Working with the Letters of the Body: A Lacanian Clinical Case Presentation

“The letters of the body” is analyst Willy Apollon’s term for those sites of the body that have been inscribed by originary trauma, trauma that is outside of language and only accessible by way of the return of the real. In a Lacanian analysis, when the clinician operates from her desire to know and works to support the space of the absent Other, these letters are mobilized in the body of the analysand. This mobilization is expressed in dreams and symptoms and, over the course of an analysis, can lead to the construction and traversal of the key unconscious fantasies subtending the analysand’s life experiences.

What are the letters of the body? What is it to work with them in an analysis? And what is the aim of such a work? In this case presentation, I will offer thoughts on the frame of a Lacanian analysis, having to do with the analytic position with respect to the patient’s request for an analysis and demand for love. I will also offer clinical material, wherein we can begin to discern something of the work of the real in the life and the body of the analysand in question, a real which is seeking expression and which might, over time, become an ethical fulcrum from which to act.

** Please note: the Zoom link for this event will be sent the Friday before, November 3 **