On the difference between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy by jean-gérard bursztein

Document Type

Article

Department

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Abstract

Abstract

This is not a book about the difference between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It is a book about the difference of psychoanalysis; which is to say that it is a book about its singular incommensurability. The reader may be surprised to discover that a detailed analysis of psychotherapy is not at all provided. Instead, the author has it as his objective only to highlight the “specificity of psychoanalysis” (9). This specificity can be directly attributed to its taking as object that which remains from the conjunction of demande and need: namely, desire, which is never without its objet petit a.1 The author is therefore correct to claim that psychoanalytic praxis does not involve the extension of the ego’s commensurability (as expressed by the dictum “where id was, there ego shall be”). Rather, psychoanalytic praxis aims at the reduction of “the weight of this egoic narcissism” (60).

Comments

This work was published before the author joined Aga Khan University.

Publication (Name of Journal)

Psychoanalytic Discourse

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