Après Coup: Lacan on Nachträglichkeit

In the interest of the integrity of scholarship, let us recall that besides Seminar 5 already discussed, Lacan addressed specifically Freud’s notion of Nachträglichkeit many times. Often Lacan refers to this notion using, as Jonathan House notes, the adverbial form nachträglich . Note that in 1972 this notion is not used as retroactivity or retrospective modification and very much like Laplanche, Lacan gives to this notion a foundational status in psychoanalysis.

For those curious to know where and when, I quote the specifics:
Seminar 1,  session of 2 June 1954 (reach the child by way of the adult)
Seminar 15, session of 22 November 1967 (nachträglich and symptomatic action)
Seminar 16, session of 7 May 1969 (nachträglich and the seminar)
Seminar 16, session of 25 June 1969 (nachträglich  and unary trait and S1)
Seminar 19, session of 8 March 1972 (elaborated as different from retroactivity or retrospective modification)
Seminar 19, session of 10 May 1972 (nachträglich and revelation)
Best,
Patricia Gherovici

Bio:

Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D. is a recipient of the 2020 Sigourney Award for her clinical and scholarly work with Latinx and gender variant communities. She is co-founder and director of the Philadelphia Lacan Group and Associate Faculty, Psychoanalytic Studies Minor, University of Pennsylvania (PSYS), Honorary Member at IPTAR, and Founding Member of Das Unbehagen. ​Her single-authored books include The Puerto Rican Syndrome (Other Press: 2003) winner of the Gradiva Award and the Boyer Prize,  Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism (Routledge: 2010) and Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference  ​(Routledge: 2017). She edited two volumes with Manya Steinkoler: Lacan On Madness: Madness Yes You Can’t ( Routledge: 2015) and Lacan, Psychoanalysis and Comedy (Cambridge University Press: 2016).  Most recently, she published with Chris Christian Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious  (Winner of the Gradiva Award for best edited collection and the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize; Routledge: 2019.)

Publication Date:

December 2, 2018

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European Journal of Psychoanalysis