In the history of the relations between philosophy and psychoanalysis, there have been two major developments: one in France and the other in Germany. It is widely accepted that these intellectual experiences have taken significantly distinct paths. In Germany, the confrontation between philosophy and psychoanalysis was staged by the Frankfurt School through its strategy of introducing Freudian discoveries into the history of ideas. In France, the philosophical inquiry concerning psychoanalysis permeated several moments of contemporary thought. Nevertheless, the main agency of the confrontation was the Lacanian reconstruction of Freudian metapsychology.
It is commonly accepted that there is no shared dialogical field between the Frankfurt School and Jacques Lacan. The Frankfurt School initially attempted to build up a kind of archaeology of social bonds and socialization processes based on readings of Freud’s theory of drives; an archaeology capable of guiding a renovation of the ambitions of social praxis, as well as the modalities of its critique. Jacques Lacan’s way, on the other hand, seems to have followed another cartography. It is true that we can find a kind of Lacanian archaeology of social bonds, mainly if we consider the theory of the ‘five’ discourses. However, despite this interest in producing a theory of discourse, Lacan developed a clinical practice grounded mainly on the recognition of the blockage produced by the unconscious against processes of self-reflection. In this sense, Lacanian psychoanalysis does not admit any notion of positive synthesis capable of weaving a reconciliation between the emancipatory ambitions of consciousness and the radical negativity of the unconscious. This leads us to understand the end of analysis as a process of subjective destitution. Such a process places psychoanalysis in opposition to the possible enlargement of consciousness’s field of self-comprehension and of any possible disalienation of the subject, blocking the dialogue between Lacan and the emancipatory aspirations of the Frankfurt School. But perhaps we are already entitled to criticize this way of addressing the problem
