The knowledge construction in psychoanalysis: a study of Argentinian lacanian thesis

Abstract

This paper investigates the way in which citations appear in a number of theses written by Argentine Lacanian psychoanalysts. We are interested in describing not only the way citations are handled in the selected corpus but also the characteristics of this practice in relation to the psychoanalytic discourse, as the features of the latter do not always meet the requirements of universities as regards writing. Following the classification by Swales ([1990] 1993), we have developed more precise analytical categories that allowed the identification of some peculiarities of psychoanalysis. In the theses analysed, we found that interdisciplinarity, as well as integrated and textual quotations, are all prominent features. We also identified certain practices —unreferenced quotations, quotations with diffuse enunciative boundaries, and unrelated quotations— i.e., quotations not academically related to the study subject.