Lacan in 90 Minutes: Why Lacan is Difficult
This is the first article in the series Lacan in 90 Minutes. It is designed to be read before attempting to grapple with specific concepts or seminars.
If you have picked up a book by Jacques Lacan—specifically his Écrits—you have likely experienced a specific kind of vertigo. The sentences are serpentine and self-interrupting. The vocabulary shifts from linguistics to topology to surrealist poetry without warning. He often seems to be mocking the reader, leading them into a logical cul-de-sac only to abandon them there.
You are not wrong, and you are not alone. Lacan is difficult. But more importantly: Lacan is difficult on purpose.
This article outlines why Lacan’s notorious style is not just a barrier to entry, but a fundamental part of his teaching method, and how you should position yourself to read him.
The Problem of Style
In standard academic writing, the author’s goal is usually clarity. The author possesses knowledge and attempts to transmit it to the reader as efficiently as possible. This is the model of university education: I know x, and soon you will know x.
Lacan rejected this model for psychoanalysis. He believed that if he presented his concepts in clear, easily digestible summaries, the reader would simply consume them, memorize them, and move on without being changed. The reader’s ego would remain intact.
For Lacan, psychoanalysis is not about accumulating knowledge; it is about confronting the gaps in your knowledge. Therefore, his writing style is designed to:
- Slow you down: You cannot skim Lacan. You must read word by word.
- Frustrate the understanding: When you cannot immediately grasp a sentence, you are forced to engage with the text actively, rather than passively absorbing it.
- Mimic the Unconscious: The unconscious does not speak in bullet points. It speaks in slips, jokes, puns, and paradoxes. Lacan’s style attempts to speak the language of the unconscious rather than the language of the ego.
Why People Persist
If he is so difficult, why do we still read him decades after his death? Why hasn’t he been relegated to a historical footnote?
Readers persist because Lacan offers a rigorous alternative to the "wellness" model of psychology. In a world increasingly focused on quick fixes, chemical imbalances, and behavioral adaptation (i.e., "how to be a productive member of society"), Lacan returned to the radical core of Freud’s discovery: that there is something in us that does not want to be well, does not want to adapt, and does not make sense.
People read Lacan because he provides tools to analyze the things that rational psychology cannot explain: our self-sabotage, our obsession with impossible desires, the structure of anxiety, and the weirdness of language itself.
The "First Contact" Error
The most common mistake new readers make is attempting to translate Lacan into something they already know.
- The Mistake: "Oh, the 'Big Other' is just society."
- The Mistake: "The 'Mirror Stage' is just about narcissism."
- The Mistake: "The 'Real' is just biology."
When you try to smooth Lacan out into "common sense," you lose exactly what makes him valuable. Lacan is attempting to describe structures that are not common sense. If you find yourself thinking, "He’s just saying X in a fancy way," you are likely missing the point.
How to Use This Series
This series, Lacan in 90 Minutes, is a map. It is not the territory.
- We will not define every term (we have the Introduction to Key Lacanian Concepts series for that).
- We will not replace the act of reading the Seminars.
- We will explain what Lacan was trying to do, the historical battles he fought, and the chronological arc of his thinking.
This series is designed to give you the coordinates so that when you do open a Seminar, you don't feel completely lost in the woods. You might still be in the woods, but you will know which way is North.
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