The Freudian Cut

Abstract

The article discusses the concept of irreversibility in psychoanalysis. By examining some of the key stages in the development of the Freudian enterprise, it argues that there is a single question that psychoanalysis has been dealing with from the very beginning and that enables us to articulate the real core of its history. The question that progressively produced the disposition of psychoanalysis, i.e. the irreversible trajectory on which it has been situated ever since is the following: Is it possible to intervene into the irreversible?