A spoonful of sugar: Medication and the psychoanalytic body

Wright, Colin

Abstract

© 2020, Springer Nature Limited. This article employs a Lacanian framework to re-visit the vexed relationship between psychoanalysis and medication, which, it is claimed, also pertains to debates about the status of the psychoanalytic body. Whilst acknowledging the importance of critiques of ‘Big Pharma’, the article makes the case for a different approach. It argues both that ‘medication’ can be considered as a (dominant) discourse that extends well beyond the taking of pills, and, relatedly, that the psychoanalytic clinic reveals the ways in which subjects can make use of medication in often creative and productive ways. It does so partly via a brief clinical vignette and partly through a reflection on the issues raised in an article by the French Lacanian psychoanalyst Éric Laurent, which posits four libidinal modes of medication: the pharmakon, the placebo, the ‘surplus of life’ and anaesthetics. Overall, the article argues that while psychoanalysts must not work for ‘Big Pharma’, they can support the uses to which some subjects put the products of ‘Big Pharma’.

Citation

Wright, C. (2020). A spoonful of sugar: Medication and the psychoanalytic body. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 25, 135–154. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-019-00146-4

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 29, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jan 24, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-06
• Deposit Date: Oct 8, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 25, 2021
• Journal: Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society
• Print ISSN: 1088-0763
• Electronic ISSN: 1543-3390
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 25
• Pages: 135–154
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-019-00146-4
• Keywords: Jacques Lacan, Medication, Addiction, ‘Big Pharma’, Éric Laurent, the Body
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2784241
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fs41282-019-00146-4
• Contract Date: Oct 8, 2019