An exploration of a new concept in critical political theory: the Lacanian Left. This is a field of theoretical and political interventions sharing a common interest in discussing the relevance of ...Lacanianism and psychoanalysis for contemporary theory.
Has Jacques Lacan's impact on psychoanalysis really been assessed? His formulation that the Freudian unconscious is "structured like a language" is well-known, but this was only the beginning. There ...was then the radically new thesis of the "real unconscious". Why this step? Searching for the Ariadne's thread that runs throughout Lacan's ever-evolving teaching, this book illuminates the questions implicit in each step, and sheds new light on his revisions and renewals of psychoanalytic concepts. In tracing these, the author brings out their consequences for the clinic, and in particular, for the subject, for symptoms, for affects, and for the aims of treatment itself. The last section of the book examines the political import of these developments. If many analysts since Freud have dreamt of reinventing psychoanalysis, the author shows the ways in which Lacan succeeded in this reinvention.
Argues that Lacan's contributions to the theory of rhetoric are substantial and revolutionary and that rhetoric is, in fact, the central concern of Lacan's entire body of work. Lacan's conception of ...rhetoric, Christian Lundberg argues in Lacan in Public, upsets and extends the received wisdom of American rhetorical studies.
Lacan and Levi-Strauss are often mentioned together in reviews of French structuralist thought, but what really links their distinct projects? In this important study, the author shows how Lacan's ...famous 'return to Freud' was only made possible through Lacan's reading of Levi-Strauss. Via a careful and illuminating comparison of the work of the psychoanalyst and that of the anthropologist, Zafiropoulos shows how Lacan's theories of the symbolic function, of the power of language, of the role of the father and even of the unconscious itself owe a major debt to Levi-Strauss. Lacan and Levi-Strauss is much more than an academic study of the relations between these two thinkers: it is also a superb introduction to the work of Lacan, setting out with detail and lucidity the major concepts of his work in the 1950s.
Psychoanalysis was neither a product of philosophy nor of academic study. Rather, psychoanalysis was born in the clinic. Freud took his lead from hysterical women; the accounts of their pain, ...anxieties and physical symptoms led him to formulate his theories on the existence of the unconscious.
The graph of desire is one of the principal points of reference in Lacanian psychoanalysis. In this book the graph is analyzed in its multiple aspects and relations. Step by step, the author ...reveals and considers formulations from the simplest to the most complex. The treatment of this issue does not deal only with the development and explanation of its logical, mathematical and topological aspects but also goes through the psychoanalytical theory and practice. The author has immersed himself in Lacans text The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious to uncover and bring this fascinating subject to light.
This book presents an evolving Lacanian reading of the psychoanalytic theory of narcissism, of the phases within Oedipus, transference, and within different types of analytic treatments. Sexual ...difference between psychical masculinity and femininity is formulated as a negative dialectic: both sexes are not without having and not having the phallus across levels of logical organization and the three registers of experience. Many clinical examples and vignettes are offered to illustrate Lacanian theory, the permutations within sexuation, as well as the various principles of Lacanian clinical practice. The Lacanian multiform criterion for the practice of psychoanalysis is presented as an alternative to the post-Freudian notions of a standard frame, or a holding environment. The criterion extends the use of psychoanalysis to a larger group of clinical, socio-economic, and multicultural populations. Finally, the book explores the criteria used for the authorization of the analyst, and how supervision differs from analysis, and from the teacher-student and lover-beloved relationships.
This striking Lacanian contribution to discourse analysis is also a critique of contemporary psychological abstraction, as well as a reassessment of the radical opposition between psychology and ...psychoanalysis. This original introduction to Lacan’s work bridges the gap between discourseanalytical debates in social psychology and the social-theoretical extensions of discourse theory. David Pavón Cuéllar provides a precise definition and a detailed explanation of key Lacanian concepts, and illustrates how they may be put to work on a concrete discourse, in this case a fragment of an interview obtained by the author from the Mexican underground Popular Revolutionary Forces (EPR). Throughout the book, Lacanian concepts are compared to their counterparts in psychology. Such a comparison reveals insuperable incompatibilities between the two series of concepts. The author shows that Lacan’s psychoanalytical terminology can neither be translated nor assimilated to the terms of current psychology. Among the notions in actual or potential competition with Lacanian concepts, the book deals with those proposed by semiology, Marxism, phenomenology, constructionism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. Taking a stand on those theoretical positions, each chapter includes detailed discussion of the contribution of classical approaches to language; including Barthes, Bakhtin, Althusser, Politzer, Wittgenstein, Berger and Luckmann, Derrida, and Ricoeur. There is sustained reference in the body of the text to the arguments of Lacan and Lacanians, of Miller, Milner, Soler, and Žižek. At the same time, in the extensive notes accompanying the text, there is a systematic reappraisal and reinterpretation of debates and pieces of research work in social psychology, especially in a discursive and critical domain that has incorporated elements of psychoanalytic theory.
Departing from the traditional German school of music theorists, Michael Klein injects a unique French critical theory perspective into the framework of music and meaning. Using primarily Lacanian ...notions of the symptom, that unnamable jouissance located in the unconscious, and the registers of subjectivity (the Imaginary, the Symbolic Order, and the Real), Klein explores how we understand music as both an artistic form created by "the subject" and an artistic expression of a culture that imposes its history on this modern subject. By creatively navigating from critical theory to music, film, fiction, and back to music, Klein distills the kinds of meaning that we have been missing when we perform, listen to, think about, and write about music without the insights of Lacan and others into formulations of modern subjectivity.
With chapters from Rik Loose, Fabian Naparstek, Patricia Gherovici, Bruce Fink, Thomos Svolos and many others, the anthology is for people interested in the topic of addictions, or in Lacanian ...psychoanalysis, and especially for those interested in how the two intersect. Lacan and Addiction is based on papers presented at a 2006 conference where Lacanians from around the world gathered to speak about addictions. Conference participants explored the complexity of the problem for the individual, society, clinicians, and for treatment. In the current climate, where addiction is mostly treated by variations of twelve step approaches and psychopharmacological "countermeasures", it is all too easy to lose sight of the dimensions of addiction that render it not just a disease to be managed but rather a significant form of human suffering and a subjective responsibility, both of which are critical components of addiction treatment. More and more, addiction treatment is turning away from psychological and psychoanalytic theorization and towards psychopharmacological measures; this anthology attempts to rectify that situation.
