Mladen Dolar I The Master is Undead

It was during his one and only visit to Slovenia, at Easter 1898, that Freud by coincidence met Dr. Karl Lueger, the antisemitic burgomaster of Vienna (who would later become Hitler’s role model). The important historical implication of this anecdote is that psychoanalysis, at its inception, had to inherently confront the new phenomenon of populist leaders, emerging after the demise of traditional authorities, the counterfeit master figures supplanting the traditional ones. Hundred years on fake masters proliferate, all the more pernicious for being fake. The paper will explore how these figures could emerge out of the spirit of what Lacan called the university discourse, the discourse supposedly based on knowledge, reason and universality. It will look at Lacan’s occasional gloomy predictions about the upsurge of segregation. It will finally consider some reasons for the present crisis of psychoanalysis. *Mladen Dolar* is Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University