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Dialogue with analysts who belong to analytic schools other than our own allows us a better understanding of those schools. It helps to clarify misconceptions we may have regarding others, discern where assumed differences are merely terminological and where they are essential, and better appreciate the grounds of the essential ones. It helps us locate ourselves relative to others, which is especially important when we share analytic institutions and other frameworks. Also, more in the spirit of controversy, it allows us to explain our views to our rivals and to express our objections to theirs, perhaps with the hope of influencing those who are open to change. But also significant is the fact that such dialogue invites us to better define and understand our own analytic thinking and practice. As it requires of us to articulate these to other analysts who are not like-minded and to reflect on these from their eyes, to think in terms not only of what we do maintain and practise but also what we don’t, our view of our own positions may be deepened and enriched and may consequently also further evolve and change.
The present controversy involves a dialogue between Lacanian and IPA non-Lacanian analysts. One reason that this dialogue is of special interest is that despite the great diversity of analytic approaches within the IPA, for many decades Lacanian psychoanalysis has developed outside of it. Is Lacanian psychoanalysis indeed so fundamentally different from the range of approaches that are prevalent within the IPA today that the physical separation is indeed still meaningful, not just a vestige of the past?
Developing a dialogue on this topic is not an easy task, in part because of a noted gap between Lacanian and non-Lacanian analytic language, and style of discourse, with Lacanians tending to be more abstract and theoretical than non-Lacanians (see Borossa, Bronstein, and Pajaczkowska 2015; Morgan 2018). As a result, for many non-Lacanian analysts, Lacanian writin