Full and Empty Speech (1 of 5): ’Let’s talk about me!’

If we accept the implications of Lacan’s mirror stage, then it would seem that both the ego and the ego-to-ego (or ego to mirror-image) relationship pose problems for clinical psychoanalytic work. Why so? Well the ego is, at basis a defensive formation, eager to sustain itself with ideal images and aggressively disposed to whatever might threaten its imaginary cohesion. It keeps at bay the truths of unconscious desire. There are also problems on the side of the psychotherapist’s side: their ego, with its needs for recognition and affirmation, with its wish to have its own experiences validated, makes for a poor instrument for clinical work. The therapist’s ego is akin to a distortion field when it comes to the prospect of really listening to what the patient is saying. For these reasons Lacan incessantly prioritizes attending to the patient’s actual speech, their signifiers, the way they use language (their idioms, metaphors, broken of trains of thought, etc.), rather than what the therapist a