An Introdution to Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

Many people come to therapy without having ever heard of psychoanalysis. They may be looking for a “mental health professional” — someone to help with a pressing emotional difficulty — but not necessarily seeking a psychoanalytic approach. In contrast, my own entry into the field was shaped by actively pursuing psychoanalysis as part of my formation and training.

In this post, I want to offer a clear, accessible overview of Lacanian psychoanalytic therapy, without diving into the theoretical complexities. It’s an approach unlike any other, and even the word we use to describe the person in therapy — analysand — reflects that difference.

Psychoanalysis: Listening Beyond the Surface

Psychoanalysis began with Sigmund Freud, a neurologist in Vienna during the late 19th century. He discovered that people often experienced relief from symptoms simply by speaking freely about their lives. Freud proposed that the mind represses thoughts and desires that are too difficult to confront — and that these repressed elements return, being too significant to stay hidden, in disguised forms, such as anxiety, compulsions, or physical symptoms.

What he found was that free speech — “free association” — was key. The instruction was simple but profound: say whatever comes to mind, no matter how irrelevant, inappropriate, or uncomfortable it may seem to you. In doing so, unconscious material — often disruptive, contradictory, or surprising — begins to surface.

The psychoanalyst listens carefully, but not in the way a conversational partner might. Silence is often used to preserve the flow of thought and to allow the analysand to follow their own unconscious associations, rather than being led by prompts or questions.

Interpretation and Construction: Opening Meaning

Freud developed two central techniques in treatment: interpretation and construction. Interpretation involves drawing attention to meanings that may have been overlooked — to

suggest that even what seems trivial might carry emotional weight. Construction, meanwhile, involves offering a tentative “filling in” of gaps in the analysand’s story, where the cause of suffering is sensed but not consciously known.

Both techniques aim not to explain or define a person’s experience, but to encourage curiosity and insight into how unconscious processes shape their lives.

Lacan’s Contribution: Language, the Body, and What Can’t Be Said

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan developed Freud’s ideas further, and with considerable complexity. For Lacan, language is not just how we express our experiences — it’s how we are structured as thinking subjects. He observed that much of human suffering occurs where language fails to fully capture what we’ve lived through. Lacan saw that there is a limit point at which language fails us because our experience is so unique to us, so singular, that it cannot be fully expressed in a common language shared with others.

He used the example of infants, who communicate in rich emotional tones long before they speak any shared language. Even as adults, we carry a layer of experience that resists being put into words — particularly the intensity of early relationships, loss, or trauma. Lacan was especially interested in this “beyond of language” — a place where words fall short but meaning still exists.

Engaging in psychoanalytic treatment is therefore an attempt to say as much as you can with the words at your disposal up to the point where our experience is so raw and individual that we can’t find the words to capture and tame its raw traumatic affect. Anyone who has experienced a terrible loss or bereavement knows exactly how this feels - when you feel too much that no amount of speaking could empty you of your pain. But saying as much as you can is a lot, and can help to lessen the intensity of that pain to a more bearable level.

The Unconscious as Dynamic, Not Buried

Rather than thinking of the unconscious as something buried deep beneath the surface, Lacan described it as something that opens and closes — like a volcano. In this view, symptoms are eruptions, and the analytic session becomes a space to listen for these shifts, not to label or resolve them too quickly, but to let them unfold.

A key feature of Lacanian practice is what’s known as the “cut.” This is not a comment or explanation, but an interruption, a punctuation, or even a silence that prompts the analysand to think differently — to hear their own words in a new way. That once you articulate your thoughts on a given subject you may no longer look at things the same way as before. This can be liberating when it means that you gain some clarity and perspective on your own thoughts and actions, judging yourself less harshly, or putting a difficult period to rest with the closure of letting go. A psychoanalyst won’t tell you what to think or what to change. You’ll tell yourself that - but only with the help of the analyst keeping up the inquiry and listening out for the deeper meanings in your thoughts, actions and words.

A Space for Singular Experience

This is not therapy in the conventional sense — there are no worksheets, advice columns, or step-by-step goals. Instead, Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a space for singularity, where no two journeys are alike and no symptom is taken at face value.

Rather than chasing normative ideals of “health” or “functionality,” this work invites the analysand to question those very concepts — especially when they feel imposed, suffocating, or misaligned with lived reality. This is particularly valuable in working with psychotic structures, where a person’s delusional system may be their singular way of making sense of a world that otherwise excludes them.

In Closing: Why This Approach Matters

To summarise: Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a space to speak the truth of one’s experience — even if that truth cannot be fully put into words. It allows for the unknown, the incommunicable, the singular. That may sound like cold comfort when you’re still left with the distance and isolation of your own suffering - but if you take your treatment as far as you can, you can create a stability for yourself, a solid footing created from knowledge that orients your whole life. It’s an incredible gift to give to yourself.

For those seeking more than symptom reduction — for those who want to understand their suffering, their desire, and their patterns at the deepest level — psychoanalysis offers something rare and valuable.

If this approach resonates with you, I welcome you to begin.