About Langs: It is really unbelievable how many thinkers/ideas have been buried because they were uncomfortable or because someone with power or authority basically just erased/canceled them. This haunts me a bit nowadays and I try to stay alert.

For example, I still agree with many of the ideas, practices or theories of my first years among lacanians and psychoanalysis in general. But there’s also many things which I see totally different now. Not only because I kept learning, reading and so on: many ideas were just being smashed or repeated. Some authors were just banned with some obscure mention or some story and that was it.

Since a couple of years I have been reading mainly Spanish texts or translated into Spanish from French. Perhaps Darian Leader is the only exception. Great British psychoanalyst! I really like his books. He does have an introduction to Lacan (comic hah). I know Bruce Fink is quite popular and I have heard and read bits and pieces which have been good. But I haven’t read one of his books and if I am not mistaken he has an introductory book.

Around 2021 I joined an online seminar with an Argentinian guy: Bruno Bonoris. His ideas really, really helped me. He published a book on 2022 and I found it very clarifying. It is not an introduction to lacanianism but it goes through many of Lacan’s ideas. Some are praised, some are criticized, some are clarified (mainly regarding to how other lacanian schools use this or that concept). It also does this with many of Freud’s ideas and some post-Freudians. Not author by author but regarding some concepts.

I was struggling with some ideas and his book, together with his Seminar, really changed everything for me. It helped me put some things together, connect some ideas and it put words on things I had the feeling were a bit off or weird (but had learned (and repeated?) from my first analyst for example or first seminars).

The book is called “Qué hace un psicoanalista? Sobre los problemas técnicos”. Do you happen to read Spanish? Even if you don’t, I translated with AI from chapters into German in order to share them with my girlfriend and I was surprised with the results (haha sorry, it was my first time translating something so long and about psychoanalysis). Maybe you could try this or does the idea give you the chills?

It might be a quite weird recommendation but it might also be a good one depending on where your interests lie.

I am not sure if other fields are the same, but I have found this one hard to navigate! Reminds me of the words of a lacanian analyst at the beginning of a IPA conference he was invited to: “There are only two things all psychoanalytic schools agree on: 1. That Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis. 2. That if the analysand doesn’t show up to his session, the person will have to pay for it anyway.”

And yes, as you know, psychoanalysis is not really popular on here! But tell me, how come you are so involved? Is this a new interest, an old interest now being taken upon again or…?

Let me appropriate something I heard Jean Allouch (fantastic guy, died some 2 years ago) say:

"What interests me is madness and the way of welcoming it, which is called psychoanalysis."

I used to say I practice lacanian psychoanalysis, but more and more (thanks to exchange with colleagues, seminars and so on) I have been trying to expand my knowledge.

Just like you discovered, there are so many great ideas and authors which were simply forgotten. It's a tough path to walk!

I don't know if you enjoy such games, but I also found here on HN some 2 player games like It takes two. Perhaps she would enjoy it? The story itself is not my cup of tea but I still think the game is great.