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Lacan's work need not be taken as opposed to ego psychology. His thought is not in contrast to ego psychology but to defensive ego functioning. In fact, the centrality he gave to language can be appropriated as a cardinal advance in ego psychology, a move that could deepen understanding of nondefensive ego functioning.
Both Lacan and ego psychology (and especially interpersonal, object relations, and self psychology) are departures from id psychology and a pseudoexplanatory emphasis on economics. Founders of schools tend to stress differences. Practitioners, who take what they find of value from any school, are more attuned to similarities. Here, in a reading of Freud on transference and affect—with Loewald and Rapaport as guides—similarities and differences in my own and Lacan's interpretations of Freud are discussed. I argue that the crucial differences between Lacan and other schools are not his emphasis on language, or the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic, or concepts like “the Other,” “the objet a,” and “the name of the father.” The differences wherein questions of
Dr. Smith is Editor, Psychiatry and the Humanities; Supervising and Training Analyst, Washington Psychoanalytic Institute; and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.
A version of this article is included in the author's Arguing with Lacan: Ego Psychology and Language scheduled for simultaneous publication by Yale University Press.
incompatibility arise are, instead, embodied in his concepts of the pleasure principle, of primal repression, and of the ego as purely citadel of defense.