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This wide-ranging collection of essays, stemming from the clinical work of Willy Apollon, Danielle Bergeron, and Lucie Cantin, compellingly elaborates psychoanalytic concepts in a manner that must interest anyone concerned with the practical import of Lacan's work, but also anyone drawn to Lacanian theory. Diverse as they are, the essays nevertheless cover the core Lacanian concepts, those crucial to an understanding of the uniqueness of Lacan's account of psychic structures.
The authors are founding members of GIFRIC (Groupe Interdisciplinaire Freudien de Recherches et d'Interventions Cliniques et Culturelles), a group of Lacanian-influenced analysts working in Quebec, who actively train mental health professionals interested in learning, or learning more, about a distinctly Lacanian approach. Involved in both cultural research and practical, clinical work, the group stands out for its pioneering psychoanalytic work with psychotic patients.
Whereas most psychoanalysts are reluctant—when they do not refuse outright—to treat psychotic disturbances, GIFRIC actively works with psycho tics, employing a psychoanalytic method that emphasizes the importance of dreams and their chain of signifiers. Freud referred to dreams as “the royal road to the unconscious,” and although it is often thought that psychotics do not dream, GIFRIC demands of their psychotic patients (as a kind of payment) the recounting of their dreams. This they consider a way gradually to begin piercing the psychotic's delusion. For the delusion is not simply problematic because it fails to correspond to some “objective” reality, but, above all, because it is a seamless vision that does not allow for any ambiguity, that is infused with certainty. Dreams, to the contrary, contain signifiers that, through association, open up