Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis itself—the practice of psychoanalysis and the institutions of psychoanalysis—should also be interpreted, which is the basis for the three papers included in this chapter. When the COVID pandemic developed, the growing practice of psychoanalysis through technology—by video or phone—became much more common and put the status of the body in the virtual psychoanalytic experience in question. In as much as Jacques Lacan defines psychoanalysis as the “encounter of the bodies,” a proposition of the encounter with the imaginary body and the real body itself is advanced, drawing on the experience of the analyst and analysand. A second paper in this chapter presents a historical sketch of the analytic act based on its own articulation with historical changes in civilization itself. In the final paper in the chapter, a theoretical approach to psychoanalytic institutions—to the School itself, in the Lacanian orientation—defines a distinction between the imaginary functioning of psychoanalytic institutions, itself based on Jacques Lacan’s use of the notion of “empire,” and the place of desire in the function of the institution.