On the conceptual grounds of subjective rectification: Responsibility, choice, and freedom in Lacanian psychoanalysis

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the conceptual grounds on which subjective rectification and the interweaving of the therapeutic and epistemic demand rely, specifically the assumption that the subject is involved in their own suffering. This perspective presupposes a subject with a certain degree of freedom and choice. Drawing on Freud’s choice of neurosis, Lacan’s unsoundable decision of being and forced choice and Zupančič’s ideas on psychological freedom, we explore the kind of choice involved in psychoanalytic theory and how it can be understood in light of the psychic determination that is central to both Freud’s and Lacan’s work. We argue that the subject’s determination is self-chosen, albeit a forced choice. This allows the subject to take responsibility for what is experienced as a causal necessity. To illustrate this, we provide examples of childhood trauma and discuss how these children have taken responsibility for their position in what happened to them.