Abstract
This chapter examines Lacan’s The Four Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Although Lacan also looks at transference and the unconscious, his conceptions of the drives and repetition distort some of Freud’s central principles. Furthermore, he often confuses the pleasure principle with the primary processes as he replaces the reality principle with the concept of repetition. Most importantly, Lacan conflates the primary processes with the unconscious as he downplays repression and focuses on how the unconscious is structured like a language.
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Samuels, R. (2022). Moving from Freud’s Five Principles to Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts. In: (Mis)Understanding Freud with Lacan, Zizek, and Neuroscience. The Palgrave Lacan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13327-5_4
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