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Neil Gorman

Neil Gorman

Neil Gorman is an assistant professor at the Aurora University School of Social Work, and a practicing Lacanian analyst, and a maker of podcasts, newsletters, & other sundry things.

📍 Near Chicago http://neilgorman.com

Master Signifiers & Adolescent Identity

Every year I teach a class on doing psychotherapy with adolescents. I’m not teaching the class this summer, but recently I read Lacan’s short paper On Freud’s “Trieb” and the Psychoanalyst’s Desire in the Écrits [https://www.amazon.com/Ecrits-Complete-English-Jacques-Lacan/dp/0393329259], and it put the

What is the real || 0

The real: One of the most interesting concepts in Lacanian psychoanalysis is the concept of the real. Perhaps one of the reasons this concept is so interesting is because it is outside f the imaginary and the symbolic, and that makes something we can’t ever really explain in the

Some Thoughts on the Real

The real is something that is a profound truth that has a traumatic impact on those who are exposed to it. An example of this is the truth the concepts of nothingness that is the heat death of the universe, another is the idea of infinite non-existence.

What is S2 in the four discourses?

Last week I covered S1 [https://neil.substack.com/p/what-is-s1-win-the-four-discourses], and this week I’ll move onto S2. This will leave $ and a, which future editions of the newsletter will get into. REVIEW: S1 = The master signifier which is an empty signifier. The master signifier is the signifier that

What is S1 w/in the four discourses?

THE SYMBOLS: To understand Lacan’s four discourses I think it is useful to have an idea of what the four symbols he will use in all four of the discourses mean. However, providing a key of this sort is not easy. The main reason that it is difficult is

Capitalism & The Death Drive

Capitalism & Psychoanalysis: I find that it is difficult to have a serious conversation about the death drive with non-psychoanalytic people. Be that as it may, I recently had an interesting person with a non-psychoanalytic clinician about the death drive, and the conversation was good! During the conversation I said:

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