“Medical Harmony: Eryximachus”—Commentary on Session V

Abstract

This commentary presents a close reading of the fifth session of Lacan’s eighth seminar, titled in the 2015 translation, ‘Medical Harmony: Eryximachus’. In this section of the seminar, as the title suggests, Lacan discusses the notion of medical harmony. The notion of the medical here is raised in Plato’s Symposium, the text Lacan has taken as the basis of his seminar, but he also connects to the clinic in the psychoanalytic sense. Lacan is therefore able to weave together a commentary on the status of the medical field, the practice of psychoanalysis and the question of love. These concepts come together in the particular notion of transference for which Lacan argues. This notion of transference is one which consists in an understanding and foregrounding of the importance of interpretation.