Lacan on Depression and Melancholia -Derek Hook, Stijn Vanheule -Interviewed by Leon Brenner

Derek Hook, Stijn Vanheule are
Interviewed by Leon Brenner on their new book 'Lacan on Depression and Melancholia'
Depression, mourning and melancholia in clinical settings. Hook and Vanheule’s edited collection links conceptual rigor in terms of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalytic thought with contemporary clinical reality, addressing the failure of a culture that biologizes human suffering and is over-reliant on psychopharmacological and behavior-based methods of treatment. Contributors to this volume think through both psychoanalytic history and our current moment, which itself is historicized, addressing the deterioration of speech and conversation, while enlarging and elaborating important clinical concepts and applications. In so doing, this book creates a social bond between clinicians, scholars, laypeople and those who engage in treatment, providing a cultural critique of the failure of identificatory bonds in a society hell bent on identity as a solution to existence. Melancholia is no longer restricted to "an illness" to cure, but a potential mode of subjective response recalling death to a ferocious social demand for limitless productivity and connectivity." - Manya Steinkoler and Vanessa Sinclair, Psychoanalysts
"Today’s predominant socio-medical discourse aims to reduce intrapsychic conflict and suffering into an orderly diagnostic list of Disorders. Vague catch-all terms like depression lure in those craving the latest evidence-based quick-fix. This book, comprising papers by eminent Lacanian thinkers, promises no quick-fixes. Instead, it questions and critiques this discourse, reminding us that subjective complexity cannot be wished away by statistic conformity to some imaginary conflict-free Order. Highly recommended." - Christos Tombras, Supervising Psychoanalyst, London,
"In our contemporary world, depression is a substantial clinical problem. Yet, its conceptualization is vague, which is a crucial part of the problem. In this volume Hook and Vanheule collect papers that provide a refreshing Lacanian reading of depressive suffering, discussing how it takes shape in psychosis and neurosis, and how it reflects a specific position towards speaking, transference and the drive." - Paul Verhaeghe, Psychoanalyst

[@user-rg4lc5ib6p]

Simply wonderful, stimulating much thought for me

[@Ambisextra_]

Two of my favorites!! This conversation came right on time for a lot in my life, cheers 🥂

[@psychoanalyticthinking153]

They are such wonderful and generous people. Always love listening to them. Pleased you enjoyed.

[@kerycktotebag8164]

im diagnosed with autism, depression with psychotic features, and assessed as having cptsd‐incited (cptsd isn't a diagnosis where i live) "treatment resistant" depression that i associate with both melancholia and psychosis.
I can force myself to symbolically connect to conventions (or at least my propensity to break conventions) but it's very tedious and hard to sustain. But I can and have invented a rich semiotic way to articulate my own identity that's rather dissociated from-and can't really "buy in"/suspend my disbelief-my place in our species.
i can't seem to "square the circle" of either, so i have to force myself to do both depending on the situation.
however, it feels effortful every day and no amount of practice makes either strategy second nature

[@vittorioemanueleferrante7107]

As a corollary to your remarks in the introduction of the book circa Aquinas, the quotations form Soler and Lolli, and the duty to know, I wish to share: "Necesse est habere aliquam virtutem per quam bonum rationis conservetur contra tristitiam, ne scilicet ratio tristitiae succumbat. Hoc autem facit patientia" (Summa theologiae, II Ilae, q. 136, a.) [A virtue is needed in order to preserve the good of the mind as against sadness, so that it would not capitulate to this. This is indeed what patience does.]
Of course "patience" being a virtue, it is not simply the bearing of suffering, it is the strenght ("virtus") needed for the bearing. And it may well be read as the contemplation of sorrow due to the void inherent to earthly life.

[@theelderskatesman4417]

thanks for this great video. Have to admit the heroic theme music freaked me out a bit.

[@psychoanalyticthinking153]

I think you right. Need to skill up and start getting a nice group entet tune

[@birdwatching_u_back]

Thank you so much for this. Since my young adulthood I’ve been all but drowning in melancholia, and so many of the things you’re talking about here resonate with me. The connection between melancholia, the preoccupation with “already being dead,” and psychotic subjective structures like foreclosure is very clear. (When I was a freshman in college, Into the Wild was my favorite movie…if that says anything about my situation haha)

[@bogdanandone9022]

Very nice one

[@momocita77]

Lacan was a horrible person.

[@infernoglass_]

meme comment

[@lilomark2543]

so is Freud