Research from the Position of an Analysand: The Renewal of Psychoanalysis and Lacan’s Teaching

Abstract

This text is a theoretical-conceptual essay that examines research in psychoanalysis through its relation to the researcher’s subjective division, tied to the cause of their desire, which can be explored as a vector for renewing psychoanalysis within the field of teaching. We propose the hypothesis that such renewal in teaching is linked to the dimension of research, drawing on Lacan, Miller, and other contemporary authors. Despite the tension highlighted by Lacan between the analytic discourse and the university discourse, the psychoanalyst did not give up the bond with the university, especially after May 1968. In his later writings, Lacan introduces the signifier “renewal” to think the transmission of psychoanalysis at the university, implying that teaching is not merely the reproduction of established content but an experience in which each person is compelled to invent, putting something of themselves into play through their relation to the unconscious. Thus, the teaching of psychoanalysis is supported by an analysand position rather than a position of mastery, fostering its renewal and enabling the transmission of a point of cause on the part of the teacher. In this context, the university may function as an “antenna” for contemporary issues, keeping psychoanalysis in dialogue with the challenges of its time. Our claim is that, even within the university setting, doing research in psychoanalysis involves making use of subjective division, highlighting the researcher’s analysand position in relation to their unconscious, which promotes the production of a new enunciation grounded in the singular element that causes their desire. We explore this dimension through fragments of three pass testimonies in which the writing of a doctoral thesis intersected with the analytic experience. The figure of the researcher-analysand thus appears as a pathway to keeping psychoanalytic transmission and research alive in the twenty-first century.