Login
Stern, D.B. (2000). The Limits of Social Construction: Commentary on Paper by Cynthia Dyess a... Psychoanal. Dial., 10:757-769.

Welcome to PEP Web!

Viewing the full text of this document requires a subscription to PEP Web.

If you are coming in from a university from a registered IP address or secure referral page you should not need to log in. Contact your university librarian in the event of problems.

If you have a personal subscription on your own account or through a Society or Institute please put your username and password in the box below. Any difficulties should be reported to your group administrator.

Username:
Password:

Can't remember your username and/or password? If you have forgotten your username and/or password please click here and log in to the PaDS database. Once there you need to fill in your email address (this must be the email address that PEP has on record for you) and click "Send." Your username and password will be sent to this email address within a few minutes. If this does not work for you please contact your group organizer.

Athens user? Login here.

Not already a subscriber? Order a subscription today.

(2000). Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 10:757-769

The Limits of Social Construction: Commentary on Paper by Cynthia Dyess and Tim Dean Related Papers

Donnel B. Stern, Ph.D. Author Information

The insufficiencies that Joan Copjec finds in the work of Judith Butler are the same kind Dyess and Dean want to alert us to in relational psychoanalysis. Two dangers of this nature are reification (that is, the relational position's becoming “the Book”) and a flirtation with superficiality (a potential outcome of believing that all experience can be understood in the terms of social relatedness). Theorizing “the impossibility of meaning” may be a first step in addressing these problems without having to limit the terms of the discussion to nature and nurture, or essence and social construction. But the idea of the Real is inextricably interrelated with, and mutually defined by, other parts of Lacan's theory. And so, if we simply import into relational psychoanalysis Lacan's conception of the Real, we are mixing apples and oranges and thereby risking conceptual confusion. We should instead use Lacan's idea as inspiration for the construction of a conception of “the impossibility of meaning” that can be used in theorizing the particular kind of problems relational psychoanalysis sets itself.

[This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.]

Copyright © 2013, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. Help | About | Download PEP Bibliography | Report a Problem

WARNING! This text is printed for the personal use of the subscriber to PEP Web and is copyright to the Journal in which it originally appeared. It is illegal to copy, distribute or circulate it in any form whatsoever.