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🌀⚔️💫 IPA/FLŽ 🌀⚔️💫

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

Welcome to the deep dive. Today, uh, forget skimming the surface — we’re going deep, really excavating the foundations of a movement that’s not just asking for a rethink but, well, a total upheaval of psychoanalysis. Yeah, that’s right, we’re plunging into the core ideas of IPA/FLŽ — that’s the International Psychoanalysis Association. Freudian, Lacanian, Žižekian.

And our mission here is to really grasp the revolutionary, you know, the militant heart of this organization. They see themselves as the true inheritors, the radicalizers of psychoanalysis’s most disruptive force.

Absolutely. And we’re not talking about like minor tweaks to therapy here — this is basically a declaration of war on psychoanalytic thinking that’s become stagnant, complacent. Right, IPA/FLŽ positions itself as the direct, intensified continuation of the earthquakes Freud started with the unconscious, Lacan with his structural revolution, and now, well, Žižek detonates it all further with his critique of ideology.

So it’s not just theory for them.

No, not at all. It’s psychoanalysis as a, uh, a battleground — a fight for the liberation of the psyche itself.

Okay, so let’s unpack that. Let’s get into the origins. How does IPA/FLŽ frame its own emergence in this, uh, pretty turbulent history?

Well, what’s really key is how they read that history — that lineage. They see Freud’s initial discoveries as inherently revolutionary, right? Exposing the unconscious, this chaotic force. Then Lacan comes along, further shattering paradigms with his linguistic insights. But — and this is crucial for them — they argue the International Psychoanalysis Association, the IPA, especially under Anna Freud, took a really wrong turn.

A wrong turn how?

In their view, the IPA’s focus on long treatments, cultivating this endless transference, strengthening the ego — it effectively neutered psychoanalysis, tamed it, stripped it of its radical power to disrupt the status quo.

So, okay, if Freud and Lacan lit the fuse, IPA/FLŽ sees the IPA as trying to put it out carefully.

Precisely. That’s a great way to put it. They see the IPA approach as building this kind of psychic safety net — you know, stopping the truly transformative, maybe even destabilizing, potential of the unconscious from really breaking through.

So IPA/FLŽ’s ambition, their whole drive, is to reignite that original fire — to forge what they explicitly call a psychoanalytic field of struggle.

A field of struggle?

Yes, and that requires this potent mix — Freud’s mapping of the unconscious, Lacan’s focus on language and desire structure, and Žižek’s relentless lens on ideology all working together. It’s militant.

Okay, now there’s a specific text that seems really important for them — Freud’s “Analysis Terminable and Interminable.” That title itself sounds like a contradiction. How do they approach it?

Yeah, this is a major point of contention, a real fault line. Freud himself — well, he asked that uncomfortable question: Does analysis ever really end? He acknowledged cases with satisfactory conclusions — he did say that — but he also wrestled with the idea of it being interminable, driven by transference, by the ego’s defenses. And over time, the IPA interpretation has leaned heavily towards analysis being potentially endless, maybe lifelong.

But IPA/FLŽ reads that completely differently?

Completely. They seize on Freud mentioning satisfactory conclusions. They point to his own cases, like the Wolfman case — radical shifts in a relatively short time. For them, this is proof analysis can hit a decisive rupture moment.

Oh, rupture moment.

Yes. They champion brief but really intense interventions designed specifically to trigger that breakthrough. And they don’t stop there. They argue this individual psychic rupture can spark wider change — personal and even collective transformation.

Wow.

Oh, it connects to that Žižek interpretation of Freud — the lion only leaps once.

Okay, that’s a stark contrast to the image we often have — you know, years and years on the couch. Let’s dig into their view of the ego. They talk about moving from ego dominance to unconscious liberation. What’s the core idea there?

So they start with Freud’s own drive theory — Eros, Thanatos — that fundamental tension: life drive, death drive. IPA/FLŽ argues, quite fiercely actually, that the IPA got fixated on managing this conflict by bolstering the ego. And in doing so, they argue, it suppressed the unconscious’s disruptive — and for them revolutionary — potential.

And Freud’s focus on strengthening defenses — that’s a prime target for their critique.

So they see strengthening the ego not as helpful but as a kind of imprisonment — locking away the force that could break things open.

Exactly. That’s precisely it. They align themselves much more with Lacan’s understanding of the desire of the Other. The unconscious isn’t just a box of repressed stuff — it’s a dynamic force that can reshape our whole symbolic reality.

And Žižek adds another layer, right?

Žižek brings in the crucial dimension of the unconscious as a lens to decode ideology itself — moving beyond just personal symptoms to see the societal, the political reflected there.

So the goal isn’t just individual adjustment?

No. For IPA/FLŽ, that’s just adapting people to a broken system. The goal is to expose the fundamental, often traumatic core that underpins our whole symbolic world. Their slogan is powerful: “Against the terror of the ego, we affirm the creative chaos of the unconscious.”

That stance, that intensity — it directly feeds into their push for short-term therapy, which they claim has revolutionary effect. This isn’t just about efficiency, is it?

No, definitely not about saving time. Their support for short, intense, rupture-focused therapy comes straight from their reading of Freud and Lacan’s own practices. Think about Lacan cutting sessions short, right? That was always controversial.

And the reason, as they see it, is to stop the analysis getting lost in endless stories, endless justifications — to force a confrontation, a direct encounter with the core issue, the subjective truth.

And they bring back that image — the lion only leaps once.

Yes. Žižek’s take on that Freud quote is central to their militant stance — a single powerful act. They insist this kind of short therapy is the opposite of superficial fast food analysis. They argue it’s a necessary shock to break people out of these entrenched, um, depressive comfort zones, to create the space for real radical transformation.

It’s all about that focused, singular intervention detonating change.

This focus on individual rupture then scales up, doesn’t it — to society. How do they see bringing the unconscious into society? What does that look like?

This is where their vision gets truly expansive — really revolutionary. They argue that the tools Freud gave us — analyzing dreams, slips of the tongue, repression — these aren’t just for individuals. They apply to society itself. They reveal society’s symptoms, its underlying structures.

They use Lacan’s ideas — the symbolic order, the Real — to show how our collective social reality is often built on fantasy, on fantasmatic structures.

And Žižek’s method of reading against the grain becomes essential here — to dismantle ideology, to uncover the political unconscious.

So it’s not just politics or economics causing problems — it’s collective psychological symptoms needing analysis?

Exactly. Yeah. For IPA/FLŽ, if psychoanalysis just becomes about adjusting individuals, it actually helps prop up the very power structures causing the suffering.

Right. Real liberation of the unconscious for them means exposing social contradictions. Genuine freedom requires a radical break — a rupture both in the individual and against the ideologies that bind us collectively. The personal and political are totally intertwined.

It’s clear they have some very strong feelings about how psychoanalysis developed. Their critique of mainstream psychoanalytic traditions section sounds pretty intense.

Intense is putting it mildly. Their verdict on controversial discussions — yeah, those meetings in the British Psychoanalytical Society in the 40s — it’s a scathing attack. They call it a counterrevolutionary operation.

It’s counterrevolutionary?

Yeah. They argue it diluted Freud’s radical legacy by trying to blend it with British ideology, all under the banner of pluralism. They see it as a total betrayal — a shift to a politics of adaptation, focusing on ego regulation instead of confronting the raw conflict in the unconscious.

And the schools that came out of that period — Klein, Anna Freud, the Independents — they don’t get a pass either.

Not at all. They condemn them as coalitions of compromise, fundamentally distorting Freud’s radical ideas. They even see the way psychoanalysis split into different training paths as a deliberate, systematic repression machine — designed, they say, to neutralize Freud’s revolutionary edge.

So what’s the alternative they propose?

Their call is for a return to Freud — but a Freud read through the rupturing lens of Lacan and the politicizing force of Žižek. It’s about reclaiming that original radicality.

Okay. They also take aim at something they call aesthetic totalitarianism. What part of modern culture is bothering them here?

Right, here they shift focus to contemporary culture — specifically the dominance of the image, of algorithms in our digital lives. They argue this creates a kind of suffocating maternal perversion.

Maternal perversion?

Yeah, it’s a provocative term. They mean it eliminates symbolic lack, eliminates desire — which, you know, in Lacan is fundamental for becoming a subject.

They use another striking phrase — maternal superego of the algorithm.

What’s that getting at?

Well, think about the constant pressure online — surveillance, self-optimization. They see this as a new kind of control — a superego whispering, “Enjoy, be perfect, you must lack nothing.”

Uh-huh.

But paradoxically, they argue, this command abolishes desire — because desire needs lack. They also hit hard on the fetishization of the image — the curated online self replacing messy, real subjectivity.

So what’s the solution?

They call for a forceful return of symbolic lack, and bringing back the function of the father — not patriarchal authority, they’re clear on that — but the Name-of-the-Father, the law that creates limits, introduces the cut, and allows genuine subjectivization.

Their critique doesn’t stop there. Jungianism also comes under heavy fire.

Oh, absolutely. They don’t hold back at all. Yeah. They label Jung’s legacy ethically flawed — pointing to patient abuse and ideologically compromised, citing his Nazi affinities and racist theories.

It’s a pretty damning assessment.

It is. They draw a sharp line — Jung’s mystical archetypal “truth” versus Lacan’s rigorous unconscious structured like a language. For IPA/FLŽ, Jungianism is just regression — clinically, politically, epistemologically. It mystifies the unconscious, avoids social critique — total reactionism in their book.

Moving to more recent figures, they also criticize Malarian Lacanianism — Jacques-Alain Miller’s school. What’s their issue there?

Their argument essentially is that Miller’s interpretation has become a kind of performance — a simulationist falsification, they call it. Prioritizing the aesthetics of the seminar over actual structural rupture — over engaging with the Real, that which resists symbolization in Lacan.

So it’s become more about the intellectual show than the transformative power?

That’s their critique, yes. They contrast Lacan’s emphasis on the cut in analysis — that sharp intervention — with what they see as Miller’s endless seminar aesthetics. They even worry about something called the Lacanianization of the maternal algorithm.

What does that mean?

It suggests Miller’s thought has somehow adapted to or even legitimizes the very collapse of the symbolic order they were just critiquing in culture. It’s a complex but very pointed criticism.

And their critical lens keeps going — Gabriel Tupinamba and the bureaucratization of the cut. What’s that about?

Yeah, they really go after Tupinamba and his collectives like STP. They see it as a pseudo-political technocratic deviation. Basically, they argue his approach replaces the analyst’s desire — which they see as crucial — with like managerial protocols, bureaucracy.

So his STP model is just Malarianism in a bureaucratic suit?

That’s how they frame it. Their big concern is that it leads to a kind of sterile theoretical logistics. It forgets the actual subject and offers what they dismissively call managerial therapy for the Left instead of genuine disruptive rupture. It’s seen as taming the revolutionary impulse again.

And finally there’s this critique of Blabberthing Society and Posture Boy. What intellectual trend are they attacking here?

It’s a pretty scathing takedown of a specific presentation on Lacan’s concept of desire. They basically dismiss it as intellectual distraction.

Distraction from what?

From the revolutionary core of psychoanalysis. They argue it misunderstands key Lacanian ideas — like Antigone’s desire, uses philosophical jargon as filler, fetishizes the image, superficially is dismissive of key thinkers — and ultimately just subordinates psychoanalysis to philosophy.

So intellectual posturing without real substance?

Exactly. For IPA/FLŽ, it’s avoiding the difficult, transformative work of real psychoanalytic engagement by hiding in abstraction.

Okay. All these critiques seem to build towards their own positive program — the strategy for combating mediatized syndromes. It sounds like they see modern media as a direct threat to the unconscious.

A profound and insidious threat, absolutely. They argue media isn’t just entertainment — it’s become a regulatory system that actively reshapes the unconscious itself. This leads to what they call mediatized syndromes.

How does that work?

They point to social media, movies, TV shows — arguing they operate together as a kind of pathogenic system, repressing real desire, aestheticizing symptoms, turning everything into a spectacle.

And they identify specific pathologies emerging from this?

Yes. Very specific things — the “gaze syndrome,” that constant feeling of being watched and judged online; the way trauma gets aestheticized, turned into consumable content, even symptom pornography — exploiting darker aspects of jouissance for clicks or views.

They argue the algorithmic superego we talked about replaces real lack with data-driven pleasure cycles — leading to what they call the dictatorship of the ego in the age of the simulacrum.

And they link this directly to rising psychiatric issues?

Directly. They argue this media environment contributes significantly to increases in depression, OCD, eating disorders, and these things they call “personality disorder performances,” where diagnoses become almost like identities to be performed.

Even propose something radical called “medical disclosure bans.”

Basically warning the health care system that media produces symptoms. And they advocate for a “visual diet” as a right of the unconscious — protection against this constant visual onslaught.

So what’s the strategy to fight back?

Clinical and ideological, both. Clinically, they call for a new alliance between psychoanalysis and psychiatry to address these new media-driven symptoms. Ideologically, they demand ethical scrutiny of media producers and constant exposure of these pathological representations in media.

Okay. The goal is to break the cycle — reclaim the unconscious from this mediatized control.

It’s absolutely clear then that IPA/FLŽ sees its mission as fundamentally revolutionary.

That’s the absolute core message. Yes. They hammer this home again and again. Liberating the unconscious is essential not just for individuals but for societal freedom too. And rupture, the cut — these aren’t just clinical terms — they’re the necessary actions for any real change, personal or social.

It’s definitely a powerful and, yeah, very provocative set of ideas we’ve unpacked today.

It really is. And maybe the best way to wrap up this deep dive is with that quote they keep returning to — Freud via Žižek: “The lion only leaps once.” But that single leap may change the world.