How and Why Read Lacan?

Towards an Epistemology of Psychoanalytic Concepts

Abstract

This article aims to propose an innovative interpretation of the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis, starting by identifying a peculiar and innovative way of – and reasons for – reading Lacan philosophically. We propose to call it an “epistemology of psychoanalytic concepts” insofar as it presupposes and tries to rigorously explain: i) the exercise of philosophy in the manner of an epistemology of concepts; ii) the recognition of the properly scientific nature of psychoanalytic practice (Freud and Lacan’s work); iii) the need for the philosophical examination of psychoanalytic concepts to be epistemologically oriented.