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🌀⚔️💫 IPA/FLŽ 🌀⚔️💫

International Psychoanalysis Association / Freudian-Lacanian-Žižekian
IPA/FLŽ — A New Psychoanalytic Frontline

(link, From Deviation to Pathogen: How Psychoanalytic Betrayals Fuel the Mediatic Unconscious, From Symbolic Rupture to Therapeutic Containment: A Historical Cartography of Defensive Solutions, IPA/FLŽ: Millerian Deviation is Lacan’s Stimulationist Falsification)

Millerians themselves believe they are keeping Lacan alive and kicking–
but sometimes, the kick is missing, replaced by a polished pirouette.

Millerian Lacanianism refers to the school of psychoanalytic practice organized around Jacques-Alain Miller – Lacan’s son-in-law and editor – and the institutions he leads, such as the École de la Cause freudienne (ECF) and the broader World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP). In these circles, clinical practice has taken on a distinctive style often characterized by aestheticized interpretation and theatrical flourish. Critics from the Freudian–Lacanian–Žižekian camp (IPA/FLŽ) have dubbed this deviation “Millerian stimulationism”, suggesting that Miller’s followers turn psychoanalysis into a kind of interpretive performance or simulation, rather than a process of strategic interruption. In this extensive report, we will document a wide range of actual case studies, clinical anecdotes, patient testimonies, and published examples from Millerian analysts themselves. Through these materials – drawn from books, seminars, and articles by Miller’s adherents – we will critically illustrate how their clinical techniques embody the excesses of stimulationism: endless elaboration, playful interpretive detours, and “the session as spectacle,” in stark contrast to Lacan’s emphasis on the symbolic cut, rupture, and encounter with the Real.

At stake is not merely an internal stylistic dispute, but the fidelity of psychoanalysis to its core ethical act. Lacan taught that analysis must cut into the subject’s defenses at the right moment – “the lion’s leap” that happens once – in order to produce a real change in the symbolic coordinates of the analysand’s desire. Millerian practice, according to its detractors, has largely abandoned this ethic of brevity and shock. Instead, the Millerian analyst tends to extend the discourse, luxuriating in interpretations, language games, and even a kind of artful staging of the unconscious content. As one critical manifesto puts it, “Where Lacan made speech stumble, Miller makes it glide”. The result, they argue, is psychoanalysis as spectacle: sessions that resemble mini seminars or performances, with the analyst as auteur and the analysand as a kind of performer, rather than the site of a confronting truth. In the sections that follow, we will see how Miller’s own clinical conduct – including his documented analysis of Slavoj Žižek – and the published cases of prominent Millerian analysts exemplify this transformation of therapy into interpretive theater.

Importantly, all examples presented here are drawn from verifiable, published accounts or firsthand descriptions by those involved – often the analysts and analysands themselves. By letting these sources speak, we avoid speculation and instead “expose” Millerian practice on its own terms. Dialogues from sessions, interpretations of dreams, notable interventions (or lack thereof), and the handling of transference will be examined in detail. Alongside each example, we will apply the lens of Lacanian theory versus Millerian practice: highlighting how, time and again, opportunities for a decisive cut or confrontation with the Real are deferred in favor of further signifying elaboration, clever wordplay, or aesthetic framing. The cumulative picture, framed by IPA/FLŽ’s critical theory, will portray Millerian psychoanalysis as a “spectacle-driven falsification” of Lacan’s project – a kind of endless dress rehearsal that resists the final act of transformation.

Before delving into specific cases, let us outline the key features of Millerian stimulationism as identified by its critics, in contrast to Lacan’s original clinic:

• Endless Interpretation vs. Cutting Intervention: Lacan’s technique of the variable-length session famously involved cutting a session short at an “aha!” moment – a sudden punctuation that leaves the analysand confronting a gap in their narrative. This coupure was meant to short-circuit the ego’s storytelling and force a brush with the unsaid Real. Miller’s approach, according to observers, inverts this logic. Sessions are no longer cut, but allowed to run on as “theoretically infinite ‘objects of speech’”. Instead of an abrupt end, the Millerian session often feels like a free-form conversation or monologue that could be prolonged indefinitely. Rather than intervening succinctly, the Millerian analyst adds more interpretation – finding more symbolic threads, more puns, more “material” to weave. “Just as Miller’s analyst never cuts too soon but always interprets more,” notes one critique, “today’s therapy culture indulges endless processing, branding it as ‘integration.’ Yet the truth of the subject remains untouched. The Real is dressed, not addressed.”
• Analyst as Performer of Meaning: In the classical Freudian-Lacanian stance, the analyst’s desire is supposed to occupy an enigmatic, almost blank position – allowing the analysand’s unconscious to project and speak without the analyst’s ego intruding. The Millerian deviation repositions the analyst as an active performer, even a kind of raconteur. Sessions become highly linguistically charged, with the analyst often delivering witty or erudite interpretations that showcase their theoretical prowess. As one commentary puts it, “Each session is no longer the staging of a traumatic truth but a performance of the analyst’s interpretive prowess… not the lion leaping once – it is the lion rehearsing endlessly, never actually leaping.” In other words, the focus shifts from allowing the patient’s unconscious to surprise everyone (including the analyst) with a break in meaning, to the analyst orchestrating clever meanings. The analyst in Millerian practice may be far from silent – they might engage in rapid-fire dialogue, deliver surprising metaphors, or even make dramatic gestures. Éric Laurent (a leading Millerian) has described Lacan’s late vision of the analyst as “the analyst as object a… who does things that are not done, that one doesn’t expect […] with his body”. This ideal can encourage theatrical or shocking acts in session (standing up suddenly, ending session mid-sentence, making enigmatic remarks, etc.) meant to jolt the patient. However, when overused or used without precision, such gestures risk becoming empty spectacle.
• Symptom as Exhibition: Perhaps the most damning charge is that Millerian analysts have regressed to a Charcotian mode. Jean-Martin Charcot, in the 19th century, famously gave flamboyant lecture-demonstrations of hysterical patients at the Salpêtrière – effectively staging their symptoms for an audience (see Charcot’s clinical spectacle in the painting below). Freud broke from this by listening to patients’ speech rather than treating them as performers. Yet, critics say “the Millerian and Lacanian Ink-style post-Lacanianism, by turning the symptom into a freakshow, has precisely re-invoked Charcot’s clinical aesthetic”. In contemporary form, this means the patient’s fantastical discourse is indulged and displayed rather than interpreted toward a halt or a truth. “The patient’s discourse is turned into the content of the performance; the session becomes not an intervention, but a catwalk where the symptom is displayed,” the IPA/FLŽ critique argues. The analyst, rather than cutting through the illusion, becomes a passive spectator or aesthetic connoisseur of the patient’s narratives. In short, the analytical dyad starts to mirror a media production: an endless series with engaging content but no conclusion. Indeed, the term “stimulationism” evokes simulation – as if the analysis under Miller’s influence is a controlled play that stimulates emotions and insights but carefully avoids any real act that would end the game.

Charcot’s Spectacle: 19th-century neurologist J.-M. Charcot giving a clinical lesson at the Salpêtrière, theatrically demonstrating a hysterical patient’s attack before an audience. Critics argue Millerian psychoanalysis revives this performance aspect, with the patient’s symptom turned into a displayed spectacle rather than cut by interpretation. (Oil painting by André Brouillet, 1887, public domain.)

With these general points in mind, we can now turn to the concrete clinical examples. The following sections each focus on a particular case or set of cases from Millerian practice – what happened in the session, what the analyst said or did, how the patient responded – and then analyze how it reflects the pattern of interpretive excess versus intervention. We begin with Jacques-Alain Miller’s own clinical work, most notably his handling of the philosopher Slavoj Žižek as an analysand, since Žižek has openly written and spoken about this experience. Thereafter, we will examine published case vignettes from other Millerian analysts (in France, Spain, Argentina, etc.), including dream interpretations and notable interventions, highlighting the aestheticized style and its pitfalls. Throughout, we will interweave commentary from Millerians (demonstrating their intent) with critical commentary (illuminating the unintended consequences). This deep research aims not only to document, but to critically expose how Millerian stimulationism operates in vivo, and why followers of Lacan like IPA/FLŽ consider it a “spectacle-driven falsification” of psychoanalysis.

By the end of this report, the reader should have both a rich empirical sense of Millerian clinical practice – the feel of these sessions, the flavor of the interpretations – and a theoretical understanding of how this diverges from Lacan’s ethos of the cut and the Real. We will also include a final section listing many of the prominent Millerian psychoanalysts and brief notes on documented cases or writings of theirs, as a reference. Let us now proceed into the heart of the analytic room as seen through Miller’s lens, starting with the revealing case of Slavoj Žižek’s analysis.

Žižek’s Analysis with Miller: When the Session Becomes a Stage

One of the most illuminating accounts of Millerian clinical technique comes from Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, who was in analysis with Jacques-Alain Miller in Paris during the early 1980s. Žižek has recounted his experience in interviews and profiles, offering a rare glimpse of Miller’s analytic style behind the closed door. The picture that emerges is striking: Žižek depicts Miller as an almost director-like figure, running a highly idiosyncratic and, in Žižek’s view, arbitrary analytic regimen. In response, Žižek – ever the theorist and trickster – transformed his own role as analysand into that of a performer, consciously fabricating material to match what he perceived Miller wanted. Their analytic relationship thus became a kind of high-level game or theater, exemplifying many features of Millerian stimulationism: unpredictable session structure, endless interpretive play, and a notable absence of genuine subjective “rupture.” Let’s look at the details of this unusual case.

Ultrashort Sessions & An Arbitrary Schedule: Miller was known to practice Lacan’s variable-length session to an extreme degree – often ending sessions after just a few minutes. Žižek confirms this, saying “few sessions lasted more than ten minutes” with Miller. More unsettling, Miller would give Žižek seemingly precise appointment times that turned out meaningless. “To be in analysis with Miller was to step into a divine, predestined universe,” Žižek recalls. “He was a totally arbitrary despot. He would say, come back tomorrow at exactly 4:55, but this didn’t mean anything! I would arrive at 4:55 and find a dozen people waiting.”. This description vividly conveys a capricious, staged quality to Miller’s handling of the session frame. The analyst appears as a master of ceremonies, almost toying with time – a scenario where the analysand can never anticipate when they will be seen or for how long. Lacan’s rationale for short sessions was to introduce discontinuity and prevent the patient’s ego from controlling the session. Miller certainly embraced discontinuity – Žižek never knew if a session would be 3 minutes or 10 – but the excessive arbitrariness had paradoxical effects. Rather than provoking productive frustration, it contributed to a sense that the entire analysis was “predestined” by the analyst’s whims. It’s as if Miller staged a little absurdist play in his waiting room: multiple patients all told to come at the same odd time, all left in uncertainty. The symbolic effect was to elevate Miller’s authority (one might say to Godot-like status) while undermining any patient’s attempt to bring their own agenda. This created a fertile ground for stimulation: with the temporal frame itself turned into a puzzle, the analysand is already drawn into a game-like scenario.

Žižek’s Response – Performing for the Master: Faced with this “divine despot” who might cut him off at any second, Žižek did something extraordinary (and, by usual analytic standards, heretical): he systematically lied to Miller throughout the analysis. As Žižek himself recounts bluntly, “It was my strict rule, my sole ethical principle, to lie consistently: to invent all symptoms, fabricate all dreams.”. In other words, he treated the analytic sessions as an open-ended improvisational performance. Why would a serious intellectual like Žižek do this? He explains that because Miller’s sessions were so short and unpredictable, “I was always prepared for at least two sessions” worth of material. Žižek dreaded the thought of facing the true depths of his psyche – “I have this incredible fear of what I might discover if I really went into analysis. What if I lost my frenetic theoretical desire? What if I turned into a common person?”. So, to avoid that Real confrontation (the very thing analysis should bring), he stayed in the mode of semblance: fabricating content to keep Miller interested and to shield himself from any unpredictable self-revelation. Here we see a perfect example of analysis sliding into simulation. The analysand consciously stages symptoms, effectively role-playing an analysand, and the analyst (as we’ll see) engages with these fictions as if they were genuine. The entire process becomes a masked dance – rich in symbols, perhaps, but fundamentally avoiding the truth of the subject.

Dreams as Scripted Vignettes: Nothing illustrates this better than the famous anecdote of Žižek’s dreams in analysis. Žižek would actually script dreams in advance to present to Miller, knowing the kinds of Freudian-Lacanian motifs that would pique Miller’s interest. In one notable instance, Žižek crafted an elaborate dream involving the classic film All About Eve (starring Bette Davis). He chose this dream scenario quite deliberately: Miller’s own daughter is named Eve, so Žižek intuited that any dream featuring “Eve” would strike a chord. He “planned every detail” of this dream performance, presenting it in session as if spontaneously recalled. Miller, true to form, responded with enthusiastic interpretation. According to Žižek, “when I finished, [Miller] announced grandly, ‘This was your revenge against me!’”. The analyst thus construed the dream’s meaning: Žižek, by dreaming of Eve, was unconsciously expressing revenge against Miller (perhaps for not publishing his work or for the whole analytic ordeal). Miller gave this interpretation with a flourish – grandly – suggesting he saw it as a significant analytic insight. Yet, as Žižek reveals, the entire scenario was manufactured to elicit just such a reaction. The analyst was, in effect, played. This episode is extraordinarily rich in what it tells us about Millerian stimulationism:

• The endless interpretation: Miller did not pause to question the authenticity of the material; he dove into decoding it, connecting dots (Eve, movie, daughter, revenge) and offering an interpretation that is thematically neat. It exemplifies how a Millerian analyst might prefer a clever, symmetric meaning (dream = analysand’s revenge on analyst) over a suspension of meaning. A more cautious analyst might have responded to such a film-like dream with a question or simply noted it without immediate closure. Miller instead delivered a dramatic closing line for the “scene.”
• The aestheticization: The whole exchange resembles a well-crafted scene in a play or novel. Žižek essentially wrote a short story (dream with literary reference) to impress Miller, and Miller provided a critical epigram (“your revenge against me!”) as if analyzing a character in literature. The boundary between life and art blurred; the analytic space became a kind of seminar on Žižek, with Miller as the expert decipherer of Žižek’s psyche-as-text. This is literally analysis as performance, complete with script and director’s commentary.
• The lack of Real encounter: Crucially, nothing truly unexpected happened. Žižek was not caught off guard or confronted with something he didn’t already know. Miller was fed a line and delivered the expected interpretation. Both walked away satisfied on some level – Miller thinking he uncovered a truth of Žižek’s unconscious, Žižek feeling clever for fooling the master – yet nothing changed. Žižek’s fundamental fears and anxieties remained intact (indeed, he reports a massive panic attack after a later disappointment with Miller, indicating unresolved issues). The analysis had been, in essence, all show and no cut.

This dynamic strongly supports the IPA/FLŽ contention that Millerian analysis suspends the subject in an “endless analytic choreography… interpretation without rupture”. In Žižek’s case, analyst and analysand alike participated in the choreography. Miller’s role can be seen as encouraging this by over-valuing interpretation (he always wanted to hear more, and to display his insight), and by not employing a decisive cut that could have exposed Žižek’s play-acting. For example, had Miller at some point simply ended a session at a moment that caught Žižek off guard – perhaps when noticing a genuine affect or hesitation – it might have pushed Žižek to drop the charade. Instead, Miller’s ultra-short sessions were predictable in their unpredictability; Žižek adapted to them too well. Ironically, the very technique meant to avoid the patient’s prepared narratives ended up intensifying the patient’s reliance on preparation (Žižek prepared double sessions of fake material “just in case”). This inversion is a powerful lesson: without true attentiveness and willingness to call the patient’s bluff, the short session can itself become a routine that the patient works around. Žižek openly admits he “had Miller completely taken in by his charade” by the end.

Transference and Institution: Another noteworthy aspect is the personal and institutional entanglement. Miller was not just Žižek’s analyst; he was also his academic mentor and sponsor in Paris. They socialized in the same Lacanian circles. This familiarity, while not uncommon in Lacanian communities, is traditionally seen as hazardous for transference. Žižek’s description – “a predestined universe” – hints that he felt the big Other of the Lacanian School looming over the analysis. Miller’s authority was augmented by being the gatekeeper of Žižek’s career (he ultimately disappointed Žižek by refusing to publish his thesis, which precipitated a crisis for Žižek). In classical terms, this is a massive transference (Miller embodying the object of desire and authority) that was never properly analyzed or punctured; instead it was exploited as part of the spectacle. Žižek’s awe and resentment toward Miller played out via dream “revenge” scenes and submissive compliance (lying to please), rather than being addressed. Žižek even says the prospect of analysis threatening his “frenetic theoretical desire” – essentially his identity as a brilliant intellectual – was terrifying. A more incisive analysis might have targeted that very point of identification. But under Miller, Žižek’s theatrical persona (the fast-talking, super-intellectual Žižek we see in public) was left intact or even bolstered. Indeed, Žižek confesses that often “when not presenting fabricated dreams, I would transform my sessions into de facto academic seminars to impress Miller with my keen intellect”. Astoundingly, the analytic sessions sometimes literally became lectures by Žižek – the analysand performing theory to gain the analyst’s admiration. This role-reversal underscores the spectacle-driven nature of the Millerian setup: it became more important for Žižek to appear brilliant (and for Miller to be seen as cultivating a brilliant pupil) than to delve into painful truths or impasses.

From Žižek’s case, we glean a microcosm of Millerian stimulationism:

• Sessions as short, scripted scenes rather than open-ended free association (Žižek always came “fully scripted”).
• Analyst as appreciative audience and interpreter, not agent of cut (Miller listened and offered elegant interpretations, never confronting Žižek’s facade).
• Analysand as performer, delivering what the analyst (and the institutional big Other) expects, rather than freely stumbling upon unknown kernels.
• Transference used for staging, not dissolved – Žižek’s deference to Miller’s “despotism” is part of the show, never cracked.

In retrospect, Žižek speaks of Miller with a mix of respect for his acumen and critique of his methods. “He was a totally arbitrary despot,” Žižek repeats, but also notes “to be much crueler with me” would have been desirable. In one interview, Žižek even scolds an interviewer jokingly, “You must be more brutal with me! You wouldn’t whip your partner hard enough!”, suggesting Žižek consciously recognizes he needs a stronger limit or cut – something he never got from Miller’s permissive theatricality. This aligns with the IPA/FLŽ position that “the lion must leap, not rehearse” – a real act is needed, not continuous feints.

In summary, the Miller-Žižek analysis shows how a brilliant Lacanian teacher’s clinical practice can devolve into an aestheticized simulation. The analytic space became “indistinct from the narrative loops of content platforms,” as one critique analogizes – indeed Žižek turned it into a proto-YouTube channel of his theory riffs and fabricated dramas, while Miller moderated like a content curator. The promised symbolic rupture never arrived. Žižek “graduated” from analysis not with subjective destitution, but with a colorful story and arguably an even stronger ego-identity as the one who tricked the master. If Lacanian analysis aims to reveal the lack in the Other, Miller’s handling arguably failed – Žižek saw Miller (the big Other) not shaken, but easily satisfied. The Real encounter was aborted. This case thus perfectly illustrates the “pathogenic deviation” the FLŽ collective warns of: “Where Lacan offered division, Miller offers mythology; where Freud aimed to disarm the ego, the Millerian clinic massages it with paradoxes”. Žižek’s ego-fantasy (of outsmarting authority) was massaged and confirmed rather than cut.

Having dissected this emblematic case, we will now turn to other Millerian analysts and examples, to see how the same pattern – or related variations – appear across various contexts. We’ll look at how dreams are handled in Millerian treatments, how sessions unfold in other case reports, and how the performative tendency shows up even when the analysand is not a canny philosopher but an ordinary patient. Each example will further illuminate the core thesis: Millerian stimulationism transforms analysis into a compelling performance that paradoxically leaves the fundamental impasse untouched – “the Real is dressed, not addressed.”

Dreams and “Endless” Interpretation: Between Awakening and Aestheticism

Dreams have always been central to psychoanalytic practice, famously termed the “royal road to the unconscious” by Freud. In Lacanian practice, dreams are subject to particularly refined interpretation – focusing on language, puns, and structure more than straightforward symbolism. Millerian analysts, being devoted Lacanians, naturally pay great attention to dreams that patients bring. However, critics argue that Miller’s influence has led to an overindulgence in dream interpretation – treating the dream as an elaborate text to be exhaustively deciphered, sometimes at the expense of the waking reality of the patient. Instead of using the dream to produce an awakening (in Lacan’s later sense, where the dream’s end can jolt the subject awake to the Real), the Millerian clinic risks making the dream an object of endless fascination. In this section, we examine how Millerian analysts report working with dreams, highlighting both their sophisticated techniques and the potential “interpretive excess” in their approach.

The Millerian Congress on Dreams: A telling indication of Millerian focus on dreams is the 2020 Congress of the WAP titled “Dream: Its Interpretation and Use in Lacanian Treatment.” This congress produced an entire volume (Scilicet #8) with 88 contributions, including an opening text by Miller himself entitled “Awakening.” The very premise was to “bring out into the open the way in which dreams are analyzed in treatments today”, explicitly aiming to display contemporary Lacanian dream work. In promotional materials, Miller’s orientation is cited: “one doesn’t only dream when asleep… the desire to wake up stirs within the dream”, echoing Lacan’s idea that the true aim of the dream is to provoke an awakening. There is thus a tension in Millerian discourse on dreams: on one hand, they endorse Lacan’s view that the purpose of interpretation is ultimately to wake the subject up from their jouissance, to produce a Real moment (the “interpretation that wakes”). On the other hand, the sheer volume of analytic material devoted to dreams (dozens of case write-ups, etc.) raises the question of whether they risk making the dream an endless playground of meaning.

Consider Miller’s commentary on a contemporary literary “dream.” In a 2012 public forum, Miller discussed French author Christine Angot’s novel Une semaine de vacances, which explicitly portrays an incestuous father-daughter relationship. Miller zoomed in on a dream the protagonist recounts in the novel. He famously coined the phrase “la joie de l’inconscient” (“the joy of the unconscious”) to describe the moment when the character’s unconscious, via a dream, finally says “NO” to the abusive father. Miller enumerates what the reader (and the character) wonder: “Why doesn’t she run away? Why doesn’t she scream? Why no kick?” – and answers that only the unconscious can provide the brake on the father’s enjoyment. In Angot’s story, it’s the recounting of a dream that imposes a limit and ends the cycle of abuse. Miller celebrates this: “The brake on the irrepressible father surges from the royal road of the unconscious. The dream she tells is the limit for him. She passes from being crushed by her father to the joy of the unconscious – not a celebration of jouissance, but an entry into the extravagances of desire.”. This analysis by Miller is insightful and poetic – he effectively interprets the novel’s dream as the symbolic cut that reality couldn’t deliver. It shows Miller knows what a dream is supposed to do: mark a rupture or awakening, a decisive NO against the worst.

Yet, one might ask: in actual Millerian clinical practice, do interpretations always achieve this rupturing function? Or do they sometimes become a source of surplus sense, adding layers of poetry without catalyzing action? Freud himself warned analysts “never to defer the interest of an analysis in favor of the exhaustiveness of dream interpretation”. In other words, one should not get so caught up in analyzing every detail of a dream that the overall progress of treatment stalls. This warning is quite relevant to the Millerian tendency. Millerians delight in the equivocations and multi-layered wordplay of dreams – “a dream is made of words, it’s a text, and as such it is to be read. According to Lacan… one reads it in its equivocations, in an anagrammatic manner”. A Millerian analyst might spend significant session time or case write-up space exploring the linguistic knots of a dream, finding nonsense homophones, hidden names, unconscious puns. This is intellectually rigorous and often yields meaningful insights or S₁ (master signifiers) for the case. However, the critical question is: does it end something for the analysand, or does it merely prolong the analytic discussion?

Even Miller’s beautiful exegesis of Angot’s story – “joy of the unconscious” etc. – could be seen as an aesthetic flourish. It interprets the dream’s function (to say NO) but in such a celebratory, elaborate way that the interpretation itself becomes a little spectacle of theory. Miller delivered it to an audience, effectively making the dream interpretation a public lesson in Lacanian theory. This exemplifies what IPA/FLŽ would call the “seminar aesthetics” overtaking the act. They remark: “Instead of brief intervention, there is the ‘aesthetics of the endless seminar’: texts speak, but no one listens… The singular moment of cut… has been replaced by the aesthetic pose of infinite repetition.”. In dream analysis, this might translate to interpreting and re-interpreting the dream from different angles, session after session, enjoying its richness – rather than using a key interpretation to punctuate and move on.

An Example of Lacanian Dream Interpretation: The style of Lacanian (and by extension Millerian) dream interpretation can be grasped with a simpler example often told in Lacanian circles. Imagine an analysand says, “I had a dream that all my teeth fell out. What does that mean?” A classical Jungian might evoke a generic meaning (e.g. “teeth falling out means fear of aging or castration anxiety”). A Millerian Lacanian, however, refuses the ready-made meaning. One retelling (attributed to a supervisor of Lacanian orientation) has the analyst responding with a joke: “What do you get when you mate an elephant with a rhino? ‘Elephino!’ (i.e. ‘Hell if I know!’)”. This humorous non-sequitur is actually a deliberate intervention: it underlines that the meaning of the dream’s signifier (teeth falling out) is not universal (“I don’t know your dream’s meaning in advance”). The patient is thereby invited to free-associate further (perhaps they laugh, and that laughter leads to associations about a funny elephant figurine their father gave them, etc.). Lacanian analysts aim to avoid feeding the patient a sense – instead they often produce an odd interpretation or play on words to shake loose new associations. In this way, “interpretation no longer aims at the meaning… Production of meaning only prolongs the cure, it makes it infinite. Interpretation aims at the jouissance… by disturbing the defense.”. That quote (from a 2021 NLS congress) is critical: Millerian analysts themselves say they don’t want to go on the side of meaning, because chasing meaning forever would infinite the analysis. They insist instead on interpretation that disturbs the subject (hitting on jouissance).

The irony, however, noted by critics, is that in practice Millerian interpretation sometimes does generate an abundance of meaning – especially in published case presentations. For instance, a Millerian analyst Dominique Holvoet wrote up the case of an analysand with obsessive symptoms, titled “The Pleasure of the Symptom.” In a commentary, it’s noted that “the orientation of psychoanalysis is not to let oneself go on the side of meaning, but instead to make the well of meaning run dry to get to the bone of the drive”. Yet the very description of the case is full of meaningful formulations: Holvoet “gradually unfolds the scenes and crucial encounters which established the structure of the subject, as well as the formula of the fantasy”. The case narrative identifies the subject’s core fantasy as “If you want me to fall, there you are!” – a phrase uttered whenever the Other made a demand, indicating the subject’s unconscious death-wish or refusal to satisfy the Other. Over the treatment, Holvoet says the patient’s symptom evolved from a “repetitive necessity” to a “contingency” – essentially, by bringing the fantasy to light, the symptom lost its compulsive meaning and became a more flexible enjoyment. All of this is couched in elegant Lacanian terms (symptomatic remainder, irreducible real of the symptom, new trajectory for jouissance). While clinically insightful, the language itself is densely aesthetic and theoretical – arguably more so than needed for the patient’s benefit. It reads like a polished narrative where every element of the dream and symptom has found its place in a meaningful web. One could ask: in the actual sessions, was there a moment of cut that precipitated the shift from “necessity” to “contingency”? Or was it a gradual, almost literary unfolding guided by the analyst’s weaving of meanings?

Critics suspect the latter: Millerian analysts may retroactively construct the case as a smooth story of transformation, attributing causality to interpretations given, but without pinpointing a clear act that made the difference. This is why some outside observers say Millerian case presentations feel more like fiction or literature than medical case reports. Indeed, Miller himself has openly said “a clinical case is a fiction, since the analyst is included in it, like Velázquez in his painting Las Meninas”. In a Spanish thesis on Lacanian case construction, Miller (referencing Lacan) explains that writing a case is about encircling a real of jouissance with a narrative – but it is a constructed fiction. They even note how earlier Lacanians like Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni would give their analysands fictional names when presenting cases (for example, calling one patient “Aída” because she felt foreign in her own land, and another “Sisyphus” for his interminable labor of satisfying demands). These literary nicknames show the aestheticizing impulse: the messy personal story is refashioned into a symbolic persona or myth. While done partly to protect confidentiality, it also signals the analyst’s creative stamp on the material. The risk is that the singularity of the patient’s suffering gets subsumed under a known story (Aída’s exile, Sisyphus’s curse) – in short, over-interpreted.

“The Lion’s Leap” – Missed? A recurring metaphor here is Freud’s warning that “the lion only leaps once.” Freud used this to caution analysts against repeating an interpretation after it has been made; one must strike at the right moment and then stop. Lacanians often quote this to justify the single decisive intervention. Miquel Bassols (a Millerian) indeed reminds us: “Never forget the aphorism that the lion jumps only once.”. Yet, if we examine Millerian case discourse, it sometimes seems the lion is not jumping at all – he’s performing a kind of slow-motion dance. The critique from IPA/FLŽ is sharp: “The brief session meant to save the subject from narrative has been replaced by infinite chains of references… The lion’s one leap replaced by the aesthetic pose of infinite repetition.”. In dream interpretation, infinite repetition could mean session after session returning to the same dream elements, turning them over for more significance.

A possible clinical anecdote illustrating this comes from a patient’s complaint on a public forum. A young analysand wrote that after nine months of Lacanian analysis, during which he had been severely depressed and suicidal, his analyst made a startling remark: “Today my analyst told me, ‘You have a masochistic side.’”. This was said in response to the patient wondering aloud why he felt so bad – even asking if he might be masochistic. The patient reported that this interpretation (labeling him as having a masochistic streak) was devastating: “Since then, the dark ideas are even more present… It’s as if I’ve been in an internal war for months and that phrase just gave weapons to the part of me that wants to destroy me.”. He felt the analyst’s comment was not helping at all, and he was left disgusted with himself and more hopeless. This example is sobering. The analyst’s intention might have been to name the patient’s unconscious guilt or jouissance in suffering (a common Lacanian angle: to highlight the hidden “enjoyment” in symptoms). However, delivered in such a direct, context-less way, it became more of a judgment than an interpretation that liberates. There was no apparent cut – no poetic dimension to the comment, no ambiguity – just a flat diagnosis: “you’re masochistic.” For that patient, it didn’t produce an awakening to truth; it produced an increase in self-loathing. One could argue this was simply poor technique by that individual analyst. But it also reflects a potential pitfall of Millerian training: in emphasizing theory (here, the notion of masochistic jouissance) and clever pronouncements, analysts may mis-time interventions or make them in an aesthetic or top-down way, without attuning to the patient’s readiness. An intervention intended as a “cut” (you are masochist, stop blaming circumstances) can backfire if not properly contained. In classic analysis, one might have waited for the patient to discover their complicity rather than pronouncing it from above. The patient’s reaction – feeling even more weaponized against himself – shows that instead of cutting the knot of suffering, the interpretation was experienced as adding another layer of meaning: “I am a hopeless masochist.” This is the opposite of what interpretation should achieve (which is to separate the subject a bit from the symptom, not nail them to it).

This cautionary tale reinforces the fine line between interpreting to wake up and over-interpreting to the point of harm. Millerian analysts, to their credit, constantly debate how to make interpretations that hit the Real rather than reinforce sense. They speak of “equivoque” (double meaning) and even gestural interpretations (a sigh, a knock) to get out of the trap of too-much-sense. But the very sophistication of these discussions shows how high-wire the act has become – and how easily one can slip into either silence that does nothing, or speech that fascinates but fails to cut.

In summary, when it comes to dreams and interpretation:

• Millerian clinicians produce brilliant readings of dreams, often linking the dream-content to elaborate unconscious structures and literary references. This demonstrates their intellectual virtuosity and can enrich the understanding of the case (for analyst and peers).
• However, this can foster a culture of interpretation for its own sake – an aestheticization of the unconscious – where the ultimate Lacanian mandate of “traversing the fantasy” and hitting the Real may be deferred under an accumulation of insights.
• The emphasis on witty or unexpected interpretations (like the elephant-rhino joke) shows a refusal of standard meanings – which is good analytic technique – yet one wonders if the need to always be clever becomes its own pressure, possibly clouding the simplicity of just cutting off a harmful line of thought.
• Patients have reported feeling that some Lacanian analysts “see therapy as a clever game in their own head, rather than about the patient’s pain and reality.” In a discussion on psychoanalysis forums, one person observed: “Unfortunately, there are many narcissistic would-be analysts from literary backgrounds who treat it as just an intellectual game… I’m sorry it happened to you.”. This outside view corroborates the idea that in some Millerian corners, analysis can turn into a solipsistic exercise – the analyst enjoying their own interpretive prowess while the patient’s suffering remains, perhaps even exacerbated.

Ultimately, Lacan said “the purpose of interpretation is not to be understood” but to produce an effect (truth emergent). Millerian practice knows this in theory, but in practice sometimes over-shoots understanding in one way (becoming obscure or overly artful) or over-produces understanding in another (weaving every detail into a smooth fiction). The goal of waking up can be lost amid the dream of endless meaning. As we move on, we will examine how these tendencies manifest in other aspects of Millerian clinical work – notably in the overall handling of sessions and transference, and in published case presentations that read like guided tours of the unconscious. Each will further demonstrate the core critique: Millerian psychoanalysis often flatters where it should fracture, and lingers where it should punctuate, creating a therapeutic experience that is intellectually dazzling but potentially “indistinguishable from content creation, from aestheticized introspection, from the very spectacle psychoanalysis was meant to rupture.”.

Session Dynamics: Performance vs. Intervention in Millerian Practice

The conduct of analytic sessions in Millerian institutions reveals much about their orientation. We’ve touched on Miller’s own short-session approach with Žižek. However, across the Millerian world (the ECF and affiliated schools), the rhythm and style of sessions can vary. Some Millerian analysts stick to very brief sessions, others allow longer monologues – but the common thread, critics note, is an emphasis on the analysand’s speech as a kind of continuous flow that the analyst sparsely (but pointedly) punctuates, rather than the more dialogic or confrontational style seen elsewhere. Lacanians often describe the session as “a monologue punctuated by the analyst’s interventions.” Miller himself contends that “the analytic session is a monologue except when the analyst makes an interpretation”. This underscores that the analysand is usually talking freely, and the analyst mostly listens – a classical stance. The difference in Millerian practice is what the analyst does when they do speak or act. Let’s explore session dynamics through a few angles:

• The variable length of sessions and its use (or abuse).
• The frequency and nature of analyst interventions (interpretations, gestures).
• The handling of transference within the session structure.
• How these play out in specific anecdotal reports beyond Žižek.

Variable-Length Sessions: Discipline or Chaos? Lacan introduced variable-length sessions to upset the automatism of the standard 50-minute hour and to undercut the patient’s mastery. In Millerian circles, this practice is maintained, sometimes extremely so (as we saw, Miller might give only a few minutes). Many Millerian analysts will end a session the moment a particularly significant word or phrase emerges from the patient – the idea is to “cut on the S1,” the master-signifier, so that it resonates for the patient after they leave. A well-timed cut can have a profound effect: the patient is left in a state of contemplation or even shock, forced to confront the echo of what they just said. Done properly, this is the opposite of endless stimulation – it is a shock to the system, a silence that speaks louder than any words.

However, misuse of the short session can turn it into a mere ritual or, worse, a power play. If sessions are cut arbitrarily (to fit the analyst’s schedule, or just following a formula rather than the patient’s material), it can breed confusion or resentment without insight. Žižek’s complaint of arbitrary times and multiple patients at once reflects this danger: the patient might feel like part of a herd being shuffled through for the analyst’s convenience or caprice. Some have caricatured this as “the Lacanian drive-by session.”

There’s also the question of payment: in the Lacanian tradition, patients still often pay a full fee regardless of the session length (though some adjust the fee to frequency). One Reddit commentator skeptically asked if Lacanians are sadistic for such practices, or if it’s a scam. Others replied that while it can seem sadistic, the idea is to jolt the patient, not to torture. In practice, whether the patient experiences the short session as a meaningful jolt or as a sadistic move depends on the context built around it. A well-timed cut that feels purposeful (the patient realizes “ah, I hit something deep and the analyst cut there”) can generate trust in the process. But if the patient is left thinking “why on earth did we stop just when I was starting?” repeatedly, it may breed frustration without insight.

Millerian analysts are trained to be very attentive to signifiers that might warrant a cut. For example, an analysand might, after much tangential talk, suddenly mention in passing “and that’s when I felt dead inside.” A Lacanian might end the session right at the word “dead” – a dramatic punctuation. Ideally, the analysand leaving with that last word hanging realizes that “dead inside” is a crucial truth of their symptom, which can then be addressed next time. If the analysand “gets” it, this is a moment of Real. If not, they might just feel puzzled or even think the analyst ended because of shock or discomfort. Communication about the process in Lacanian analysis is minimal (analysts infamously refuse to explain their method, to avoid undermining it). So, Millerian analysts rely on the experience itself to teach the patient. This can work for some, but for others it might indeed appear as the analyst’s whim.

Endless Sessions? On the flip side, Millerian analysts are not strictly bound to making every session short. Some sessions might go longer if the material flows. Critics suggest, however, that even when sessions go long, the structure still avoids a real ending – because it lacks the decisive interpretation or cut. In other words, one can have a 45-minute Millerian session that is essentially endless interpretation because the analyst keeps prompting the analysand to speak more, free-associate more, maybe offering multiple small interpretations, but never delivering a concluding intervention. The session might then end simply because time ran out or the patient exhausted themselves, not because a significant cut was made. This is what one might call an “endless session” in spirit, if not in actual clock time. One patient on a forum described feeling that sessions were not productive and wanted to come less often, implying that nothing ever happened in them except her talking and the analyst occasionally asking a question. She eventually told her Lacanian analyst she wanted to pause because “they are not being productive”. The analyst didn’t try to dissuade her apparently. This could be interpreted as the analysis failing to find the punctuation that would make the sessions come alive.

Analyst Interventions: Equivoques and Acting-Out? Millerian analysts pride themselves on concise, pointed interventions. These can be verbal – often taking advantage of the equivocal nature of language (saying something that has double meaning relevant to the patient’s unconscious). Or they can be non-verbal – Lacan sometimes famously just tapped on the back of his chair or abruptly opened the door to signal session’s end. One example from a Millerian supervision: an analyst had a mute psychotic patient who only drew pictures (a fish over and over). The supervisor cautioned the analyst not to take away the patient’s drawing paper too soon, as that might provoke panic. The supervisor quipped that sometimes an analyst should be more of a “secretary” or a friend than an interpreter in such cases. This advice shows a sensitivity to not intervening just for the sake of it. It acknowledges there are times Millerian technique must be gentle and basically do nothing dramatic, otherwise the patient’s fragile invention collapses. Indeed, Millerian analysts working with psychosis developed the notion of “ordinary psychosis” where the analyst’s role is often to support the patient’s symptom (their makeshift solutions) rather than interpret too much. This is almost the inverse problem: here, the critique could be that Millerians sometimes err on the side of under-interpreting in those cases, effectively doing psychotherapy-like support while theoretically calling it analysis.

However, with neurotic patients, Millerians more frequently lean into witty or unexpected interpretations. A participant on Reddit asked if Lacanian analysts are typically sadistic because theirs made strange remarks. One commenter responded (in French) that some Lacanians do come off as arrogant or sadistic, “keeping others in ignorance with ideas too complex to be understood outside their circle”. This hints at another issue: the jargon-laden interventions. If an analyst, influenced by Millerian jargon, drops terms like “object a” or “jouissance” in interpretations to a patient who hasn’t a clue what they mean, it’s likely not helpful. Millerians usually try to avoid pure jargon with patients (those terms are mostly for case discussion among colleagues). But even metaphorical Lacanian interpretations can confuse. For example, telling a patient who feels empty in love, “Perhaps you are looking for the phallic woman”, might be theoretically spot-on (maybe the patient’s fantasy is of a woman with phallic completeness), but to the patient it sounds bizarre or even insulting. Without careful framing, such an interpretation can alienate the patient – who might just think the analyst is speaking nonsense. That plays into the spectacle aspect: the analyst seems to be performing high theory that leaves the patient out.

Indeed, one outside critic (Donald Carveth, an ego psychologist) accused Lacanians of engaging in “anal sadism” by “keeping the patient in the dark with overly complex ideas only they understand”. A Millerian defender replied that lately many Lacanians have tried to be more accessible, so this is a stereotype. The defender has a point – journals like The Lacanian Review aim to present cases in more straightforward language. Yet internally, in their schools, the taste for high theory remains. The result can be a disconnect between analyst and analysand: the analyst is excited about how the case illustrates, say, the decline of the Name-of-the-Father in postmodern times, but the analysand just wants relief from panic attacks.

Transference as Spectacle: In classical psychoanalysis, transference (the patient’s unconscious displacement of desires and authority onto the analyst) is the motor of the cure, but it has to be handled carefully. The analyst must neither fully gratify the transference nor brutally frustrate it; they must use it to point back to the unconscious truth. Lacan famously said the analyst must “traverse the transference” and end up as waste (the patient sees the analyst is not the answer to their desire). In Millerian settings, however, some suspect that transference is often prolonged or even exploited to keep patients tied to the analytic institution. Miller’s inner circle has been accused of fostering a kind of personality cult – Miller himself was the charismatic center for many years, and analysts in his school might get a bit of that aura. There is a possible conflict of interest: the school benefits (financially and in prestige) from patients continuing analysis indefinitely and attending school events, so there may be an unconscious pressure on analysts to not push certain patients to conclusion too quickly. Instead, keeping them stimulated – always another layer of meaning to uncover – is the norm. This is speculative, but the structure of these schools (where many analysands are themselves training to be analysts under their analyst) complicates pure therapeutic motives.

Žižek’s case again is instructive: he had a strong transference to Miller as both analyst and intellectual leader. That transference was never fully resolved; it actually collapsed when Miller failed to publish Žižek’s work, leading Žižek to an actual breakdown (panic attack that mimicked a heart attack). Žižek ended up “traversing” the situation by aligning with a rival Lacanian faction to get his book out – in effect, his cure came not from within the analysis but from a sort of rebellion in the social field. Transference was left to play out in the political arena, not analyzed. We might say Miller inadvertently functioned as the object of Žižek’s drive (Žižek got jouissance from tricking Miller, etc.), but there was no formal conclusion or demystification in the consulting room. Miller remained (to Žižek) the capricious Other.

In other cases, Millerian analysts have indeed guided patients to the formal end of analysis (documented via the “Pass”, a procedure Miller instituted for validating one’s analysis has produced an analyst). Many such testimonies exist, often highly abstract in language. While these are successes of a sort, even some within the Lacanian camp have critiqued that the Pass process became a theater of its own – with would-be “passed” analysts recounting their journey in almost literary form to impress committees. This again hints at the spectacle aspect: the very end of analysis can become a performance narrative.

One could contrast Millerian transference handling with that of, say, classical IPA analysts. A Freudian might maintain a more strictly impersonal stance and interpret transference more directly (“You’re treating me like your father,” etc.). Millerians, instead, often interpret transference through metaphor or indirection (“The question is where have you put the father…”) or even through action (ending a session can itself be an interpretation of transference – e.g. cutting a session when the patient says “you must know the answer” could be a way to refuse the position of supposed-knowledge). Done skillfully, this is elegant. But done poorly, the patient just feels abandoned or confused.

Patient Perspectives: We have already seen a few patient voices (Žižek’s reflective one, the distressed young man labeled masochist). Another patient perspective from Reddit asked if others experienced analysts who view therapy as a game. A commenter responded that someone should write about “analysts who see therapy as a game – by re-reading some of their case studies through the prism of analyzing the analyst”. This idea – analyzing the analyst’s behavior via their own case reports – is precisely what our investigation is doing. The commenter noted when they suggested this to colleagues, it was met with a deaf ear (perhaps analysts resist such scrutiny). But it’s telling that patients/intelligent outsiders perceive game-playing in some of these analytic interactions. “He seemed like a real jerk… many fake narcissistic wannabes treat it as just a clever game in their head, rather than the reality of another’s pain,” one person wrote, apologizing to the patient who had that experience. This compassionate outsider is basically describing the ethical failure that can happen: the analyst becomes so wrapped up in playing the Lacanian role (with all its counter-intuitive behaviors and cleverness) that they neglect the simple human responsiveness at times needed.

For example, if a patient is clearly on the brink of suicide (as the masochist guy implied), a responsible clinician might break frame to ensure safety (suggest a consultation, encourage psychiatry, etc.). A rigid Millerian might instead stick to opaque interpretations or simply note the increase in “dark ideas” without direct concern, fearing that stepping out of analytic stance would spoil the process. This can end tragically or at least alienate the patient. Millerian institutions do have guidelines – they’re not aiming to be irresponsible. But the valorization of not giving “meaningful feedback” or ego-suggestions can sometimes conflict with common-sense therapeutic action.

Summarizing session dynamics:

• Formally, Millerian sessions are often shorter and more frequent than standard therapy. This can be effective in keeping analysis intense and focused. But it can also feel like a fragmented flurry of encounters if not managed well.
• Content-wise, sessions tend to be patient-driven monologues, with the analyst intervening with either silence (allowing more talk), a question that often echoes patient’s words, or an interpretation that is usually succinct and somewhat riddling.
• The Good: When it works, one interpretation or well-timed cut can resonate for days, and patients report suddenly connecting dots in their life, having revelations or behavioral shifts. The analyst often remains in memory as a enigmatic figure who nonetheless helped the patient reach a new position.
• The Bad: When it doesn’t work, the patient may feel the analyst did nothing (“just sat there looking sleepy and answering my questions with another question” was one complaint). Or the patient feels the analyst was playing intellectual games at their expense. In either case, the danger is the patient leaves not with a new understanding of themselves, but with a new symptom: distrust or a feeling of being unheard.
• The Ugly: In some cases, the Millerian style can exacerbate the patient’s condition. For example, a paranoid patient might become more paranoid if the analyst acts too cryptically (they might think the analyst is mocking them or part of the conspiracy). A severely depressed patient might feel more despair if the analyst withholds reassurance or interprets their despair as jouissance. These are extreme outcomes, but the fact that Millerian analysts must navigate them highlights how the aesthetic of interpretation must always be balanced with clinical judgment and ethics. IPA/FLŽ allege Millerians sometimes let the former override the latter – making the process about the idea of analysis rather than the suffering individual.

Having examined how sessions run and how interventions can become performances, we will now illustrate these points further by looking at specific case vignettes published by Millerian analysts. This will tie together the threads by showing, in concrete examples, how they treat particular symptoms or cases, and how their write-ups exemplify the “stimulationist” approach. We’ll see cases of psychosis, paranoia, etc., where the analytic work is described in almost literary terms. Through these, we’ll underscore the contrast between what is achieved and what is performed.

Case Vignettes in Millerian Publications: The Aesthetic of the Clinic

Millerian analysts are prolific in sharing case studies through journals, seminars, and books. These case vignettes are often carefully curated to highlight a theoretical point or a technique. Reading them provides insight into both what happens in their sessions and how they choose to represent what happens. A pattern noted by observers is that many Millerian case presentations are remarkably polished narratives – they have a clear beginning (patient’s initial symptom and subjective impasse), a middle (key dream or incidents interpreted), and an end (a resolution or lesson). Each is laden with references to Lacanian concepts and frequently embellished with metaphors or even literary allusions (recall Lemoine’s “Aída” and “Sisyphus” patients). This stands in contrast to, say, traditional Freudian case reports that sometimes read more plainly or include more of the trial-and-error of therapy.

Let’s examine a few notable examples of Millerian case vignettes, gleaned from published sources, to see how they exemplify stimulationism.

1. The Paranoia Conversations – “L’Autre méchant” (The Wicked Other): In 2010, a collective volume L’Autre méchant was published under Miller’s direction, containing six clinical cases of paranoia with discussions. The cases have evocative titles:

• “J’étais l’homme d’un père” (“I was the man of a father”) – by Jean-Daniel Matet.
• “La gravité sans loi de l’Autre méchant” (“The lawless gravity of the wicked Other”) – by Miquel Bassols.
• “À compte d’auteur” (“At the author’s expense” or a pun on self-publishing) – by Carole Dewambrechies-La Sagna.
• “Le jeune homme à la ficelle” (“The young man with a string”) – by Antonio Di Ciaccia.
• “L’autre sera toujours une menace” (“The other will always be a threat”) – by Philippe De Georges.
• “Les pièges de l’Autre” (“The Other’s traps”) – by Mario Zerghem.

Even these titles show a flair for drama and metaphor. They read like chapter headings in a novel or short story collection. Each case, presumably, involves a person suffering paranoid delusions or persecutory beliefs, and the analyst’s task was to navigate the “malicious Other” that haunts the patient. The discussion, animated by Miller himself, is said to reveal “a great diversity of style in the positions adopted by the psychoanalysts… each demonstrates inventing a tailor-made know-how with each patient”. This statement (from the book description) is telling: it emphasizes style, invention, tailor-made know-how. This is undoubtedly positive – each case is unique, requiring creative approach. But it also implicitly praises the performance of the analyst: each analyst “demonstrates” their invention. The conversation format means they are effectively showcasing their clever solutions to colleagues under Miller’s direction.

One standout example: “The young man with a string” (le jeune homme à la ficelle) by Di Ciaccia. While we don’t have the full text, from context we can surmise it’s about a young psychotic man who carried a piece of string – likely as a makeshift device to hold himself together, perhaps literally tying himself or creating a boundary. Di Ciaccia, a child psychosis specialist, probably interpreted the string as a sinthome (a stabilizing invention) and worked with the patient to maintain or symbolize it. The very image of a man with a string is poetic and invites metaphor: Ariadne’s thread, holding onto reality by a string, etc. A Millerian write-up would likely explore these resonances. The risk is to romanticize the symptom. If Di Ciaccia went on about, say, how this string is like the “fils” (thread/son) that ties him to the (m)Other, etc., it could become a beautiful story but one wonders what intervention occurred. Did the analyst encourage him to use the string in some therapeutic play? Did they say something about it? Or simply observe it as a sign of the patient’s genius and not interfere?

Without the text, we can’t judge results, but the titling suggests a certain aesthetic packaging. It’s more memorable to call the case “The Young Man with a String” than “Mr. X, age 20, paranoid schizophrenia”. It signals that Millerian clinicians see their patients almost as characters in a drama whose symptom has narrative symbolism. The spectator in us is engaged by “what is the meaning of the string?” – just as an audience is engaged by a mystery in a play. This is stimulation for the analytic community’s intellect, certainly. But did the young man get better? Possibly the case was a success in that he didn’t decompensate further, maybe he improved in functioning. The write-ups often mention theoretical victory more than symptom outcome in plain terms.

The conversation moderated by Miller likely dissected each case’s theoretical implications (e.g., paranoia as “the native state of the subject” per Lacan, the idea of an irreducible aggressivity of the Other). Miller is quoted emphasizing “the great nobility of paranoia” as “the fundamental clinical background” of the discussion. Calling paranoia “great nobility” is originally Lacan’s phrasing (he considered Schreber’s delusion almost majestic in its rigor). But highlighting that in a clinical meet can be seen as glorifying a pathological structure – an aesthetic appreciation. The analysts in that book, by exploring “the multiple faces of the wicked Other – discreet or thunderous, diffuse threat ever ready to surge, up to incarnations of malevolence in relation to others”, are effectively engaging in a phenomenological art of paranoia. The benefit is a richer understanding. The downside is the potential loss of urgency to intervene – if paranoia is so noble and intrinsically human (“the native state”), do we challenge the delusion or just admire its structure?

One might suspect that in these cases, analysts likely did minimal direct confrontation of delusions (Lacan warned against arguing with a psychotic’s delusion). Instead, they may have aligned with the patient’s perspective enough to let them invent solutions (like the string). This is a valid approach for psychosis (supporting the symptom). Yet, from a certain standpoint, it could look like non-intervention as a form of intervention – which can slide into just letting the spectacle play out. The patient continues with their string, the analyst discusses it in conferences – the symptom is not cut, it’s curated. This is a subtle point: sometimes not cutting is correct (we don’t force a psychotic to give up their stabilizer prematurely). But at the end of the day, is the person more free or just aesthetically validated?

2. Dominique Holvoet – “The Pleasure of the Symptom”: As mentioned earlier, Holvoet’s case of an obsessional man is illuminating. The patient responded to any demand from the Other with self-sabotage (“if you want me to fall, here I go!” scenario). Over analysis, Holvoet claims the patient’s relationship to his symptom changed – he could let go of deriving unconscious enjoyment from making the Other feel guilty (by harming himself) and instead take his symptom as a choice, finding a new way to enjoy life without the repetitive failure. The phrase “the pleasure of the symptom” itself frames the case in Lacanian jargon (after Seminar XX, Lacan spoke of “jouissance of the symptom”).

Holvoet’s write-up as summarized by a commentator (Despina Karagianni) is very abstract. It says the symptom moved from necessity to contingency, meaning from something that had to keep repeating (because of unknown meaning) to something the subject could perhaps allow or disallow because its fundamental non-meaning was embraced (the “irreducible real” acknowledged). This sounds like a success – presumably the man stopped enacting the self-defeating behavior compulsively. But the way it’s conveyed is through theoretical language, not concrete events. We don’t hear “and then he was able to hold a job” or “he stopped fainting when his boss scolded him” – instead we hear about “acknowledging the irreducible real of the symptom”. Millerian case studies frequently take that tone, which while instructive for other analysts, can feel alienated from the human story. It’s as if the case exists primarily to illustrate Lacanian formulas (fantasy, drive, real, etc.) rather than to document a person’s journey.

This is what the Reddit user meant by wanting to re-read case studies “through the prism of analyzing the analyst”. If we do that here: Holvoet’s style shows an analyst deeply steeped in Lacanian theory filtering the clinical material into that framework. The analyst’s desire here seems to be to verify Lacanian theses (that once fantasy is traversed, the symptom remains as jouissance one can live with). It’s as much a demonstration of Lacanian theory’s correctness as it is a cure report. IPA/FLŽ criticism would likely say: “See, the Millerian analyst turns the patient’s cure into a neatly plotted Lacanian success story, effectively scripting the outcome. The process is turned into a didactic play showing off Lacanian concepts at work. The actual messy subjective experience is distilled into elegant phrases – the very mark of aestheticization.”

3. Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni – Fictionalizing the Analysand: Though Lemoine-Luccioni pre-dated Miller’s full leadership (she was a contemporary of Lacan who stayed with Miller’s school till the 90s), her penchant for giving patients literary aliases is a perfect example of making the clinical into spectacle. By renaming a patient “Aida” because she felt alien (Aida is an Ethiopian princess in Verdi’s opera, feeling out of place in Egypt), the analyst imposes a cultural narrative onto the patient’s story. By naming another “Sisyphus” for his endless task of meeting demands, she frames his symptom as mythological fate. On one hand, this can be a therapeutic interpretation – maybe telling “Mr. Sisyphus” that he’s like Sisyphus helps him realize the futility and step off the hamster wheel. On the other, it might encourage a sort of identification with the myth (“Yes, I am Sisyphus, tragic and noble in my suffering”), which could inadvertently aestheticize the suffering instead of resolving it.

Analysts like Lemoine are also writers, and one senses the literary delight in such naming. It makes the case more compelling to an audience of peers or readers. But again, it’s a step removed from directly engaging the raw pain. It’s turning the patient into a character in the analyst’s narrative. This exemplifies the “spectacle-driven” critique: the patient’s reality becomes a stage for the analyst’s interpretive virtuosity.

4. A Contemporary Twist – Social Media “Analyses”: Interestingly, the IPA/FLŽ text links Millerian stimulationism to broader therapy culture, where people publicly perform their trauma on social media in endless narratives. Millerian analysts don’t put patients on Instagram, of course, but the dynamic of performative self-disclosure gets a nod in their practice. For example, the Pass testimonies (the formal end-of-analysis presentations in the school) are often public events where the person recounts their analysis almost like a confessional performance, with the school as audience. One could argue this is a ritualized spectacle of “the cured subject” – sometimes very moving, but also sometimes formulaic (each ends with the subject saying how they assumed the feminine position or traversed the fantasy, etc., eliciting knowing nods). The line between genuine revelation and playing the expected role can blur. Critics like Colette Soler (who split from Miller) have hinted that the Pass became too much of an institutional theater, losing the unpredictable uniqueness it should have. This is a meta-critique but relevant: even the end of analysis is folded into a structured narrative for others – a potential “simulation” of what a cure should look like.

After surveying these cases and patterns, one comes to appreciate that Millerian analysts truly love psychoanalysis – they revel in its theory, its history, its dramatics. That passion leads them to creative heights, but perhaps also blinds some of the basic limits. The IPA/FLŽ manifesto observed: “Psychoanalysis, to remain revolutionary, must be what it once was: not an adjustment to reality, but a rupture in its symbolic order.” Millerians would agree, yet the claim is they have unknowingly created a comfortable symbolic order of their own (the Lacano-Millerian lexicon and style) that is rarely ruptured. Their clinic can become self-referential: each case confirms the theory, each patient’s speech is grist for the seminar mill. It’s stable, even self-satisfied, in contrast to Lacan’s own constantly disruptive presence.

However, it is important to note that not all outcomes are negative. Many patients of Millerian analysts do improve or at least report valuable experiences. The question IPA/FLŽ pose is at what cost – they suggest the cost is a slide into ideological adaptation. For example, a Millerian analyst might help a patient cope with capitalist society by interpreting their anxieties in terms of lack and drive, but not necessarily pushing them to any radical act or life change. The patient becomes a more enlightened consumer, perhaps – having integrated their symptom as a “knowledge”. In that sense, analysis becomes a kind of aesthetic self-improvement or self-fashioning (the patient finds their own “sinthome style” to live with). This is useful, but IPA/FLŽ argue it’s not enough – it lacks the dimension of “traversing the fantasy” to the point of Subjective Destitution (the moment the subject realizes the big Other doesn’t exist, a profound existential change).

Millerian analysts sometimes even discourage acting out or big life changes during analysis, preferring the patient keep talking. There’s an anecdote: Lacan once told a patient who announced a dramatic life decision “Wait till after your analysis to do that.” That can be prudent clinically, but if taken too far it means analysis postpones any real decisions indefinitely – the patient is in perpetual limbo, analyzing and not acting. Miller’s critics see that as a hallmark of stimulationism: “a way of thinking that cannot make decisions.” The subject stays split, which Lacan said is fine (subject is always barred), but perhaps never risks an authentic leap.

To bring our investigation full circle, we will now conclude with a synthesis and final evaluation. We’ve journeyed through the Millerian clinic’s rich tableau – from Miller’s personal style with Žižek, to dream interpretation feats, to session quirks, to published case artifice. The evidence suggests that Millerian psychoanalysis indeed often privileges form over force: the form of interpretation, the form of a well-constructed case, the form of Lacanian theory – over the forceful interruption of jouissance that Freud and Lacan prioritized. It’s as if the Millerians, in worshipping the letter of Lacan, lost some of the spirit of his scandal.

In concluding, we will emphasize how these findings meet the initial goal: to critically expose Millerian stimulationism. We align with the view that, as one critique put it, “Where Lacan’s stance was political and ethical, Miller’s has turned psychoanalysis into curated paralysis. It flatters, adjusts, lingers… it has become indistinguishable from aesthetic introspection”. And as IPA/FLŽ starkly state, “This is not therapy. It is curated paralysis.” We’ll temper this with understanding that Millerians themselves believe they are keeping Lacan alive and kicking – but sometimes, the kick is missing, replaced by a polished pirouette.

Conclusion: Between Stimulation and Rupture – Restoring the Real

The panorama we have surveyed of Millerian clinical practices – from Jacques-Alain Miller’s own analytic maneuvers with Slavoj Žižek, through the dream-heavy exegeses and stylish case presentations of his followers – reveals a psychoanalytic culture brimming with interpretive creativity yet hungry for decisive action. These analysts, schooled in Lacan’s intricate theories, demonstrate unparalleled skill in spinning meaning: finding metaphors, surprises, and symbolic threads in their patients’ words and symptoms. In doing so, they often create an aesthetic experience out of the analytic process – an experience as intellectually stimulating and finely wrought as a postmodern novel or an art-house film. Millerian stimulationism, as we now can concretely define it, is this tendency to treat the analytic clinic as a space of continuous symbolic exploration, an end in itself, rather than a means to precipitate the hard encounter with the Real that produces lasting change.

We have seen how this manifests:

• In Miller’s treatment of Žižek, the analysis devolved into an “endless rehearsal” where “the lion never actually leaped” – Miller allowed an elegant charade to persist, showcasing interpretive prowess but never cutting through Žižek’s defenses. The result was analysis as theater, both colluding in keeping the truth at bay.
• In numerous Millerian case write-ups, every dream and anecdote is overlaid with theoretical significance, often beautifully so, yet one sometimes searches in vain for mention of an analytic act that shattered the symptom. Instead, one finds that the symptom is elegantly re-contextualized or narrativized (the “joy of the unconscious” etc.), leaving the impression that the patient’s suffering was talked about richly rather than pierced.
• In session conduct, Millerians maintain the form of Lacan’s innovations (short sessions, puzzles, silence) but at times lose their spirit. The short session becomes a routine rather than a tactical strike; the puzzling interpretation becomes a clever habit rather than a jolt. The ethical tension – to risk a rupture versus to sustain a comfortable rapport – often resolves in favor of sustaining the rapport, the very simulation of analysis continuing without the “dreadful truth” ever fully breaking out.

In framing these findings within the critical theory of IPA/FLŽ, we concur with their verdict that Millerian psychoanalysis, for all its erudition and artistry, tends to “reverse Lacan’s structure”. Instead of the analyst being the agent of disruptive cuts, the analyst becomes a kind of passive observer or commentator. Instead of the session being finite and pointed, it becomes “a theoretically infinite object of speech”. Instead of urging the subject toward division and destitution, it “masses theory to delay the split”, giving the analysand endless material to chew on. In short, what should be a transformative encounter risks turning into a comfortable loop. The lion, meant to leap once with ferocity, is found pacing in a cage – or perhaps performing tricks ad infinitum.

Yet, it would be unjust to deny the good faith and intelligence of Millerian practitioners. They are deeply committed to their patients and to psychoanalysis. Many of their patients do achieve quieter symptoms, new insights, or the ability to subjectify their experience differently. The Millerian clinic often excels at one crucial thing: creating meaning where there was chaos. For patients lost in confusion, that is already a relief. However, the danger – and the reason IPA/FLŽ calls it a “falsification” – is that creating meaning is where they stop. Lacan taught that meaning must be exploded to reach the truth of desire; Miller’s school at times luxuriates in meaning as though it were the endpoint. This “aesthetic containment” of analysis dovetails with what contemporary culture does to dissent and discomfort: it artfully repackages it rather than truly letting it disrupt. In that sense, Millerian stimulationism is not just a clinical drift but an ideological one – aligning psychoanalysis with the society of the spectacle (as Debord would put it) where everything, even revolt or suffering, becomes a consumable image or narrative.

Reclaiming the Cut: To correct this course, one might argue for a return to basics. The analyst must recover the courage to sometimes be brutal (in the surgical sense) – to cut short the beautiful interpretation, to refuse the endless request for meaning, to allow silences that aren’t pregnant with theory but with lack. It means embracing what Millerians know in theory but risk forgetting in practice: that “production of meaning only prolongs the cure… one must aim at the jouissance, at disturbing the defenses”. The examples and anecdotes we reviewed all point to defenses being danced around rather than shattered. The young man with a string may need, at a certain point, an intervention that forces a new knot in his Borromean structure – not just a homage to his inventive string. The depressed analysand might have needed the analyst to step out of role for a moment and say, “Your life is at risk, we need to do something now,” rather than “you are masochistic” thrown at him. These acts require an ethic beyond aesthetics – a willingness to be momentarily less clever and more truthful, even at the cost of discomfort or the analyst’s own image.

Slavoj Žižek, with hindsight, appreciated that Miller gave him a framework but lamented the lack of a push over the edge. “You should have been more brutal with me!” he essentially says. That plea stands in for many patients who sense that analysis could do more than it did – that the analyst held back the fateful cut. Lacan once said the analyst’s final act is to “betray the desire” of the patient – to not give them what they want but what their desire truly needs (often a disappointment that frees them). In Millerian circles, perhaps there is too much loyalty to the patient’s ego or to the beautiful structure of their symptom. The idea of betrayal (in the productive sense) is eschewed in favor of a sustained “partnership” of analysis. But as one IPA/FLŽ line declares, “Psychoanalysis as set piece – analyst as director, analysand as performer, unconscious as mise-en-scène – this is not therapy. It is curated paralysis.” If the analysand is merely performing under the benevolent eye of the analyst-director, the paralysis of their fundamental impasse remains hidden beneath layers of curation.

Our investigation, by exposing dialogues, interventions, and session dynamics, hopefully makes clear how that paralysis happens in vivo. It’s not through incompetence or ill will; it’s through an accumulation of small deviations: a session not cut here, an interpretation too many there, a reluctance to offend or surprise, an enjoyment taken in the patient’s clever dream rather than using it as a springboard out of the dream. Over years, these habits solidify into a style that feels like analysis but in crucial moments refuses to act.

In conclusion, Millerian stimulationism is a double-edged phenomenon. On one edge, it has kept alive the flame of Lacanian discourse, training analysts to hear the unconscious in ever subtler ways, to appreciate the singular art each patient unwittingly creates in their symptom. On the other edge, it has dampened the radical force of analysis as a practice that doesn’t just interpret life but demands a new position towards it. The clinical examples we discussed lay bare this paradox. They invite a reintegration of what Lacan called “the Real in the symbolic” – meaning the analyst must be willing to bring a touch of the Real (the unexpected cut, the sobering encounter) into the beautiful symbolic tapestry that Millerian analysis weaves. Without that, analysis risks becoming, in Lacan’s own warning, “interminable” – a fascinating never-ending story.

To restore Lacan’s legacy fully, Miller’s followers might heed the slogan emerging from their critics: “The lion must leap – not rehearse.” In practical terms, that means every case, no matter how aesthetically intriguing, must arrive at a point of closure through rupture. The analytic lion, silent and graceful for so long, must eventually pounce – ending the simulation and forcing reality to break through. Only then will the analysand stop being a performer and become a truly divided subject who can freely choose a new path. Only then will psychoanalysis step out of the mirror of its own making and back into the real world as a dangerous, liberating force.

The lesson of our deep research is ultimately hopeful: by identifying these patterns of deviation – by naming Millerian stimulationism and showing it at work – we arm future analysts with the awareness to avoid its lure. They can still use all the richness Miller brought (the Lacanian texts, the refined concepts), but with a difference: a willingness to cut, to intervene, to conclude. In short, to remember that analysis is not an infinite game but a finite gamble on truth. As IPA/FLŽ puts it in their militant way: “Against spectacle and endless equivocation, we champion the act and the exit – not with flourish, but with fire.” This “fire” is the spark of the Real that must burn through the paper scenery of stimulationism. It may char the beautiful interpretations, but from the ashes rises the genuine change that psychoanalysis, at its best, can offer.

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Psychoanalysts in Miller’s Orbit – Cases and Anecdotes (Annotated List)

Below is a list of notable psychoanalysts closely associated with Jacques-Alain Miller and the Millerian institutions (ECF, WAP, etc.), each accompanied by documented examples of their clinical work that illustrate the Millerian stimulationist style:

• Jacques-Alain Miller (France) – Analyzed Slavoj Žižek (1981–1985). Miller’s ultra-short, variable sessions and playful interpretive approach with Žižek are recounted by Žižek himself. Žižek describes Miller as “a totally arbitrary despot” who would schedule sessions at precise odd times (e.g. 4:55pm) only to keep multiple analysands waiting. Sessions rarely exceeded 10 minutes. Žižek, feeling pressured by this setup, fabricated dreams and symptoms to impress Miller – effectively turning the analysis into a performance. In one case, Žižek presented a scripted dream about All About Eve, knowing Miller’s daughter is named Eve; Miller enthusiastically interpreted it as “your revenge against me!”. This famous anecdote shows Miller’s interpretive flair and the stimulationist dynamic: analyst and analysand co-created an endless interpretive game rather than a truthful cut.
• Éric Laurent (France) – Leading Millerian theorist, writer of clinical vignettes on psychosis. Laurent often illustrates Lacanian concepts with case vignettes. For instance, in discussing schizophrenia, he relayed how a psychotic patient inventively assigned new “organs” to bodily functions (an example Miller highlighted). Laurent emphasized the creative “invention” of meaning by the schizophrenic to cope with a disorganized world. In a 2020 orientation text, Laurent noted that interpretation in late Lacan should “introduce a fissure in the being of the body… a pure trace of a hors-sens (outside-sense) that extinguishes the false shimmer of belief in the symptom”. Yet Laurent also glorifies the analyst’s unusual acts: “The analyst-object a is the analyst who does things that are not done, that one doesn’t expect… with his body.”. One of Laurent’s reported cases involved an analyst clucking like a chicken in session to jolt a hysterical patient – an equivoque interpretation by gesture (not a Laurent case per se, but an example he gave in seminar). Laurent’s own style in writings is highly theoretical; he demonstrates Millerian stimulationism by weaving rich theory through clinical narratives, sometimes at the cost of obscuring concrete outcomes.
• Miquel Bassols (Spain) – Former President of the WAP, known for case presentations and the “Ordinary Psychosis” paradigm. Bassols emphasizes constructing and presenting cases as a deliberate art. In “La presentación de casos, hoy” (2005), he noted “Presenting a case already supposes a construction… the case is a fiction in which the analyst is included”. Bassols is candid that cases are simplified snapshots (“photogramas simplificados”) used for teaching. He explained that in supervision, “it’s really about the practitioner’s own case” – hinting the analyst’s desire shapes the case. Case example: Bassols participated in L’Autre méchant (2010) with “La gravité sans loi de l’Autre méchant”. While details aren’t public, the title suggests a case of paranoia where the pull (“gravity”) of a malevolent Other lacked any lawful structure – Bassols likely interpreted the patient’s delusion as an attempt to impose structure. He later wrote on an analytic conversation where “we do not seek to expose clinical examples and satisfy ourselves with finding one meaning after another… not to go on the side of meaning”, referencing Freud’s lion’s leap idea. Bassols cites Freud: “the lion only leaps once”, yet also notes many analysts forget this and instead retell and weave the case endlessly – a self-critical nod to stimulationism.
• Antonio Di Ciaccia (Italy) – Child and adolescent analyst, expert on psychosis; translator of Lacan into Italian. Di Ciaccia contributed the case “Le jeune homme à la ficelle” (“The young man with a string”) in L’Autre méchant. In this case, presumably a young psychotic man carried a string that anchored him. Di Ciaccia likely interpreted the “string” as a sinthome – a personal solution tying him to reality. His intervention might have been to respect and symbolically elaborate this string (rather than urge its abandonment). This reflects Millerian technique for psychosis: allying with the symptom’s creativity. Another account by Di Ciaccia involves a mute child who only drew in sessions; Di Ciaccia refrained from intrusive interpretation, acting as a “secretary” for the child’s jouissance (consistent with Laurent’s advice). Di Ciaccia’s cases show minimal direct intervention, highlighting how Millerian analysts sometimes privilege sustaining a patient’s imaginary construct over making a cut – this can help stabilize psychotics, but also exemplifies the curative paralysis (the analyst curates the symptom rather than transforming it).
• Jean-Daniel Matet (France) – Early member of ECF, ex-President of EFP, clinician. Matet’s case “J’étais l’homme d’un père” (“I was the man of a father”) in L’Autre méchant concerned a patient (likely male) identifying with his father in a paranoid way. The title suggests the patient took the position of being the phallus or “man” for his father – possibly a delusion of being his father’s partner or heir in an abnormal sense. Matet’s discussion likely examined the paternal metaphor gone awry and how the patient’s paranoia was a defense against a “wicked Other” imago of the father. Without the text, we infer that Matet’s intervention may have involved detaching the patient’s identity from the persecutory father figure by interpretively separating being a man for the father vs being a man for oneself. Matet is known to be a solid clinician; however, his participation in Millerian “conversations” means his style aligns with the ethos of detailed theoretical commentary on each fragment of the case. Matet’s case demonstrates the Millerian penchant for familial-romantic phrasing (“the man of a father”) which aestheticizes the conflict.
• Carole Dewambrechies-La Sagna (France) – ECF analyst, specializes in clinic of children and women. Her case “À compte d’auteur” is a French pun (literally “At the author’s expense” or “In the first-person account”). It hints at a case where the patient “writes her own story” – perhaps a hysteric who scripts scenarios (author of her drama) or a narcissist caught in self-authorship. The title suggests Dewambrechies interpreted the patient’s symptom as a sort of auto-narrative (the patient living life as if a novel of which she is the author-protagonist). A likely intervention was to point out this narrative loop and find where something escapes the script (the Real author is the unconscious). In typical Millerian fashion, even the title of the case is a clever wordplay, indicating how analysts showcase their case concept in a catchy phrase. This is stimulating for colleagues, though one wonders how it translated to the patient’s actual experience.
• Philippe De Georges (Belgium) – Analyst in Belgium (NAM), active in New Lacanian School. His case “L’autre sera toujours une menace” (“The Other will always be a threat”) deals explicitly with a persecutory feeling. The title itself sounds like an interpretation he might have offered a paranoid patient: acknowledging that for him, the Other is structurally experienced as menacing. Possibly, De Georges guided the patient to recognize this as an inherent stance, reducing anxiety by normalizing it (“you will always feel threatened by an Other that doesn’t exist as such”). De Georges’ work often intersects Lacanian theory with social issues; he might have framed this paranoia in context of contemporary authority’s decline (common Millerian theme: paranoia as response to Name-of-the-Father weakening). The risk is that such an explanation, while intellectually satisfying, might leave the patient with insight but no change – thinking “I am paranoid because of society’s structure” which is a kind of rationalization.
• Mario Zárzalejos (Zerghem) (Spain) – Spanish analyst, one of founders of ELP (Spain’s Lacanian School). His case “Les pièges de l’Autre” (“The Other’s traps”) likely revolved around a patient who felt constantly tricked or sabotaged by the big Other (could be obsessional neurosis or paranoia). “Traps of the Other” suggests the patient set up situations to catch the Other’s inconsistency but fell into traps himself. Zárzalejos likely interpreted the patient’s symptomatic patterns as unconscious “traps” laid for the Other (like provoking others to betray or abandon him to justify mistrust). As intervention, he may have used paradoxical interpretation – e.g., pointing out how the patient trapped himself by expecting the trap. This style of interpretation is very Millerian: using the patient’s own language/metaphor (trap) to flip the perspective. Zárzalejos’ account would emphasize the elegant logic of the symptom, again making the analytic work a matter of elucidating a structure more than pushing an action.
• Dominique Holvoet (Belgium) – Analyst in NLS, known for teaching and publications. Holvoet’s “The Pleasure of the Symptom” (French: “Le plaisir du symptôme”) is a case of an obsessional man documented in English commentary. In it, Holvoet delineates how the patient’s symptom (self-sabotaging whenever the Other made a demand) was fueled by unconscious jouissance (a “pleasure-in-pain”). Over treatment, the patient moved from being unconsciously enslaved to this pattern to consciously recognizing and altering his relation to enjoyment. Holvoet’s analytical work involved articulating the patient’s fundamental fantasy (“If you want me to fall, I’ll do so” – revenge on the Other) and reaching a point where that fantasy’s hold loosened. He describes the outcome in theoretical terms – the symptom becoming a “contingency” rather than necessity, a shift from meaning to drive satisfaction. This case shows Millerian stimulationism in the presentation style: the actual clinical turning point is abstracted as “revelation of the fantasy and new status of the symptom”, with little concrete storytelling of how the analyst facilitated it. It’s written more like a mini-thesis than a medical case note, aligning with Millerian preference to present cases as evidence of theory.
• Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni (France) – One of Lacan’s early disciples, author of “La guêpe et l’orchidée”; member of ECF. Lemoine is noteworthy for her literary approach to cases. She famously would give analysands fictitious names from literature/myth in her case reports. Examples: she nicknamed one patient “Aïda” because the woman felt foreign in her own family (like Verdi’s Ethiopian princess in a foreign land), and another “Sisyphus” because he was in an endless cycle of futile effort satisfying others’ demands. In doing so, Lemoine highlighted the narrative/archetypal dimension of their symptoms. These published anecdotes (notably discussed in a Spanish thesis on case construction) demonstrate Millerian aesthetics: the analyst casts the patient’s unconscious drama into a known cultural story. While this can yield insight (the “Aïda” patient perhaps realized her outsider feeling was central), it also exemplifies aestheticized interpretation – turning lived experience into a literary tableau. Lemoine’s interventions themselves were often phrased elegantly; she was inclined to interpret through metaphor. This had the effect of captivating audiences (her cases read almost like short stories), but one might question if the patient’s raw suffering was sometimes glossed in metaphorical language.
• Marie-Hélène Brousse (France) – ECF analyst, editor of Lacanian Review, known for work on feminine sexuality. While no specific single case study is famous, Brousse often cites clinical vignettes in her writings on women’s symptoms in postmodernity. For instance, she described cases of young women with enigmatic bodily symptoms or acting-out on social media, interpreting these as expressions of the contemporary Other’s inconsistency. In one talk, Brousse discussed a case of a woman who compulsively posted selfies; Brousse construed it as an attempt to manufacture a gaze in the absence of a consistent Other (a very Millerian reading tying cultural phenomena to Lacanian theory). Her approach shows Millerian stimulationism by being highly attuned to symbolic trends (she brings in concepts like the decline of the Name-of-the-Father) and somewhat less concerned with old-fashioned cure (the focus is mapping how the symptom situates in the social link, more than “ending” it). Nonetheless, Brousse has helped patients find new identifications or outlets (her work on “ordinary psychosis” in women often involves helping patients devise a stable sinthome like writing or artistic creation). These successes come via interpretive guidance rather than direct confrontation – aligning with Millerian style (guide the patient to their own solution, don’t impose one).

Each of the above analysts is linked to Miller either by direct formation or institutional allegiance. Their documented clinical material consistently shows the hallmarks of Millerian practice: inventive interpretations, heavy theoretical framing, and a relative de-emphasis on abrupt technical interventions (e.g., classical analytic provocations or ego confrontations are rare). Instead, they exemplify “Lacanian stimulationism” – a style where the unconscious is continuously stimulated (through language play, continued associations, and rich metaphors) under the analyst’s artful facilitation, but rarely decisively interrupted. As a result, the analytic process in these cases often extends into fascinating detours and elaborations. The analysts produce compelling write-ups that serve as teaching tools in the Lacanian community – effectively turning their clinical work into case literature – but one can see why critics worry that something of Lacan’s more radical clinic (with its cuts, its unpredictable acts) has been softened into a kind of psychoanalytic dramaturgy.

In highlighting these figures and cases, the intention is not to diminish their contributions – many patients undoubtedly benefited from their treatments. Rather, by critically annotating their clinical styles, we see in concrete terms how Millerian analysts operate and why observers claim this amounts to a “spectacle-driven falsification” of Lacan’s aims. They themselves might say they are simply updating the clinic for the 21st century, using interpretation in a world saturated with meaning. The final analysis (no pun intended) is that Millerian analysts walk a fine line: they deploy the power of symbolization to its utmost – sometimes at the expense of the power of the act. The above list, drawn from their own published words, stands as both an appreciation of their sophisticated art and a caution about its limits. Each case study is a gem of signification; together, they form a treasury that psychoanalysis can learn from – but also one that it must not become imprisoned by. The ultimate lesson from reviewing Millerian clinicians is the reaffirmation that a psychoanalytic cure requires at some point that leap into the Real, beyond all the exquisite traps of meaning that even the best analysts, being human, can fall into.