Écrits

Écrits
French title	Écrits
English title	Écrits
Year	1966
Text type	Collected volume (essays, lectures, articles)
Mode of delivery	Written (compilation of prior texts, some revised)
First presentation	Various (individual texts delivered/published between 1936 and 1966)
First publication	Éditions du Seuil (1966)
Collected in	N/A (Écrits is the collected volume itself)
Text status	Authorial compilation
Original language	French
Psychoanalytic content
Key concepts	Unconscious structured like a language • Mirror stage • Objet petit a • Phallus • Barred subject • Graph of desire • Symbolic order • Name-of-the-Father
Themes	Psychoanalytic theory; structure of the unconscious; subjectivity; language and desire; critique of ego psychology; topology and formalization
Freud references	The Interpretation of Dreams • Beyond the Pleasure Principle • The Ego and the Id • On Narcissism
Related seminars	Seminar I through Seminar XI (implicitly referenced) • Seminar XVII (anticipated)
Theoretical context
Period	Structuralist / early topological period
Register	Symbolic • Imaginary • Real

Écrits is the principal collected volume of writings by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, first published by Éditions du Seuil in 1966. Spanning over 900 pages in its original French edition, the work brings together essays, conference papers, and theoretical interventions that Lacan composed between 1936 and 1966. Écrits is widely regarded as one of the most influential and challenging contributions to 20th-century psychoanalytic theory, particularly within the Lacanian tradition, and a foundational text in structuralist and poststructuralist thought.

Écrits formalizes Lacan’s “return to Freud” by reinterpreting the Freudian corpus through the lens of structural linguistics, philosophy, and logic. Its essays rework core psychoanalytic ideas—such as repression, desire, subjectivity, and transference—while introducing Lacan’s own innovations, including the mirror stage, the symbolic order, the object a, the phallus as signifier, and the graph of desire. Lacan’s style in Écrits is notoriously dense, elliptical, and conceptually layered, but its impact on psychoanalysis, literary theory, and continental philosophy has been substantial.

The essays in Écrits reflect Lacan’s evolving theory of the subject, his critique of ego psychology, and his insistence on the centrality of language to unconscious processes. The volume remains essential reading in Lacanian psychoanalytic training and has been the subject of extensive commentary by figures such as Bruce Fink, Jacques-Alain Miller, Stijn Vanheule, and Joan Copjec.

Historical and Editorial Context

Jacques Lacan’s Écrits was published at a pivotal moment in the history of psychoanalysis in France. By 1966, Lacan had spent over two decades delivering weekly seminars and had become a central figure in the postwar rearticulation of Freudian theory. His teaching—especially Seminars I through XI—had begun to gain traction among intellectuals and clinicians disillusioned with both ego psychology and the bureaucratic structures of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Lacan had been expelled from the IPA in 1963 due to his controversial analytic practices, particularly his use of variable-length sessions. The publication of Écrits in 1966 can thus be seen as both a summation and a strategic intervention: an effort to codify his theoretical project in textual form outside the institutional constraints of the IPA.

The initial French edition was released by Éditions du Seuil in a large-format hardcover volume with over 900 pages. The volume’s cover famously bore Lacan’s name in large capital letters, underscoring its status as a major intellectual event. The essays selected span from 1936 (“The Mirror Stage”) to 1966, with some previously unpublished or substantially revised for the collection. Lacan prefaced the volume with an essay titled “On My Antecedents,” which functions as a theoretical and autobiographical introduction, mapping his trajectory from psychiatry to psychoanalysis and aligning his work with structuralist paradigms.

Subsequent editions of Écrits include a 1970 reprint by Seuil and the 2006 complete English translation by Bruce Fink, published by W. W. Norton. Prior to Fink’s translation, only selected texts were available in English via Alan Sheridan’s Écrits: A Selection (1977), which—though influential—was criticized for its interpretive liberties and omissions.

Structure and Publication

Lacan divided Écrits into a series of sections that loosely mirror his theoretical development. The texts do not follow strict chronological order but are thematically and conceptually linked. The volume opens with “On My Antecedents,” followed by early formulations such as “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I,” and culminates in complex theoretical writings like “Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious” and “Science and Truth.”

The contents of Écrits include conference papers (e.g., “The Mirror Stage”), articles from psychoanalytic journals (e.g., La Psychanalyse, La Scuola Freudiana), and major theoretical essays presented at conferences and symposia (e.g., Royaumont Colloquium, 1960). Lacan revised many of these texts prior to their inclusion, infusing them with additional references, diagrams (such as the graph of desire), and notational innovations.

The editorial architecture of the volume serves both pedagogical and polemical purposes: Lacan not only advances his theoretical apparatus but also critiques rival traditions (such as ego psychology) and repositions psychoanalysis in relation to linguistics, philosophy, and science.

Theoretical Aims and Project

Lacan’s stated aim in compiling Écrits was to return psychoanalysis to its Freudian foundations while reformulating its conceptual apparatus in light of contemporary structuralist theory. Central to this project is the proposition—first articulated in the 1950s and reiterated throughout Écrits—that “the unconscious is structured like a language.” This thesis reorients Freudian metapsychology around questions of signification, subjectivity, and symbolic order, distancing it from biological, empirical, or adaptive frameworks.

Lacan’s critique of ego psychology is a persistent motif in the volume. In essays such as “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” and “The Direction of the Treatment,” he argues that ego psychology misrecognizes the unconscious by privileging consciousness, adaptation, and developmental stages over language and desire.

The volume also articulates a profound critique of the Cartesian cogito. Rather than positing a coherent, self-transparent subject of knowledge (“I think, therefore I am”), Lacan’s writings demonstrate that the psychoanalytic subject is a divided or “barred” subject ($\bar{S}$), constituted through language, alienated in the Other, and traversed by unconscious desire. In this sense, Écrits may be read as a sustained effort to produce a non-Cartesian theory of subjectivity rooted in Freudian discovery.

Overview of Major Essays (Part I)

“The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I” (1949)

First presented at the IPA Congress in Marienbad in 1936 and later revised in 1949, “The Mirror Stage” is one of Lacan’s earliest and most influential essays. It introduces the concept of the imaginary order and the idea that the subject's identity is founded on a misrecognition of its own image in the mirror. According to Lacan, the infant, between six and eighteen months of age, identifies with its specular image, forming an “ideal-I” that serves as the prototype for ego formation.

This process of identification inaugurates a structural alienation: the subject’s sense of unity is always mediated by an external image, which is both seductive and deceptive. The mirror stage thus underpins Lacan’s account of the ego as fundamentally imaginary—an effect of misrecognition (méconnaissance)—and prefigures his later distinction between the imaginary, symbolic, and real registers.

“The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” (1953)

Delivered at the Rome Congress in 1953 and often considered Lacan’s founding manifesto, this essay lays the groundwork for his symbolic turn. Lacan insists that speech, not instinct or drive alone, is central to the analytic situation. He distinguishes between full speech (which speaks the truth of the subject in the symbolic order) and empty speech (which reinforces ego defenses).

The essay also elaborates Lacan’s conception of the symbolic order as the field of language, law, and social structure. The unconscious is not a biological substrate but a function of symbolic articulations—the return of the repressed is a return of signifiers. Lacan redefines the goal of analysis as the traversal of fantasy and the assumption of desire within the symbolic field.

“The Freudian Thing” (1955)

This polemical essay confronts both behaviorist reductionism and psychoanalytic revisionism. Lacan asserts that psychoanalysis is not a psychology but a science of the subject, whose object is the unconscious structured like a language. He defends the Freudian legacy against distortions by contemporaries who either psychologize or biologize the unconscious.

In this essay, Lacan underscores the centrality of transference, repetition, and resistance, aligning them not with empirical observation but with the logic of signification and desire. The “Freudian thing” is thus not Freud’s person or doctrine, but a textual and theoretical field open to structural reading.

“Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious” (1960)

Arguably the most conceptually dense essay in Écrits, this text presents Lacan’s graph of desire and outlines the mathemes of subjectivity. The essay synthesizes many of Lacan’s core ideas: the split subject ($\bar{S}$), the distinction between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the statement, and the role of the object a as the cause of desire.

Drawing on Freudian metapsychology and structural linguistics, Lacan articulates a topology of the unconscious as a chain of signifiers (S₁ → S₂) through which the subject is constituted and divided. The dialectic of desire emerges from this split: the subject is not the master of its meaning but is spoken by the signifier of the Other.

Overview of Major Essays (Part II)

“Position of the Unconscious” (1960)

Originally delivered as a lecture in 1960 and later published in Écrits, “Position of the Unconscious” deepens Lacan’s structural theory of the unconscious. He argues that the unconscious is not a psychic substance or a spatial location but a structural position defined by discontinuity, temporality, and the function of the signifier. Lacan distinguishes between two temporal moments of the unconscious: the moment of its opening (insistence, eruption) and its closure (fading, repression).

Here, Lacan also introduces the idea that the unconscious emerges at the point where the subject is eclipsed by the signifier. The unconscious speaks, not as a repository of repressed content, but as a disruption of speech that opens a field of meaning. He critiques the notion of “making the unconscious conscious,” arguing instead that analysis works to locate the position from which the unconscious speaks.

“The Signification of the Phallus” (1958)

Presented at the Congress of the Société Française de Psychanalyse in 1958, this essay introduces one of Lacan’s most debated formulations: that the phallus is not a biological organ but a privileged signifier of lack and desire. Lacan distinguishes between the penis (as an anatomical object) and the phallus (as a symbolic function), arguing that the phallus signifies the absence structuring subjectivity.

Crucial to this essay is Lacan’s articulation of sexual difference in terms of symbolic positioning rather than anatomical destiny. The subject either has the phallus (masculine position) or is the phallus (feminine position), but neither sex possesses it. This shift undermines the logic of normative sexuality and opens the way for Lacan’s later sexuation formulas.

The essay is foundational for later feminist and queer theoretical readings of Lacan, and also anticipates his development of the concept of jouissance, particularly in relation to feminine subjectivity.

“Kant with Sade” (1963)

In this provocative essay, Lacan stages a dialogue between Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy and the writings of the Marquis de Sade, arguing that Sade’s perverse fantasies reveal the hidden structure of the Kantian categorical imperative. He proposes that both Kantian ethics and Sadean jouissance hinge on the superego, an agency that commands the subject to obey a Law devoid of any empirical or affective justification.

The essay explores the alignment between perversion and the Law, suggesting that the Sadean figure enacts a literalization of the moral command, pushing obedience to the point of transgression. Lacan also examines the function of jouissance—a painful, excessive enjoyment—within ethical discourse, linking it to the Thing (das Ding) and the structure of the Real.

This essay is among Lacan’s most interdisciplinary texts and has had a wide influence in philosophical circles, particularly through the work of Slavoj Žižek, Joan Copjec, and others.

“Science and Truth” (1965)

Lacan’s engagement with epistemology and the question of scientificity culminates in “Science and Truth,” where he interrogates the position of psychoanalysis within the field of knowledge. He argues that psychoanalysis is not an empirical science in the positivist sense, but neither is it reducible to the humanities or literature. Instead, it occupies a unique epistemological space between truth and knowledge (savoir).

Lacan distinguishes between the subject of science—which is excluded from the discourse of science itself—and the subject of the unconscious, who is constituted through speech and lack. He claims that modern science emerges by excluding the subject, whereas psychoanalysis reinstates this subject as the locus of truth effects.

This essay also sets the stage for Lacan’s later elaboration of the four discourses (of the master, the university, the hysteric, and the analyst), which he would formalize in Seminar XVII. In Écrits, the discourse of science serves as a limit case for understanding the structural exclusion of the subject from knowledge.

Key Concepts and Innovations

The Écrits serve as the principal site for Lacan’s articulation and elaboration of several central psychoanalytic concepts. These innovations reconfigure Freudian theory in structural, linguistic, and topological terms.

The Mirror Stage

Originally introduced in 1936 and revised in 1949, the mirror stage posits that the infant’s identification with its reflection in the mirror inaugurates both the imaginary register and the formation of the ego. This misrecognized image offers the illusion of unity, masking the subject’s actual fragmentation. The ego, as a result, is not an intrinsic entity but a construct grounded in alienation and specular misrecognition.

The Registers: Symbolic, Imaginary, Real

Lacan’s tripartite model of the psyche—symbolic, imaginary, and real—is foundational across the Écrits:

• The symbolic refers to the order of language, law, and social structure. It is the field of the Other and the location of the subject’s insertion into meaning.
• The imaginary encompasses the domain of images, specular identification, and ego formation.
• The real designates what is outside of or resistant to symbolization—what eludes capture by the signifier.

The interplay of these registers structures subjectivity and pathology. For example, neurosis emerges from symbolic conflicts; psychosis results from a foreclosure of the symbolic Name-of-the-Father; perversion occupies a different relation to the symbolic law altogether.

The Signifier and the Barred Subject ($\bar{S}$)

In Écrits, Lacan reformulates the Freudian unconscious as a system of differential signifiers, emphasizing that the subject is not the master of its speech but constituted by language. The signifier operates not as a representation of a thing but as a difference in a system of relations.

The barred subject ($\bar{S}$) designates the split subject—divided between the conscious ego and the unconscious processes that escape it. This subject is not prior to language but emerges from its effects: the signifier comes to represent the subject for another signifier.

Objet petit a

The object a' (or objet petit a'), is perhaps Lacan’s most distinctive theoretical contribution. Introduced in the late 1950s and elaborated in Écrits, it refers to the cause of desire, not its object. Unlike a concrete object (a toy, a person), a designates a void or remainder produced by the operation of language.

The object a sustains desire precisely because it is unattainable: it is the leftover of the subject’s division by the signifier. In clinical terms, it plays a crucial role in the logic of fantasy, symptom formation, and transference.

The Phallus as Signifier

In “The Signification of the Phallus,” Lacan argues that the phallus functions not as an organ or a biological marker of sex, but as a signifier of lack. It structures the subject’s access to the symbolic order and mediates the relation between desire and law.

The phallus’s function is to veil the lack at the heart of the Other and to regulate symbolic exchange. Its signifying role accounts for sexual difference, not in anatomical terms, but in terms of symbolic positioning—who assumes the role of “having” or “being” the phallus.

The Graph of Desire

In the essay “Subversion of the Subject,” Lacan presents his graph of desire, a formal diagram that maps the relations among:

• The signifier and signified
• The subject of the enunciation and the statement
• Desire and the demand of the Other
• The object a

The graph visually represents the dialectic of desire: how the subject is divided and animated by signifiers, caught between what is said and what is meant, and haunted by the unattainable object of desire.

The Split Between Enunciation and Statement

A core conceptual innovation in Écrits is the distinction between:

• The subject of the enunciation (the one who speaks)
• The subject of the statement (what is said)

This split allows Lacan to analyze the unconscious not as a repository of content, but as a disruption within speech itself. The unconscious reveals itself in slips, dreams, and jokes because the subject of the enunciation is never fully identical with the subject of the statement. This insight reframes analytic interpretation as a practice of listening to what is not said, what is excluded or deferred by the signifier.

The Name-of-the-Father

The Name-of-the-Father is a master signifier introduced by Lacan to account for the subject’s entry into the symbolic order. It replaces the desire of the mother with the Law of the father, enabling the subject to differentiate itself from the maternal demand and assume a position within culture and language.

The foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father is central to Lacan’s theory of psychosis, as detailed in Seminar III. While not elaborated fully in Écrits, the concept appears as part of Lacan’s larger effort to theorize the paternal metaphor and symbolic law.

Methodology and Clinical Implications

Lacan’s Écrits is not only a collection of theoretical essays but also a methodological intervention into the practice of psychoanalysis. Throughout the volume, Lacan opposes reductive models of the psyche grounded in adaptation, self-knowledge, or developmental norms. Instead, he proposes a reorientation of psychoanalysis around the logic of the signifier, the structure of language, and the unconscious as discontinuous and structured.

Structuralism, Linguistics, and Formalization

The methodology of Écrits is deeply informed by structuralist linguistics—especially the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson—and mathematical formalization. Lacan appropriates Saussure’s distinction between the signifier and the signified, reversing their priority: for Lacan, it is the signifier that determines the signified, not the other way around.

This inversion grounds Lacan’s concept of the unconscious as a chain of signifiers rather than a storehouse of repressed contents. Repression, condensation, and displacement (Freudian mechanisms of dream-work) are reconceived in Écrits as functions of signifying logic—specifically, as metaphor and metonymy.

Lacan also integrates topology—especially the use of graphs and diagrams—to depict unconscious structure and the relational positioning of the subject. The graph of desire, for instance, is both a heuristic tool and a formalization of linguistic and psychic operations. His use of diagrams does not merely illustrate theory; it is theory in structural form.

Against Ego Psychology and Adaptation

A central polemic running through Écrits is Lacan’s critique of ego psychology, the dominant trend in postwar American psychoanalysis. He charges ego psychologists with reducing psychoanalysis to a technique of adaptation, one that seeks to strengthen the ego in the face of external reality, rather than address the subject’s relation to the unconscious and desire.

In essays like “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” and “The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power,” Lacan argues that such adaptationist models betray Freud’s discovery of unconscious desire. Rather than reinforcing the ego, analysis must dismantle its illusions, allowing the subject to confront the truth of their division and lack.

This stance has significant clinical consequences: the analyst must not act as an ego-ideal, nor offer normative guidance or reassurance. Instead, the analyst occupies the position of the objet petit a—the cause of the analysand’s desire—and facilitates the subject’s traversal of fantasy.

Interpretation and the Ethics of Psychoanalysis

One of Lacan’s most distinctive contributions, elaborated across Écrits, is his theory of interpretation. Interpretation is not a translation of unconscious content into conscious knowledge; it is a punctuation or intervention in the signifying chain that opens a space for new meaning to emerge. Interpretation works by producing equivocations, displacements, or unexpected resonances that reveal the subject’s desire.

For Lacan, the goal of analysis is not insight but subjectivation—the process by which the subject assumes responsibility for its unconscious position. This requires confronting not the repressed content but the structure of lack that makes desire possible.

Accordingly, Lacan places ethics at the center of psychoanalytic practice. In Écrits, this is most evident in texts like “The Freudian Thing” and “Kant with Sade,” where he interrogates the moral implications of analysis. The analyst’s ethical position is to not yield on their desire—to refrain from imposing normative ideals and instead sustain the space in which the subject may encounter the truth of their own division.

Reception and Critical Commentary

From the moment of its publication, Écrits provoked strong responses across psychoanalytic, philosophical, and literary communities. Its density, opacity, and conceptual inventiveness made it at once a source of inspiration and frustration. While some critics accused Lacan of stylistic obscurantism, others hailed the work as a necessary radicalization of psychoanalysis in the face of theoretical stagnation.

Psychoanalytic Reception in France

Within France, Écrits solidified Lacan’s status as a major intellectual force but also exacerbated tensions within the psychoanalytic establishment. By 1966, Lacan had been expelled from the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), largely due to his unorthodox practices, including the variable-length session and his non-conformity to training standards.

Nonetheless, Écrits became a foundational text for the newly formed École Freudienne de Paris (EFP), which Lacan founded in 1964. The EFP would use Écrits as a core theoretical text in its training and seminars, marking a decisive split from ego psychology and mainstream institutional analysis.

The book’s influence extended beyond Lacan’s immediate followers. Philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, and Roland Barthes took Lacan seriously as a structural thinker, seeing Écrits as part of a broader movement to rethink subjectivity, power, and knowledge through language.

English Translation and Anglophone Commentary

The reception of Écrits in the Anglophone world was slower and more contentious. Alan Sheridan’s 1977 translation, Écrits: A Selection, introduced a generation of English readers to Lacan’s thought, but the translation was selective, inconsistent, and at times misleading. Sheridan’s omissions and paraphrases led to critiques that Lacan was needlessly obscure or stylistically impenetrable.

It wasn’t until Bruce Fink’s complete and more technically faithful translation in 2006 that Anglophone readers gained reliable access to the full Écrits. Fink’s translation is widely regarded as a milestone in Lacanian scholarship and remains the standard edition in English-language psychoanalytic training.

Fink’s own writings—especially The Lacanian Subject and Lacan to the Letter—have been instrumental in unpacking the clinical and theoretical stakes of Écrits. He emphasizes that while the volume is difficult, its complexity stems from the difficulty of its object: the unconscious as a linguistic structure, resistant to mastery.

Scholarly Commentary

Numerous scholars have produced interpretive and pedagogical works to make Écrits more accessible to clinicians, theorists, and students:

• Bruce Fink has provided detailed readings of key essays, clarifying the technical distinctions (e.g., subject of enunciation vs. subject of the statement) and clinical implications of Lacan’s theory.
• Stijn Vanheule, along with Derek Hook and Calum Neill, has edited a multi-volume commentary, Reading Lacan’s Écrits, that offers close readings of individual texts in sequence. This series is especially useful for understanding Lacan’s shifting terminology and structural method.
• Joan Copjec has explored the political and philosophical implications of Lacan’s theory of the signifier, especially in relation to feminist theory. In Read My Desire, she defends Lacan against historicist misreadings and foregrounds the irreducibility of sexual difference in Écrits.
• Jacques-Alain Miller, Lacan’s appointed editor and successor, has produced extensive commentary on Écrits in his seminars and editorial work. He has argued that Écrits is best understood not as a self-contained doctrine but as a series of interventions that must be read in dialogue with Lacan’s oral teaching in the seminars.

Translation and Publication History

The first edition of Écrits appeared in 1966, published by Éditions du Seuil. It contained 29 texts written between 1936 and 1966, many of which had previously circulated only in limited psychoanalytic journals or were unpublished. The volume immediately became a bestseller in France, rare for a psychoanalytic text, and positioned Lacan as a major figure in structuralist thought.

In 1970, Seuil released a reprint, further cementing its status as a definitive reference for Lacanian theory.

The first English-language version, Écrits: A Selection, appeared in 1977, translated by Alan Sheridan and published by Tavistock and Norton. It included only about one-third of the full French volume and excluded several major essays.

In 2006, Bruce Fink’s complete translation was published by W. W. Norton. This edition restored previously omitted texts and introduced standardized terminology for Lacanian concepts (e.g., objet petit a, Name-of-the-Father, jouissance), making it more usable for Anglophone psychoanalytic education.

Scholars have noted that differences in translation have consequences for the reception and interpretation of Lacan’s thought. For example, Sheridan’s rendering of jouissance as “enjoyment” misses its connotations of painful excess, while Fink’s decision to retain many untranslated French terms respects their technical precision.

The continued publication and citation of Écrits testifies to its enduring significance in psychoanalytic training, cultural theory, and interdisciplinary research.

Legacy and Cultural Impact

Since its initial publication in 1966, Écrits has exerted a profound and far-reaching influence across multiple disciplines—including psychoanalysis, philosophy, literary theory, linguistics, film studies, feminism, and political theory. Lacan’s writing style, dense and elliptical though it may be, has not deterred generations of scholars, clinicians, and theorists from engaging with the challenges and insights embedded in the collection.

Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Écrits is widely regarded as a landmark text in the structuralist movement, positioning Lacan alongside figures like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. His insistence that the unconscious is structured like a language aligned psychoanalysis with Saussurean linguistics and reinforced the broader structuralist emphasis on systems, relations, and formal organization over substance or content.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Lacan’s work became a key reference in poststructuralist thought, influencing theorists such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard. While some of these thinkers critically distanced themselves from Lacanian positions, they nonetheless regarded Écrits as a foundational source for rethinking subjectivity, knowledge, power, and language.

Feminism, Queer Theory, and Sexual Difference

Écrits also played a complex and contested role in the development of feminist and queer theory. The essays “The Signification of the Phallus” and “Subversion of the Subject” became flashpoints in debates over sexual difference, phallocentrism, and symbolic castration.

French feminist theorists such as Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, and Julia Kristeva engaged critically with Lacan’s writings—sometimes appropriating, other times opposing his formulations. Irigaray, in particular, challenged the centrality of the phallus in Lacan’s model of sexual difference, arguing that it reinscribed masculine privilege under the guise of structural necessity.

In the Anglophone world, Joan Copjec defended Lacan against such critiques, arguing that Écrits offers a non-biological account of subject formation and desire that resists essentialism. Copjec’s work, especially Read My Desire, emphasized Lacan’s difference from both Freudian biologism and Foucauldian historicism.

In queer theory, figures like Leo Bersani and Judith Butler drew on Lacan’s formulations of the subject, law, and desire, while simultaneously reworking them. Butler, for instance, adapted Lacanian ideas of performativity and the symbolic law in her theories of gender construction, particularly in Gender Trouble.

Literary and Film Theory

Écrits has had enduring relevance in the fields of literary criticism and film studies. In the 1970s and 1980s, Lacanian theory—especially the mirror stage, the gaze, and the phallus—became central to the semiotic approach to cinema. Scholars such as Christian Metz, Kaja Silverman, and Laura Mulvey employed Lacanian concepts to analyze filmic subjectivity, spectatorship, and the function of narrative desire.

In literature and critical theory, Lacan’s rereading of Freud via Saussure and Jakobson influenced a structural approach to texts, emphasizing the interplay of signifiers, unconscious logic, and symbolic economy. His notion of the subject as spoken (rather than speaking) helped catalyze a shift away from authorial intent toward discourse analysis and textuality.

Clinical Practice and Psychoanalytic Training

Despite its abstract style, Écrits remains a cornerstone of Lacanian clinical training, particularly in European psychoanalytic institutions. It is widely read and studied in the schools founded or inspired by Lacan, such as the École de la Cause Freudienne (ECF) and the New Lacanian School (NLS). Lacanian analysts treat Écrits not only as a theoretical text but as a guide to the ethics and method of analytic practice.

The collection’s emphasis on interpretation, desire, transference, and the analyst’s position as cause of the analysand’s desire shapes the framework of Lacanian treatment. The dense formalization found in essays like “Subversion of the Subject” or “Science and Truth” becomes a tool for working with structure rather than meaning alone.