Between Angst and Repetition: What Does Not Deceive

Abstract

This paper sets out to develop the connection between two central concepts of the analytical experience: repetition and angst. Both have been extensively explored separately, but they have not been studied enough in their connection, which gives this investigation its unprecedented character. We shall start from the guidelines set out by Lacan in one of his Seminar classes titled "The four fundamental concepts of Psychoanalysis" (Lacan, 2012 [1964]). It is a response to a question from the audience referred to what does not deceive. The unavoidable reference to Kierkegaard fittingly anticipates the connection between the two concepts, which shall be explored from the perspective of the encounter between the subject and the reality of desire, the body and the iteration of suffering. We thus come to the conclusion that these two concepts function as indisputable compasses in the work of the analyst and their ethics.