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The idea of therapy and its effects on personality is actually something discussed in psychoanalytic literature (noting that psychoanalysis !== "therapy" in most cases), often framed as an ethical question, "when is it permissible to perform psychoanalysis?" Some quotes from a book on Lacan: > what exactly does ‘curing’ mean? Is it simply the disappearance of a symptom, or does one aim to change the underlying personality structure that produced it and in which it is inscribed? Is this at all achievable, and if it is, is it desirable? If it is neither achievable nor desirable, then where should curing stop – at what boundary line? And finally, is it always a good thing even to begin the process, when you don’t know where to end it or whether you will be leaving behind a damaged and less effective Subject? > By the early 1960s, Lacan felt that forcing people to confront the truth about themselves, the meaning of their symptoms and the hitherto repressed elements in their unconscious, had consequences too serious to be undertaken with anything less than the greatest caution. > I shall finish with an example of a patient who, at the end of her treatment, seemed quite aware of the loss she would suffer as a result of being cured. The young woman, who had been severely anorexic, talked about a dream during one of her last sessions. In it, she had on a necklace on which there was a great, pointed spike or barb. The curious thing was that this necklace was under her skin, within her body, and she wanted to remove it – to get it out of her. She somehow managed to tug it out, but as the spike came out of her body, it left a gaping hole, and she was bleeding. The analyst said in agreement with her unconscious knowledge: ‘Yes, you will be left with a hole. And you will be
bleeding.’ The patient understood immediately and perfectly the meaning of both: that the giving up of her symptom would indeed leave a hole in the structure of her Subject, and she would face the new reality of menstrual bleeding. If this illustration leaves one with many questions, that is as Lacan would have wished. |