Does cure come as a by-product of psychoanalytic treatment? (2003)*

“Does cure come as a by-product of psychoanalytic treatment?” a well-known query, at least in French psychoanalytic circles, has often been attributed to Jacques Lacan. However, it was originally Freud’s (1923a): “The removal of the symptoms of the illness is not especially aimed at, but is achieved, as it were, as a by-product if the analysis is properly carried through” (p. 251). Only later was this theme brought to light by Lacan (1966, pp. 324–325). Lacan practically made an imperative out of it: the psychoanalyst must not interest himself in therapy, a position that has long influenced psychoanalysis in France.