ABSTRACT
Now we move on to explore the role of psychology as an ostensible alternative to psychiatry in the development of the Lacanian tradition, with a focus on the political limitations this places on progressive therapeutic work. I discuss the historical context for the development of the psy professions and the place of psychology today as an observational practice concerned with operationalised measurement of self-ef®cacy, a disciplinary approach that rests on conceptions of cognition abstracted from the subject. The relationship between psychological and psychoanalytic methodology is explored in clinical practice, and quite different conceptions of training and supervision, of psychologists and psychoanalysts, are described to draw out the problems that Lacanian psychoanalysts face when we are expected to adhere to an educational process de®ned by psychological assumptions.
