The Most Hysterical Psychoanalyst.

This paper is an investigation into the prominence of hysteria in Lacan's work and the enduring significance of the diagnosis for contemporary practice. Beginning with Lacan's theory of neurosis, the importance of language, and symbolic functions, we will begin to understand why the hysterical symptom is the symptomatic structure par excellence. Lacan lauds hysteria as the neurosis in direct dialogue with a given historical moment, teaching the psychoanalyst where we are in the unfolding struggle between neurosis and civilization. He returned to the case of Dora throughout his twenty-eight years of teaching to refine his work. He even saw psychoanalysis as the progressive "hystericization" of the patient and depicted himself as an hysteric walking around on a stage, not knowing what he was saying, while attempting to teach the psychoanalysts. Lacan's reading of Dora seems to mark important shifts in his own life, from his beginning to write as a psychoanalyst, to being thrown out of the IPA, to struggling with his own school and the ensuing political eruptions in France in 1968. By tracking his elaboration of Dora we can witness the evolution of Lacan's work and how he uniquely positions the analyst in the transference.

Critique and cure: a dream of uniting psychoanalysis and philosophy.

Critical theory, whose aim was to historicize philosophy through integrating it with the social sciences, turned to psychoanalysis to find its way through an accounting of philosophy after the Second World War. Over 50 years after this initial project, the rift between philosophy and psychoanalysis has never been greater. If Jacques Lacan could be considered one of the few psychoanalysts to maintain and foster links to philosophical thought in the latter half of the 20th century, his work has sadly remained marginal in the clinical field throughout America and Europe. Both critical theory and Lacan remain skeptical of the direction taken by psychoanalysis after Freud. Reflecting on the history of these two disciplines, as well as through an examination of Theodor Adorno's posthumously published dream journal, critique and cure emerge as two dialectically intertwined themes that gain momentum in the dream of the unification of the philosophical and psychoanalytic projects.

The ordinary and the extraordinary countertransference.

This is both a clinical and an epistemological inquiry into the concept of countertransference. A distinction is made between the ordinary countertransference, a transitory disruption residing within the analyst's consciousness, and the extraordinary countertransference, an impasse intolerable to the analyst to such an extent that it remains outside awareness. This distinction, rooted in the history of psychoanalytic thought, is here traced in a recorded psychoanalysis. The clinical material is examined from three perspectives, including empirical evaluation by computer-assisted monitoring of spoken language and two modes of psychoanalytic interpretive listening. Analytic sessions designated as ordinary were readily identified by quantitative measures. However, the threshold between the ordinary and the extraordinary countertransference was reached at the point where empirical observations broke down. Detailed psychoanalytic observation of the four sessions that lie beyond empirical validation led to a formulation of the analyst's state of consciousness during these pivotal hours.