Is Psychoanalysis a Scam?

Recently, someone asked me to name the most newsworthy revelation in my new book, The Last Psychoanalyst.

I didn’t even hesitate. It is the fact that Jacques Lacan, the most important and influential psychoanalyst since Freud, declared that the clinical practice of psychoanalysis was a scam. In French, an escroquerie.

It's one way to make yourself last psychoanalyst.

To be fair, Lacan said this in 1977. It was reported in the French press in 1980. It should have been fully digested by now. And yet, someone like me, who was fully engaged in the world of French psychoanalysis at the time, never heard about it. I myself first heard it in 2011.

Call it the power of repression, if you like. Surely, Lacan’s minions had no interest in publicizing his judgment. Certainly, the psychoanalytic establishment was not going to examine the issue. As an apostate, I could discuss it fully, in detail in my book.

Happy reading!