Four Discourses - Necessity of Formalising Psychoanalysis

Necessity of Formalising Psychoanalysis

Prior to the development of the Four Discourses, the primary guideline for clinical psychoanalysis was the Oedipus Complex. In Lacan's Seminar of 1969-70, he discovers a major problem with the Oedipus complex, namely that the father is already castrated at the point of intervention, rendering the orthodox Freudian reading, where the father becomes a terrifying figure, a neurotic fantasy. Lacan's solution to the tendency of analysts to invoke their own imaginary readings and neurotic fantasies was to begin to formalise psychoanalytic theory, and express it in mathematical functions. This would ensure not only that a minimum of the teaching is lost when communicated, but also limit the associations of the analyst with the concepts employed.