Link Theory and Practice: The Irreducible Effects of Presence

A possible definition for vínculo, translated into English as link or bond, is that of an unconscious situation that links subjects, determining them based on a relationship of presence and the effects of presence, distinct from a relationship based on absence and the re-presentation of that absence, leading to irreducible effects and encounters with excess and singularity that are not necessarily traumatic or traumatizing. These encounters with the new can open access to exciting possibilities and also carry the potential to reduce the new to the schematized and already known. I will be talking about the origins, her/history, and developments of link theory, covering authors and thinkers such as Enrique Pichon-Rivière, Janine Puget, and Isidoro Berenstein, and the attempts to construct a metapsychology that tries to grapple with the complexity of overlapping worlds, of the “intrapsychic,” the “intersubjective,” and the “transsubjective,” accounting for the crucial ongoing importance of all these realms in their articulations with social, political, economic, and other dimensions.