How to Read Lacan (How to Read)
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • The Unconscious Un-idea
  • meat lake
How to Read Lacan (How to Read)
Slavoj Zizek
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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  5. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (October Books) Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (October Books)

ASIN: 0393329550

Book Description

The How to Read series provides a context and an explanation that will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. These books use excerpts from the major texts to explain essential topics, such as Jacques Lacan's core ideas about enjoyment, which re-created our concept of psychoanalysis.

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars The Unconscious Un-idea.......2007-02-06

As an historian of ideas I have sought a methodology beneath and beyond ideational analysis, identifying the presuppositions of our ideas. It was not until reading a review of several books by Slavoj Zizek several months ago that I begin to realize that this task is the life work of Jacques Lacan (1901-81).

Zizek's HOW TO READ LACAN is an insightful introduction to realities that escape our conscious awareness, resting deep beneath geologic layers of symbolic pretensions. With a double doctorate in both philosophy and pyschoanalysis, Zizek is especially qualified to introduce us to Lacan's work, arguably the most renowned psychoanalyst since Sigmund Freud.

Not sharing Zizek's expertise in popular culture, this reviewer is not qualified to give HOW TO READ LACAN five stars. And yet, while enabling us to probe more deeply the microscopic dimensions of our daily lives, Zizek's reading of Lacan also empowers us to understand and stand under the macroscopic dimensions of geopolitics on the fragile planet that is our home.

An instance of this reading is Zizek's interpretation of Donald Rumsfeld's March 2003 rendition of 1) known knowns, 2) known unknowns and 3) unknown unknowns. Zizek continutes that what Rumsfeld "forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the 'unknown knowns,' things we don't know that we know -- which is precisely the Freudian unconscious, the 'knowledge that doesn't know itself,' as Lacan use to say, the core of which is fantasy." These 'unknown knowns,' Zizek continues, are "the disavowed beliefs and suppositions we are not even aware of adhering to ourselves, but which nonetheless determine our acts and feelings."

4 out of 5 stars meat lake.......2007-01-30

Zizek admits in the introduction that he brings both arguments and material from his other published works to this How to Read manual. As a result, readers of Zizek will recognize the echoes of some jokes, lists and paragraphs. The limit of Zizek's sustained argumentation reaches about three pages. Each of the seven chapters will have a title, three or four pages will directly address that chapter's title and then fourteen or so pages will rehearse and mull topics of tangential relation. More of these topics of tangential relation are political, cultural, and philosophical rather than specifically Lacanian. Zizek sees Lacan as a tool for reading and interpreting, whose writings compel more ethical considerations than anything else. Each paragraph of Lacan that Zizek discusses proves its worth for its moment but makes little claim for its systematic application or perennial value. The attention of Lacan seems only slightly more mercurial than Zizek's. I find much of Zizek's discussion thought-provoking, clever, and engaging. I feel there is more Zizek than Lacan here, and I love reading Lacan. The list of materials for further reading is refined and helpful. Overall, this book smiles as it serves its tour of duty.
Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (October Books)
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • Lacanian heresy inside! Beware of being tainted!
  • Perfect - if that's what you want.
  • This book is great; those below who don't like it are clowns
  • Titling awry
  • Looking Awry This Book
Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (October Books)
Slavoj Zizek
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 026274015X

Book Description

Slavoj Zizek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements in Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan through the works of contemporary popular culture, from horror fiction and detective thrillers to popular romances and Hitchcock films.

Slavoj Zizek is a Researcher in the Institute of Sociology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He ran as a proreform candidate for the presidency of the republic of Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia, in 1990.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Lacanian heresy inside! Beware of being tainted!.......2004-10-05

I am struck by the negative reviews that caution readers: "Zizek is not an orthodox Lacanian! Read him only if you have already understood Lacan!" This is, of course, the typically cultish--really Catholic--approach to Lacan that treats him as a holy text, pre-supposes a series of high priests who have been properly anoited and through whom one must receive the officially sanctioned interpretation. I don't read Zizek for Lacan--I read him for Zizek, and I encourage others to do likewise. *Looking Awry* and *Enjoy Your Symptom* are prehaps the easiest approaches to Zizek and his brand of cultural criticism, as they rely almost entirely on popular culture, especially film. Zizek's perverse (and often dirty) sense of humor and tendency to read against the grain at all costs are apparent on nearly every page, which makes this a very engaging read, indeed. Intellectually, there are some problems with his approach, of course--but Zizek's voice is such a refreshing change of pace, and his constant turn to a reading that you thought was impossible (but turns out to be preversely appealing) makes them all worthwhile.

5 out of 5 stars Perfect - if that's what you want........2004-05-15

That's what I wanted, at least: An illustration of the key Lacanian concepts. What Zizek'bokk gives you, in fact, is the key to reading Lacan.

Lacan's seminar is an unreadable text - if that's your first/second/third etc. time. Lacan, you see, does not make conclusions. To illustrate that:
- You are writing a paper on, let's say, "Gaze". You would like to know what's Lacan's take on gaze. You open "On Gaze as Object a" chapter from "Four Fundamentals".
- you read a paragraph. You do not quite understand what you have read.
- you read the following paragraph. Now, understanding this one is even more difficult, because Lacan is assuming that you have fully understood the previous one. Ok, third paragragh ... Should I continue?
- You either think that this book is non-sense or that you are stupid. Both conclusions are wrong.

As soon as you get the background - Lacan's non-sense makes perfect sense. Zizek give this background in a highly entertaining manner (his writing is a jewel - keeps you thinking "If only I could write like that!"). I am currently doing a PhD in literature, and I have to go through plenty of academic rubbish - dry and actually, useless critical books, that make use of Lacan, Foucault and others to get published and never be read. Zizec is a breath of fresh air.

Please believe me - do not give up on Lacan, do not call him bad names, (like "idiotic nonsense, nobody ever understood him, they were all pretending to understand him because they were afraid to look stupid in the 60s") - before you read Zizec.

5 out of 5 stars This book is great; those below who don't like it are clowns.......2002-09-22

Jacques Lacan's theories are completely, utterly undecipherable. The only way to begin to understand the fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory is to read somebody else writing on Lacan. And thank God Zizek does that for us. To understand Lacan, I've always had to turn to film theory critism--Laura Mulvey--but none of that ever goes beyond theories of the gaze, neglecting to dispell the mystery around some of the most basic concepts of Lacan. Zizek rolls through these various terms and ideas, always providing an exemplification of the idea in popular culture, usually in Hitchcock or within Sci-Fi genres, and then a clear-to-understand definition. So if you're confused as to what desire, drive, lack, objet a, other, Other, the Real, or the Thing are in terms of Lacanian jargon, this might be your book.

4 out of 5 stars Titling awry.......2001-07-08

This book is very interesting but I think it would have been better to call it "An Introduction to Popular Culture trhough Jaques Lacan". This would be a proper title because Zizek dedicates more space to tell us what some products of popular culture are about (i.e. Stephen King's novel "Pet Sematary"; Robert Sheckley's short story "The Store of the Worlds") than to explain, or even outline, the theories of Jaques Lacan. This in itself is not a critique, I just want to say that the title can be misleading. You will not find here an explanation or an introduction to Lacan, but rather a Lacanian reading or interpretation of some products of popular culture (novels, short stories and films.) If you are looking for an easy or brief rendering of Lacan, this book will not be of much help. Moreover, I would say that the readers who will profit the most are those who are already familiar with, or at least know something about, Lacanian thought. This said, I think that Zizek's Lacanian reading of popular works is very good in some cases, and somewhat poor in others. For example, he recalls the novel "Pet Sematary" but he explains almost nothing about it. The good cases, however, make it worth the effort to read the book (Zizek's writing is complicated, but so is Lacan's), and even if you do not agree with some of his points, they are still useful to encourage thought and discussion. If you are interested in the study of popular culture, the interpretation of film and literature, or in the application of Lacanian theory to social analysis, this book will certainly be of use.

3 out of 5 stars Looking Awry This Book.......2000-06-01

This book consists of three parts each of which treats so wide range of topics that there seems to be no logical consistency except Lacanian theory. In the first part, Zizek applys Lacanian theory on reality to various topics such as Zenofs paradox, Shakespearefs gHamleth, Stephen Kingfs gPet Semataryh, and Steven Spielbergfs gEmpire of the Sunh. Then, the second part focuses on Hitchcockfs works and the third part discusses gFantasy, Bureaucracy, Democracyh, however, both parts treat various works in popular culture, too. Actually, Zizek treats Lacanian theory on reality in the first part, on psychoanalysis in the second part, and on gthe Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Realh in the third part, and the third part arranges the preceding parts. But I feel that this book is about how to analyze popular culture rather than about Lacan. As an introduction to Jacques Lacan, I think this book is too difficult. However, this bookfs style which does not have a logical consistency like an ordinary thesis might be more easy to know Lacanian theory than compactly explaining book with many diagrams.
Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • Oh the Wonders of Lacan
  • Excellent translation
Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English
Jacques Lacan
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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  5. Lacan to the Letter: Reading Ecrits Closely Lacan to the Letter: Reading Ecrits Closely

ASIN: 0393329259

Book Description

"Fink's precise new translation makes this pivotal period in Lacan's thought more accessible to English speakers."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Brilliant and innovative, Jacques Lacan's work lies at the epicenter of modern thought about otherness, subjectivity, sexual difference, the drives, the law, and enjoyment. This new translation of his complete works offers welcome, readable access to Lacan's seminal thinking on diverse subjects touched upon over the course of his inimitable intellectual career.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Oh the Wonders of Lacan.......2007-09-23

While Lacan is in and of himself very difficult, this is a lovely complilation. Everything you need to atleast attempt to understand Lacan. Best of Luck, it's very much worth it!

5 out of 5 stars Excellent translation.......2007-03-03

This is a treat - the first complete English translation of Lacan's Ecrits with a wonderful translation by Bruce Fink. After reading a couple pieces, I compared with Sheridan's previous partial translation and found a number of differences. Overall, Fink tends to be more readable and, I suspect, accurate.

Since you're probably already aware of Lacan's thought and importance, I won't go into that here and will restrict my comments to this particular edition. Fink provides endnotes on the translation of certain difficult words and explains how he dealt with them, sometimes with specific examples for particularly tricky sections. It's clear that he understands Lacan's text inside and out. Additionally, his endnotes prove very helpful in understanding some of the German and Latin in Lacan's writing. Because I'm not an expert in psychoanalysis, I found Fink's explanations of certain terms and ideas very helpful.

Lacan provides an index of major concerts, but this was a bit different than what I was expecting. Rather than explicitly stating "The Symbolic Order means . . . ", he gives a general area where the read is encouraged to discover its essence. This is, all things considered, probably a better way to handle the situation for, as we know, Lacan's concepts do not fit into neat little summaries or paraphrases.

Overall, Norton did a great job putting this together. Provided you have the time to sit down and really spend some time with these essays, I definitely recommend this. Even if you don't always agree with Lacan's thought, Ecrits provides some excellent mental stimulation
The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • Rogers trusts her readers
  • At a loss for words
  • Profound, inspiring, helpful!
  • Illuminating
The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma
Annie Rogers
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1400061954
Release Date: 2006-08-08

Book Description

In her twenty years as a clinical psychologist, Annie Rogers has learned to understand the silent language of girls who will not–who cannot–speak about devastating sexual trauma. Abuse too painful to put into words does have a language, though, a language of coded signs and symptoms that conventional therapy fails to understand. In this luminous, deeply moving book, Rogers reveals how she has helped many girls find expression and healing for the sexual trauma that has shattered their childhoods.

Rogers opens with a harrowing account of her own emotional collapse in childhood and goes on to illustrate its significance to how she hears and understands trauma in her clinical work. Years after her breakdown, when she discovered the brilliant work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Rogers at last had the key she needed to unlock the secrets of the unsayable. With Lacan’s theory of language and its layered associations as her guide, Rogers was able to make startling connections with seemingly unreachable girls who had lost years of childhood, who had endured the unspeakable in silence.

At the heart of the book is the searing portrait of the girl Rogers calls Ellen, brutally abused for three years by her teenage male babysitter. Over the course of seven years of therapy, Rogers helped Ellen find words for the terrible things that had happened to her, face up to the unconscious patterns through which she replayed the trauma, and learn to live beyond the shadows of the past. Through Ellen’s story, Rogers illuminates the complex, intimate unraveling of trauma between therapist and child, as painful truths and their consequences come to light in unexpected ways.

Like Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, The Unsayable is a book with the power to change the way we think about suffering and self-expression. For those who have experienced psychological trauma, and for those who yearn to help, this brave, compelling book will be a touchstone of lucid understanding and true healing.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Rogers trusts her readers.......2007-08-19

I am not an expert in this field.
This book was an introduction to a deep way of thinking about humanity.
About Freud and psychoanalysis.
The book takes the reader through a process. The authors experience, clues, cases, clues, structure, clues. Trusting the reader, Ann Rogers takes the care to let our consciousness unfold. The material and stories of the girls and of her reactions is frightening. Horrifying. Her technique of not blaming the perpetrator nor leaving the victim in the sole role of victim was difficult but at the same time open doors to understanding the past, the behaviors and the future.
I can't recommend it more highly.

5 out of 5 stars At a loss for words.......2007-02-24

It's probably not a coincidence that it is difficult to put into words what Annie has communicated in her book about the hidden language of trauma. Through her entrancing and lyrical use of language, she somehow magically illustrates how the invisible marks of trauma on the body repeatedly surface through the spoken--and more importantly non-spoken--language. In her work with traumatized children, Annie mirrors back traces of their unconscious she remarkably detects in both their words and silences, and ultimately helps the child to give voice to the haunting "unsayable."

Admittedly, I am still trying to process all that was said in this book. And as I do so, I take comfort in Annie's final words of the book when she said: "..if your body in pieces has begun to speak, and if you are now brimming with words and their sounds--and you're no longer sure of what you're hearing or saying...you are the one person I've written this for, the one to whom I entrust these words."

5 out of 5 stars Profound, inspiring, helpful!.......2006-11-30

I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I'm just beginning to deal with it at the age of 17. An older friend of mine sent me this book in hopes it would help.
I didn't expect it to help so much.

I went through it with a highlighter, marking all the meaningful, important lines; each page is near fully yellowed.

I read this book in a week. I could not put it down.

Highly, highly recommended--not only for CSA survivors, but for psychologists, and anyone else interested in understanding.

5 out of 5 stars Illuminating.......2006-08-22

With an emphasis on words and the associations we make with them, Rogers unveils how some children continue to re-experience and re-live past trauma. First, she describes her own childhood crises in a narrative that is both revealing and intimate. She describes her state in ways that allow one to experience it as she had, instead of something simply as foreign and "over with." Then, through example, we follow her as she tries to understand what the children's gestures and words are trying to "say" without their being able to verbalize it. However, she uses the children's own meanings of things (instead of simply standard symbolic meanings) to re-explain to them what has happened and how it continues to persist in their lives, unwittingly. This is what keeps it fresh and real. Moreover, throughout the book, there is an unstated underlying stream of empathy and relatedness. A great book.
Jacques Lacan & Co: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985
Average customer rating: Not rated
    Jacques Lacan & Co: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985
    Elisabeth Roudinesco
    Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Hardcover

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    ASIN: 0226729974

    Book Description

    "Roudinesco provides a finely drawn map of the intellectual debates within French psychoanalysis, especially under the influence of the German emigrés during the 1930s and 1940s. She is a good historian, in that she provides not only a narrative history but also extensive passages from Lacan's own oral-history interviews with the various figures, so that we have not only her commentary but some flavor of the original documentation. Many of the quotes are gems."—Sander I. Gilman, Bulletin of the History of Medicine
    Jacques Lacan (Routledge Critical Thinkers)
    Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    • A well written introduction into the Labyrinth of Lacanian thought
    Jacques Lacan (Routledge Critical Thinkers)
    Sean Homer
    Manufacturer: Routledge
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    4. Michel Foucault (Routledge Critical Thinkers) Michel Foucault (Routledge Critical Thinkers)
    5. How to Read Lacan (How to Read) How to Read Lacan (How to Read)

    ASIN: 0415256178

    Book Description

    This volume provides an excellent introduction to the work of Jacques Lacan, covering all of Lacan's major concepts such as the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. Sean Homer draws on a number of examples from the fields of literary, film, gender and cultural studies to help explain these difficult concepts, and explores the ways in which Lacanian psychoanalytic theory has impacted on these areas. This is the ideal introduction to the work of one of the most important theorists and thinkers of our time for scholars working within a variety of disciplines.

    Customer Reviews:

    5 out of 5 stars A well written introduction into the Labyrinth of Lacanian thought.......2007-02-08

    I have been struggling with Lacan for some time and have read several introductions. Sean Homer's book is one of the best; therefore I would like to recommend it. Homer concentrates on the most important concepts in Lacan's philosophy and gives at the end of each chapter a short summery. May be this takes away much of the complexity of Lacan's thought, but knowing what his writing is all about might be still very helpful before entering in the labyrinth of the French philosopher's thought.
    The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan , Book 11)
    Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
    • Not the Best of Lacan
    • The Master - but not for all!
    • Not worth the time and effort
    • No explanation needed. Lacan rocks my world.
    The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan , Book 11)
    Jacques Lacan
    Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

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    5. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II : The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955 (Seminar of Jacques Lacan) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II : The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955 (Seminar of Jacques Lacan)

    ASIN: 0393317757

    Book Description

    Jacques Lacan's writings, and especially the seminars for which he has become famous, offer a controversial, radical reappraisal of the legacy bequeathed by Freud. This volume is based on a year's seminar in which Dr. Lacan addressed a larger, less specialized audience than ever before, among whom he could not assume familiarity with his work. For his listeners then, and for his readers now, he wanted to "introduce a certain coherence into the major concepts on which psycho-analysis is based," namely, the unconscious, repetition, the transference, and the drive. Along the way he argues for a structural affinity between psychoanalysis and language, discusses the relation of psychoanalysis to religion, and reveals his particular stance on topics ranging from sexuality and death to alienation and repression. This book constitutes the essence of Dr. Lacan's sensibility.

    Also available from Lacan's Seminar: Book I, Freud's Writings on Technique; Book II, The Theory of the Ego in Psychoanalytic Theory; Book III, The Psychoses; Book VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis; and Book XX, On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge (all from Norton).

    Customer Reviews:

    3 out of 5 stars Not the Best of Lacan.......2005-06-10

    I love Lacan, and refer to him often in my own work in the Anthropology of Gender, but this particular book is rather befuddled and vague, and I would never submit my own students to it. It may be due to translation (sadly enough, I do not read French), but if you are interested in Lacan's approach to psychoanalysis, I suggest you read Ecrits, unless you are an intellectual masochist.

    5 out of 5 stars The Master - but not for all!.......2002-04-18

    Lacan must be read with care. He is not for everybody. He is for those who are interested in the mind, in desire, in language. Specifically, for those who have developed an interest in "theory" or "post-structuralism", which he helped to develop. In this volume Lacan sets out some key concepts in his thinking - but he does not do so systematically! Do not expect him to explain everything to you in a clear, linear fashion. Rather, he plays on words and on ideas, he maneuvers and evades, he skirts around the issue, and comes back to it. Have patience if you choose to read him - discuss his writings with others. If you do this, you may come to understand why Lacan is regarded with so much respect in France and has virtualy reared an entire generation of first-rate theorists and thinkers.

    It will help (but will not guarantee understanding) if you have some background in Freud, even if it is only a slight one. Good luck!

    1 out of 5 stars Not worth the time and effort.......2001-05-04

    First, let me start off by saying that I am an intellectual historian with a great passion for the history of ideas, especially those dealing with the mind and how it works-- psychoanalytic thought in particular. I'm well used to reading works that are dense, difficult, and jargon-laden. I'm also quite familiar with intellectual traditions that Lacan is responding to, borrowing from, and those that he himself has inspired (most notably the tradition of French psychoanalytical feminism a la Irigaray, Cixous, Kristeva, etc). I say all this not to pat myself on the back, but to provide some context for this review: I am *not* someone who hates books just because they're difficult, or because they're about such rarefied subjects.

    However, I cannot in good intellectual faith recommend this book to anyone. Partly, I freely admit, this is because I really don't think Lacan has really all that much to say. While I don't deny the fact that he *was* instrumental in putting a structuralist (and then post-structuralist) turn in psychoanalysis in some of his early essays (such as appear in "Ecrits") as well as pioneering contraversial new techniques of therapy, such as the variable-length session). But since those early daysthen, his reputation was due more to his charismatic personality and his influential friends within the French academic world, rather than because he had all that much to say.

    This book is a perfect example of that. Taken from one of his mid-period seminars (essentially series of lecture courses), Lacan babbles, obfuscates, metaphorizes,and jokes his way through a set of vaguely philosophical points about the mind that could probably have been adequately summarized in a single lecture, or maybe 20-30 pages. (Note to readers of Freud, Jung, Adler, etc. Please be aware that, unlike those guys, Lacan makes no references whatsoever to practical therapeutic experiences to back up his claims; this is pure theoretical speculation. Also, don't expect Lacan's use of terms like 'drive', 'unconscious' or 'transference' to have anything in common with the more conventional psychoanalytical meanings of those terms.) His use of metaphors has a haphazard quality to it that, at times, borders on the nonsensical-- particularly when he starts borrowing them from fields that he clearly doesn't understand very well himself, such as topology. That said, it's undeniable that Lacan's audience was enamoured of his performance. The questions and answers that are included here show a rapt and almost fawning reverence for the man they affectionately refer to as "The Master". But what does a reader, not able to bask in the warm glow of Lacan's personal charisma, get out of this? Not much.... a tiny handful of rehashed ideas, and a few witty phrases here and there, but mostly one gets a lot of dense, pointless verbiage from a man who seems like he's trying to hide the fact that he's got nothing new to say .

    If you're going to read Lacan, read some of the real stuff-- when he was actually putting forth new (and at the time, revolutionary) ideas like his essays on "The Mirror Stage", "The Form and Function of the Letter", and "Agressivity in Psychoanalysis"-- or, if you must, some of the early seminars. But by this point, Lacan had long since ceased to be someone worth paying attention to-- and this book simply isn't worth the trouble it takes to get through it. (There are a lot of difficult works that *are* worth the trouble-- Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit", Marx's "Das Kapital", Heidegger's "Being and Time", and even a lot of works by the other post-structuralists with whom Lacan is often associated-- but believe me, this just isn't one of them).

    5 out of 5 stars No explanation needed. Lacan rocks my world........1998-10-16

    Most people who have read Lacan did so in an academic context, which can sour one's experience of truly useful texts. Yet I encourage those of you interested in learning more about psychoanalytic theory, and the way humans ARE in general, to pick up the Four Fun Concepts. Of course its content is difficult and subject to debate, but the benefits of reading Lacan, especially in conjunction with Freud (and even Irigaray, if need be) are immense. A MUST for artists, writers, historians, Psych students, feminist theorists, and anyone else who likes to learn and think.
    The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (Seminar of Jacques Lacan)
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      The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (Seminar of Jacques Lacan)
      Jacques Lacan
      Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Hardcover

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      ASIN: 0393062635

      Book Description

      Revolutionary and innovative, Jacques Lacan's work lies at the epicenter of modern thought about otherness, subjectivity, sexual difference, the law, and enjoyment.

      This new translation of Lacan's yearlong deliberation on psychoanalysis and contemporary social order offers welcome, readable access to the brilliant author's seminal thinking on Freud, Marx, and Hegel; patterns of social and sexual behavior; and the nature and function of science and knowledge in the contemporary world.
      The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading
      Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
      • That dingbat!
      • Rsponse to the above review
      • This book had potential but I was not interested in it.
      The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading

      Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      5. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan , Book 11) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan , Book 11)

      ASIN: 0801832934

      Book Description

      Jacques Lacan's seminar on "The Purloined Letter" at once challenged literary theorists and revealed a radically new conception of psychoanalysis. His far-reaching claims about language and truth provoked a vigorous critique by Jacques Derrida, whose essay in turn has spawned further responses from Barbara Johnson, Jane Gallop, Irene Harvey, Norman Holland, and others.

      Customer Reviews:

      3 out of 5 stars That dingbat!.......2006-01-22

      No, I don't think that person filed the wrong review; they're from Miami, Florida, that pretty much explains it

      4 out of 5 stars Rsponse to the above review.......1999-11-27

      Although I have not finished the book yet, I needed to respond to the other reviewer who wrote that this is not a good mystery. You dingbat! This is a work in philosophy and psychology, not fiction! If you don't even have the slightest clue regarding a text, do not review it!

      3 out of 5 stars This book had potential but I was not interested in it........1999-10-25

      I repeat I am not a big fan of mystery novels but this one was not mysterious at all. Edgar Allen Poe left out the suspenseful feeling that every mystery should contain.
      The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960 (Seminar of Jacques Lacan)
      Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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      The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960 (Seminar of Jacques Lacan)
      Jacques Lacan
      Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

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      4. Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English
      5. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II : The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955 (Seminar of Jacques Lacan) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II : The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955 (Seminar of Jacques Lacan)

      ASIN: 0393316130

      Book Description

      One of the most influential French intellectuals of this century, Lacan is seen here at the height of his powers. Lacan dedicates this seventh year of his famous seminar to the problematic role of ethics in psychoanalysis. Delving into the psychoanalyst's inevitable involvement with ethical questions and "the attraction of transgression," Lacan illuminates Freud's psychoanalytic work and its continued influence. Lacan explores the problem of sublimation, the paradox of jouissance, the essence of tragedy (a reading of Sophocle's Antigone), and the tragic dimension of analytic experience. His exploration leads us to startling insights on "the consequence of man's relationship to desire" and the conflicting judgments of ethics and analysis.

      Customer Reviews:

      5 out of 5 stars Satisfaction of Hours.......2007-04-04

      Lacan is one of the most enigmatic, fascinating, and turgid philosophers (argue if you will)/creators to have ever lived. This volume is Lacan at his best. One may spend hours on an essay, Das Ding, for example. The pay-off, however, is incalculable. His interpretation of Antigone in this volume rates among the best ever elaborated by a theorist of any type. He shows this first true literary heroine in all of her sublimity. Whereas Heidegger deals with Antigone abstractly, Lacan writes as if he knew her: as if her loved her and needs to tell us the motivation behind her tragic necessity. While perhaps not the perfect Seminar of Lacan's with which to begin, it is far from the worst. Certainly it is essential once one has been introduced to Lacan's thought. Moreover, the very title of the Seminar, "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis," is enough to justify the time it takes to examine it. Indeed, the title is to be taken in two senses, both as the ethical doctrine that should be practiced by the analyst, and as a possible opening into an altogether different experience of thinking about ethics for the non-analyst. This is a truly essential book.

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