a notion of "theory" that is worth being
familiarized with. Ordinarily "theory" in humanities/philosophy etc. is
equated with "critical theory"; but Lacan's bogus theory of psychology and
Althusser's bogus theory of economics share this sense of "theory".

I think there are many shades to "bullshit". From a scientific, objective
point of view, all of this is bullshit -- I'm a STEM nerd by day and I _have_
that point of view. _From that point of view_ I'd have to see extraordinary
evidence towards methods like Anna's or Melanie Klein's (or Kohut, or, or)
making any sense at all. That's a sense in which I reject Freud. The sense in
which I accept Lacan is something very different.

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staticautomatic
Respectfully, your description of Lacan's "theory" not being _that kind of
theory_ or whatever is exactly the kind of bullshit at issue; no one can even
articulate what _kind_ of theory it is, let alone what the theory itself is.
You are asserting, precisely in the obscurantist way described in the paper I
linked to, that his work is immune to critical attack.

~~~
thanatropism
Lacanian psychoanalysis is a dead horse that's pointless to "attack". If you
want soft gooey targets for sokal-ish "critical attack", please take down
Piketty or Judith Butler.

