Anguish and its variations: what place in today's clinic?

Abstract

This article defines the concept of distress, which was central in Freud’s and Lacan’s theories, and which was defined as the affection that takes place as an irreductible sign of the real register. This is a central phenomenon of neurosis. Closely related to this affection, we can see the concepts of acting out and passage to the act, presented by Lacan in the 10th Seminary, which allow us to rethink the clinical presentations by way of act, also characteristic of our contemporary age. The study of these presentations becomes a clinical concern, but outlining their coordinates enables us to approach the effects that the decline of the essential speech of modernity have caused in contemporary people. As a result, changes at the symbolic level, characteristic of our contemporary age, appear and these have obvious effects on the persons that we meet in our clinical practice, that is, disorientated people that appear with the action as a letter presentation, far away from the typical symptom symbolization.