Écrits

A collection of thirty-five theoretical texts written between 1936 and 1966. Écrits has been characterized as elitist by Jean-Claude Milner, but Slavoj Žižek claims that

In fact, Lacan’s seminars and ecrits relate like analysand’s and analyst’s speech in the treatment. In seminars, Lacan acts as analysand, he “freely associates,” improvises, jumps, addressing his public, which is thus put into the role of a kind of collective analyst. In comparison, his writings are more condensed, formulaic, and they throw at the reader unreadable ambiguous propositions which often appear like oracles, challenging the reader to start working on them, to translate them into clear theses and provide examples and logical demonstrations of them.[1]

Table of contents

1. Overture to this Collection
2. Seminar on the "The Purloined Letter"
3. On My Antecedents
4. Beyond the "Reality Principle"
5. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I Function, as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience
6. Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis
7. A Theoretical Introduction to the Functions of Psychoanalysis in Criminology
8. Presentation on Psychical Causality
9. Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty
10. Presentation on Transference
11. On the Subject Who Is Finally in Question
12. The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis
13. Variations on the Standard Treatment
14. On a Purpose
15. Introduction to Jean Hyppolite's Commentary on Freud's "Verneinung"
16. Response to Jean Hyppolite's Commentary on Freud's "Verneinung"
17. The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis
18. Psychoanalysis and it's Teaching
19. The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysis in 1956
20. The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud
21. On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis
22. The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power
23. Remarks on Daniel Lagache's Presentation: "Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure"
24. The Signification of the Phallus
25. In Memory of Ernst Jones: On His Theory of Symbolism
26. On an Ex Post Facto Syllabary
27. Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality
28. The Youth of Gide, or the Letter and Desire
29. Kant with Sade
30. The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious
31. Position of the Unconscious
32. On Freud's "Trieb" and Psychoanalyst's Desire
33. Science and Truth

Classified Index of the Major Concepts

Commentary on the Graphs

Index of Freud's German Terms

Index of Proper Names