Notes Towards a Phenomenological Reading of Lacan

Abstract

Phenomenological psychotherapy, while critiquing psychoanalytic theories, has always sought to draw on and be inspired by these (and other) approaches. To read psychoanalysis through the lens of existential-phenomenology opens, deepens and perhaps even rehabilitates this body of work. In this paper, the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is explored through a phenomenological reading of his early work. Aspects of his developmental theory, as well as certain of his theoretical innovations, are related to psychopathology and treatment and are explored and understood in phenomenological terms. Emphasis is placed on psychotherapeutic experience and understandings. The paper argues that there is much of value in Lacan's work and that it is more existentially rich than is often acknowledged.