Books/Joel Dor/Introduction to the Reading of Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a Language

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This text seeks to make Lacan's work understandable for both clinicians eager to figure out Lacan's theory and scholars in the various human sciences, upon which Lacan's work draws. The book probes the link between structuralism and linguistic theory, clarifying Lacan's famous formulation that the unconscious is structured like a language. It further provides the necessary theoretical grounding for the clinical application of Lacanian theory.

A major and long overdue addition to the America/English psychoanalytic literature. . . . All major concepts-among them the mirror stage, the Name-of-the-Father, metaphor and metonymy, the phallus, the foreclosure of the subject-are developed in depth-Nicholas Kouretsas, Harvard Medical School

Description

This book presents the radically new theory of subjectivity found in the work of Jacques Lacan. Against the tide of post-structuralist thinkers who announce “the death of the subject,” Bruce Fink explores what it means to come into being as a subject where impersonal forces once reigned, subjectify the alien roll of the dice at the beginning of our universe, and make our own knotted web of our parents’ desires that led them to bring us into this world.

Lucidly guiding readers through the labyrinth of Lacanian theory—unpacking such central notions as the Other, object a, the unconscious as structures like a language, alienation and separation, the paternal metaphor, jouissance, and sexual difference—Fink demonstrates in-depth knowledge of Lacan’s theoretical and clinical work. Indeed, this is the first book to appear in English that displays a firm grasp of both theory and practice of Lacanian psychoanalysis, the author being one of the only Americans to have undergone full training with Lacan’s school in Paris.

Fink leads the reader step by step into Lacan’s conceptual system to explain how one comes to be a subject—leading to psychosis. Presenting Lacan’s theory in the context of his clinical preoccupations, Fink provides the most balanced, sophisticated, and penetrating view of Lacan’s work to date—invaluable to the initiated and the uninitiated alike.

Reviews

"A major and long overdue addition to the America/English psychoanalytic literature. . . . All major concepts—among them the mirror stage, the Name-of-the-Father, metaphor and metonymy, the phallus, the foreclosure of the subject—are developed in depth." -Nicholas Kouretsas, Harvard Medical School

About the Author

Joel Dor was a professor of psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VII and a member of the Association de Formation Psychoanalytique et de Recherches Freudiennes: Espace Analytique. He is also the author of Introduction to the Reading of Lacan and Structure and Perversions (both Other Press).

Susan Fairfield is an editor, translator, and poet. She is also the author of papers on literary criticism, a psychoanalyst, and co-editor of Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis. She lives in the Bay Area of California.

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