Psychoanalysis teaching and “dovinization”

Abstract

This article analyzes the teaching of psychoanalysis through two decisive moments in Jacques Lacan’s work: Psychoanalysis and Its Teaching (1957) and My Teaching, Its Nature and Its Ends (1968). Drawing on these texts, the paper examines how Lacan articulates both what psychoanalysis teaches and the conditions under which such teaching can be sustained. These formulations are situated within the contemporary context of psychoanalytic transmission, characterized by the proliferation of courses, training devices, and the growing visibility of psychoanalysts on social media, often guided by logics of consumption and exposure. Within this framework, the article proposes the neologism “dovinization” to name the process of theoretical sanitization that removes the negativity inherent to the experience of the unconscious, converting psychoanalytic knowledge into a cultural commodity. Finally, it argues that analytic formation cannot be reduced to technical training or the dissemination of content, but is grounded in style, understood as the singular residue of personal analysis, capable of preserving the subversive character of psychoanalysis.