From Kierkegaard to Lacan: Repetition?
“The only thing that repeated itself was that no repetition was possible”
Søren Kierkegaard
Russell Grigg and the Lacan Circle were in conversation with Maro Bellou in December 2022. You may request the recording of the event below.
Lacan warns us: “Do not think that, for as long as I live, you can consider any of my formulas definitive. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve”. One could say that the logic of this statement extends throughout Lacan’s teachings: the concepts he uses never have just the one meaning, but their significance or non-significance varies, depending on context. Where his ideas are concerned, it is not possible to ascribe to them what he termed a “point de capiton”, since Lacan incessantly moves the goal posts or even overturns his very conceptions. In this paper, we will be dealing with repetition, one of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, a concept to which Lacan always came back, looking at both its good and its reverse side. Specifically, we will examine it from the point of view of a fundamental transition, the transition from the symbolic to the real. We will see how repetition in Lacan intersects with the thinking of Kierkegaard, who – and this is no accident – is present at all stages of Lacan’s teachings.
Maro Bellou is a psychologist and a member of the Borromean Knot Society of the NLS in Greece. She holds a Master in Medicine, specialisation: Pain Management (2011), and a Master in Philosophy (2021). She has notably published Gadget-Eros: love in the age of technology (Sideris, Athens, 2017, 2nd ed. 2019), and more recently, From Kierkegaard to Lacan: Repetition? in the Lacanian Review Online.
Maro’s paper, Lacan as a reader of Kierkegaard: Repetition’s encounter with the Real is published in our journal, PsychoanalysisLacan Volume 6 here. Request the recording of this event below. Contact us here with any queries.
In Conversation: Maro Bellou
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