Agency via Speech: A Lacanian Perspective on the Process Toward Agency in Psychoanalytic Therapy

We examined if Gorlin and Békés's (2021) “agency via awareness” framework—hypothesizing that agency is a key goal across therapeutic orientations and can be stimulated via increased awareness—aligns with Lacanian psychoanalysis1 and how so. We agree with Gorlin and Békés (2021) that stimulating agency is a key goal in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, though we advocate for another approach of agency—one that neither belongs to a self-conscious, intentional agent nor is considered an illusion of the ego. Building on Lacan's (1969-1970/2007) Seminar XVII, and more specifically his concepts of “knowledge,” “truth,” and “jouissance,” we argue that agency is not per se increased via “awareness” but rather by separating oneself from one's deterministic master signifiers. In psychoanalytic therapy, it is key to touch upon these signifiers that are “charged” with a certain jouissance and therefore have a deterministic quality. We illustrate our argument with the case of Rita, a woman who attended 20 sessions of psychoanalytic psychotherapy due to depressive complaints.