Joining by medialink from Dallas, Stephanie explores an area not often considered in detail in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Drawing from her extensive research and clinical practice, workshop, the workshop begins by considering how psychotherapy and most schools of psychoanalysis have long asserted that the success of the treatment hinges upon the clinician’s use of what is more or less “accurate” empathy. Although there are many definitions of the term, one key definition is empathy as einfühlung or "feeling into" the other’s experience in order to arrive at understanding. This is regarded by Lacanians as harmful to the practice of psychoanalysis because it operates in the imaginary and ignores Lacan’s teaching that all understanding is misunderstanding. That being said, empathy inevitably plays a role in the treatment insofar as analysands frequently fantasize that receiving empathy from the likes of their parents, lovers, or analyst will bridge the non-rapport of the sexual relation. What are Lacanian ways to respond to analysands’ demands stemming from transferences to the subject-supposed-to-be-empathic? Departing from the party line, Steohanie suggests that it is not oxymoronic to practice empathy from the position of the Lacanian analyst. Using the registers of the imaginary, symbolic, and real alongside Lacan’s teachings on the desire and position of the analyst, Stephanie will demonstrate that without conceptualizing it as such, many Lacanian analysts might currently practice forms of empathy which are motivated by the desire of the analyst. Namely, these include what she calls “negative empathy” and “real order empathy.”

Biography

Stephanie Swales, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Dallas, a practicing psychoanalyst, a licensed clinical psychologist, and a clinical supervisor located in Dallas, Texas. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters as well as two books: Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch(Routledge, 2019), co-authored with Carol Owens, and Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject(Routledge, 2012). She serves as an editor for the PCSreview section of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, member-at-large for the Association for Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society as well as for the Dallas Society.