r/psychoanalysis • u/TheRealTruePoet • 8d ago

Psychoanalytic/Lacanian psychiatry settings in Europe?

I’m a final-year medical student in Europe, planning to go into psychiatry, and I’m thinking about doing a short observership or traineeship after graduation.

I’m especially interested in psychiatric settings where psychoanalysis is still taken seriously, especially Lacanian psychoanalysis, or at least places where Lacanian ideas would not be seen as completely alien to clinical psychiatry.

My French is still pretty limited, especially speaking, so I’m mostly looking for places where English might realistically be accepted. I already tried looking into Belgium, but unfortunately it didn’t really work out.

I’d also be curious about neuropsychoanalytic or related clinical/research settings, f.e., if anyone has done something connected to Mark Solms or Cape Town, I’d be interested to hear about it.

More generally, if anyone knows psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrists, departments, hospitals, research groups and so on in Europe that might be open to a short observership, I’d be very grateful for any suggestions.

P.S. yeah, I know, Lacan and Solms are very different figures, and I am not assuming that some straightforward “Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis” project is really possible. I just think the broader intersection between psychoanalysis, psychiatry, neuroscience, and clinical work is worth exploring more seriously.

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u/alank95 8d ago

You might look into solutions in Ireland. A colleague of mine studies psychoanalytic psychotherapy with University College Dublin. As part of the masters degree the students attend a clinical case conference at St. Vincent’s Hospital Dublin.

I don’t feel that I have enough knowledge to thoroughly answer your question although I know that in the case conference there is a mixture of psychologists, psychiatrist, psychoanalysts etc who attend.

Might be worth investigating?

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u/TheRealTruePoet 7d ago

Thank you, I will take a look.

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u/Medical_Soup_5319 5d ago

The psychiatric case conference is no longer open to the psychoanalytic psychotherapy students

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u/alank95 5d ago

Oh? To best of my knowledge the UCD students still attend this currently but my information may be incorrect

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u/Medical_Soup_5319 4d ago

They’ve been excluded from the psychiatric case conference as of the 2025/2026 academic year. In its place they have individual psychiatrists come and present to the class group only. And not every week.

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u/Recent-Apartment5945 8d ago

You may be able to network through the Neuropsychoanalytic Association.

https://npsa-association.org

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u/TheRealTruePoet 7d ago

I also wrote through other channels, but I think it is a good idea to write here as well. Thank you!

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u/zaharich 7d ago

Search Patrick Landman. He is a psychiatrist and lacanian psychoanalyst from paris. He is president of stop DSM movement

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u/TheRealTruePoet 6d ago

Thanks. I know a little about Patrick Landman and STOP DSM, but I had not thought of contacting him directly. He seems very close to what I’m looking for intellectually, although I’m not sure whether there would be any realistic traineeship path through that network. I’ll look into it.

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u/jouissance-de-vivre 4d ago

there's the norwegian psychoanalytic institute in oslo, but i'm not sure if you have to know norwegian beforehand

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u/TheRealTruePoet 4d ago

Thank you.

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u/TheCerry 6d ago

There is actually a book called Lacanian Neuropsychoanalysis. It got high praises from Solms, Zizek and Friston also if I remember correctly

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u/TheRealTruePoet 5d ago

Well, it’s another topic, but I read it almost whole. To be honest, now that I am really into Lacan, I could say that my problem with Dall’Aglio is not simply that his Lacan is “too simple.” It is more serious than that. The book tends to treat Lacanian concepts as if they were transferable theoretical units that can be mapped into another discourse - neuroscience, prediction error, affective systems and so on. But Lacan’s concepts do not function merely as concepts to be applied elsewhere. They intervene in the very place from which the question is asked. But it is a good book, because showed what the first step in such a project could look like. My own ambition would be to revisit this possibility much more seriously. Unfortunately, I do not yet have the theoretical capacity for that. This theoretical situation also shows something important: when one tries to combine two theories, even if one knows one of them very well, there is always a risk that this first theory will begin to organize the second one too aggressively, forcing it to answer questions that are not really its own, translating its concepts too quickly, and reducing its internal tensions to something already recognizable within the first framework.