Psychoanalytically oriented psychologist
Haktan Tay
What lies behind discourse?
To listen to the subject is to find them in speech.
Analytic listening
What are you saying?
What do I hear.
About
Speech brings
the subject into being.
I am a psychoanalytically oriented psychologist and researcher. At the centre of my work are the concepts of the subject, discourse and desire. I follow how these three concepts are interwoven within Jacques Lacan’s theoretical framework, both in my clinical practice and in my academic writing.
I graduated in psychology from Yalova University and completed psychoanalytically oriented clinical internships in several institutions, alongside different clinicians. I follow Lacanian practice both in Turkey and internationally.
“L’inconscient est structuré comme un langage.”
— Jacques Lacan, ÉcritsÇekiçle Felsefe is the journal I edit as editor-in-chief; I also write on psychoanalysis for several publications. I continue to present my work on psychoanalysis at national and international conferences.
“Toute parole appelle réponse.”
— Jacques Lacan, Écrits
Approach
Lacanian
Psychoanalysis
A session does not offer a solution — it opens a space. In speech, in silence and in the slippages of meaning, the subject follows the trace of their own desire. Analytic listening attends to what is said beyond what is said.
Borromean
Knot
At the foundation of Lacan’s theory lie three rings: the Real (Réel), the Symbolic (Symbolique) and the Imaginary (Imaginaire). Like a Borromean knot, they hold one another together — if one is cut, the others come undone.
Clinical practice listens for the breaks in these three dimensions. Accompanying the subject’s discourse, the analyst recognises what the symbolic order leaves out: the traces of the real.
What cannot be symbolised, the field before language. Trauma, recurring symptoms, overwhelming excitement — the Real seeps through the holes in the Symbolic. Clinical work explores how one can live with these leaks.
Language, law, the big Other. The subject is born into the symbolic order and keeps sliding along the chain of signifiers. Following this slippage, analysis of discourse brings the structure of the subject’s desire to light.
The mirror stage, the ego, recognition and misrecognition. The analytic relation is one of the rare places where a way out of the trap of the image becomes possible — a moment in which the subject can see themselves differently.
Process
How I work
We talk together about your expectations, your questions and your history. This session is for assessment and involves no commitment.
The frequency and length of sessions and the way we will work are agreed. The psychoanalytic frame creates a space in which the subject’s speech can unfold freely.
Through free association we discover the doors that open onto the unconscious. Every session is singular; what leads is not the analysand but speech itself.
Psychoanalysis aims not at instant solutions but at a lasting subjective transformation. A new position is found within discourse; the process takes time, but it leaves a mark.
Experience
Clinical &
Academic Path
Psychological testing, clinical interviewing, case formulation, psychopathological assessment.
Neurodevelopmental disorders, rehabilitation, neuropsychological testing.
Organisation of the commission’s activities and of professional development events.
Academic work
Publications
Scroll
Conferences &
Talks
Essays
Scroll
Reading
List
Journal
Çekiçle
Felsefe
A Turkish journal at the crossroads of philosophy, psychology, sociology, cinema, politics and literature. Its name means “Philosophising with a Hammer”: taking its cue from Nietzsche’s hammer, Çekiçle Felsefe aims to tear thought down and build it anew.
cekiclefelsefe.com“To philosophise is to undermine concepts and bring the assumptions within them to light.”
Le Stade du Miroir
Your reflection moves with you
but it is never quite you.
Try both sides of the line
Essay on the mirror stage →A story told in discourse
The Birth of the Subject
- 1 First, a point — a bodily being not yet fallen into language.
- 2 Language surrounds it — the signifier’s circle closes.
- 3 The bar falls — the subject is divided.
- 4 Here is $ — the speaking being, split by the unconscious.
Lacanian notation
Mathemes
To reduce the core of his theory to formulas, Lacan used algebraic mathemes. Those below form the skeleton of the clinic and of writing. Essay on the formulas of sexuation →
Le fantasme — the basic pattern of the relation between the divided subject and objet a.
A signifier represents the subject for another signifier. Meaning slides along the chain.
The big Other is not whole; it carries a lack within its own set of signifiers.
The object-cause of desire — a sliding void that can never be fully grasped.
The subject who has entered language, divided — living in the gap between what they say and what they mean.
The signifier of lack; what determines desire in the symbolic order — not an organ but a function.
Lacan · Seminar XVII
The Four Discourses
In his theory of the four discourses, Lacan rotates the same four mathemes — $, S1, S2, a — through four positions. Who is the agent, who the other, what is the truth, what is produced? Click to turn the wheel.
Essay on the four discourses →
The master signifier (S1) commands knowledge (S2); the subject ($) is hidden as truth, and what remains is objet a (surplus-jouissance). The discourse of history.
Lacan · Écrits
Le Graphe du Désir
“Subversion du sujet” — the schema developed in that text: the subject’s journey through discourse, how the signifying chain cuts it, and how $emerges. Hover over a node.
The “raw” subject, not yet fallen into language, not yet cut by the signifier. Lacan’s fictional starting point — not a real moment, but a position assumed retroactively.
Click a node · drag
Essay on the big Other and the graph of desire →Short glossary
Concepts
Short definitions of the Lacanian and Freudian concepts used across the site. Click to open.
L’inconscientUnconscious
For Lacan, the unconscious is structured like a language. It is not simply a storehouse of the repressed; it works in the cut between what is said and what cannot be said. Read the essay →
$Divided subject
The person who has entered language, divided. They live in the gap between what they say and what they mean; this is exactly where the unconscious speaks. Read the essay →
Le RéelThe Real
What cannot be symbolised or put into words. The place where trauma, anxiety and the repeating symptom seep through. Read the essay →
Le SymboliqueThe Symbolic
Language, law, the big Other. The order into which the subject is born and in which it takes its place in a chain of sliding meanings. Read the essay →
L’ImaginaireThe Imaginary
The mirror stage, the ego, recognition and misrecognition. The imaginary order: the illusory field in which the “I” appears. Read the essay →
Objet petit aObject of desire
The object-cause that sets desire in motion and can never be fully grasped. It turns around a lack. Read the essay →
Le DésirDesire
What remains between demand and need. It does not end with a satisfaction; it always moves towards the desire of the Other. Read the essay →
Le Grand Autre (A)The big Other
The cornerstone of language and law; the symbolic order that constitutes the subject as it speaks. Not a person but a place. Read the essay →
JouissanceEnjoyment beyond pleasure
A satisfaction that goes beyond the limit of pleasure and is interwoven with pain. In Lacan, the bond between the symptom and the subject. Read the essay →
Le Stade du MiroirThe mirror stage
The moment when a child between six and eighteen months recognises its image in the mirror as “I”. The ego is founded from the start on a misrecognition. Read the essay →
Le Nom-du-PèreThe Name-of-the-Father
The symbolic function that sets a limit to the mother’s desire; not a person, but the signifier that ties the subject to language and law. Read the essay →
Le PhallusPhallus
Not an organ but the signifier of lack and of desire. No one has it; everyone positions themselves in relation to it. Read the essay →
Le TransfertTransference
The love the analysand addresses to the knowledge they suppose the analyst to have; the engine of analysis. Read the essay →
Le SymptômeThe symptom
The disguised return of the repressed; both a message and a form of satisfaction. Read the essay →
Appointment
Ready to take
a first step?
The psychoanalytic journey begins with a question. I am here to find that question with you.
BeginContact
Let us begin
a conversation.
Write to me about psychoanalytic sessions, supervision or academic collaboration. The first session is free.