He turns psychoanalysis into a school for listening to the passions of the soul and to the malaise of civilization, the only school capable of counteracting the philanthropic but deceptive ideals of happiness therapies…
...Lacan invites us to partake in a genuinely tragic vision of man – a vision derived from a baroque aesthetic, from Theodor Adorno’s and Max Horkheimer’s views on Auschwitz, and a conception of time influenced by Heidegger. He turns psychoanalysis into a school for listening to the passions of the soul and to the malaise of civilization, the only school capable of counteracting the philanthropic but deceptive ideals of happiness therapies that claim to treat the ego and cultivate narcissism, while really concealing the disintegration of inner identity.
ELISABETH ROUDINESCO - The mirror stage: an obliterated archive. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 2004.
