Lacan reads Melanie Klein: Thoughts on the case dick

Abstract

This article presents Jacques Lacan's reading of Melanie Klein's case Dick. In order to do so, one revisits the debate with the philosopher Jean Hyppolite to explicitate how the mechanisms of Ausstossung [expulsion], Verneinung [denial] and Bejahung [affirmation], described by Freud in 1925, may contribute to the understanding of mental constitution under a Lacanian perspective. Next, one brings the case to light to apprehend what was presented in theory from a clinical standpoint as well as to evidence how Lacan distances himself from Klein's conception of fantasy. The subject of diagnosis, however, appears in both authors related to a form of subjective organization in a constitution which provides elements to reflect on this issue in contemporaneity.