Abstract
In the eleventh number of the Papers of the School One Action Committee, Rivka Warshawsky raises the specter of a neurasthenic practice of psychoanalysis. Lacan himself raised such an issue, in the “Function and field of speech and language,” where he uses the word “gloomy” and speaks of “reticence,” to evoke something akin to Warshawsky’s question. Lacan links this to a problem in clinical approach and training as well, which he attributes to an excessive rigidity, a formalization of training and practice which obliterates the true meaning of Freud’s work—a reliance on Imaginary conceptualizations and technique, in contrast to the true, Symbolic, meaning of Freud’s work. The important thing about this engagement is the very invention required of psychoanalysts in the response to it, an invention born of the very social and psychic forms of the twenty-first century, and which people see in the varied, yet related, responses of analysts throughout the world to these challenges.