Hebrew Translation of Eric Laurent's "Psychoanalysis and Mental Health"

Hebrew Translation of Eric Laurent's Book "Psychoanalysis and Mental Health"

In connection with the question of the forthcoming PIPOL 5 Congress, "Does Mental Health Exist?", I have the pleasure to announce the Hebrew translation of a new book by Eric Laurent, "Psychoanalysis and Mental Health".

The publication is the result of the joint effort of Susy Piechotka, Ilana Rabin, Tal Melamed, Yair Tzivoni and Ernesto Piechotka.

Laurent defines the spirit of professional practice in the field of mental health in terms of a "reduction of the act to the economy of behaviour". This definition underscores the increasing push to a "policy of things" that challenges analytic practice.

To quote Laurent: "Only psychoanalytic discourse … takes upon itself the impossible involved in any knowledge given under the mode of decipherment…”. This is a statement that calls for the policy of the symptom, for a renewed effort to "read the symptom", to read the symptomatic letter in a time where symbolic weakness pushes the individual to increased "friendlessness", to the frenzied One.

This book uproots the analyst from whatever daydream of extraterritoriality that might have put him to sleep: the teaching that can be drawn from the book is that every practitioner of psychoanalysis operates in the field of Mental Health, knowingly or unknowingly.

In the face of present-day subjective emergencies, real irruptions of the unconscious, theanalyst has to operate without any a-priori supposition of knowledge of theunconscious of he who requires his "services".

Ernesto Piechotka