ABSTRACT
Acting out, mad jouissance, nonsensical claims, uncanny repetition, and seemingly incessant demand don’t always “civilise” themselves by way of the transference and in some clinical cases, time seems to stand still. Taking a look at the developments in Lacan’s Seminar IV can help us think about such patients to make more useful clinical interventions, making cuts into the “jouissance standoff” that one often finds in such cases. The Relation to the Object (Seminar IV) is the seminar that will allow us to also understand why this metaphoric grounding is more difficult for some patients and perhaps even hypothesise why the “borderline” is most often featured on the American clinical menu as a national speciality.
