Klein alongside Lacan (2)

We continue to differentiate the meta-psychologies of Klein and Freud/Lacan with reference to Juliet Mitchell's introduction to Klein's work. The topic of the unconscious proves central here. Whereas Klein's notion of the unconscious is full of contents, Lacan's unconscious is decidedly not, especially considering that it is 'structured like a language' and - as in Freud's work - it is a system of thought with its own laws. Whereas for Klein, the unconscious and preconscious seem often blended together - unsurprisingly, perhaps, given her work with children - for Freud this is not the case. The Freudian unconscious is a dynamic unconscious which necessarily entails repression; Klein's unconscious is, by contrast, descriptive in nature. We briefly touch on Klein's idea of positions - a crucial contribution to psychoanalytic theory - as a way of thinking about how past and present are one for her, which is decidedly not the case for Freud and Lacan. Klein's, formulations, finally, lack the triangular structures that are omnipresent in Lacan's theorizations.

[@J_Dubois]

fantastic! would love more of these comparisons

[@samanmohajer]

Thank you, Derek. Will you make the third part of Klein alongside Lacan?

[@lacanian_lifter]

I researched and presented on the topic of actual neurosis recently, as I felt that there was not, in Lacan, a robust treatment of actual neurosis. It was an attempt to do a bit of the same syncretizing work that you seem to be doing here, and that Mitchell is doing in her book. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, it cost me a friend in the analytic community when I went off the Lacanian reservation…)

[@derekhookonlacan]

For a Lacanian treatment of the topic of actual neurosis look to the work of Paul Verhaeghe who uses the concept as a means of accounting for JA Miller and many other Lacanians call ordinary psychosis… search for Jonathan Redmond’s article comparing the two conceptualizations.

[@kerycktotebag8164]

Bracha Ettinger would say there's no contradiction if and only if you add subsymbolic, corpo-real and transpersonal aspects of phantasy, to that which the "synthome" (sinthome/symptom + what sounds like these "early" unconcious-but-not-preconscious mechanisms and how they synergize and conflict with the phallic stuff that's already been elaborated) is negotiating.
Her "matrixial" supplement also contains temporal, not only "time as spatial" stuff, for example intergenerational trauma has an aspect of both personal past and the lives of others, but i can't recall if she places klein's unconscious as only imaginary