The Lacanian tradition is unique among psychoanalytic schools in its influence upon academic fields such as literature, philosophy, cultural and critical studies. This book aims to make Lacan's ideas accessible and relevant also to mainstream psychoanalysts, and to showcase developments in Lacanian thinking since his death in 1981. The volume highlights the clinical usefulness of such concepts as the paternal metaphor, the formula of fantasy, psychic structure, the central role of desire and the interlinking of the individual subject in the matrix of the Other. While these themes are woven through all the papers, each is a highly individual reflection upon some aspect of Lacanian theory, practice or history. Bernard Burgoyne's close study of the sources of Lacan's academic inspirations clarifies many of his ideas; Sara Flanders' remarkable overview of the field of French psychoanalysis situates Lacan firmly at its centre; while Lionel Bailly's exposition of Lacan's version of the Oedipus Complex reclaims a currently fashionable area of psychoanalysis for the man who alone in the 1950s made the case for the necessity of the tripartite structure of object-relations in the psyche. Berges and Balbo's work shows Lacanian thinking presaging recent evidence-based ideas of how mother-baby interactions bring into being the ability to mentalise and the development of subjectivity itself. Nobus' paper encapsulates the trajectory and aim of a Lacanian analysis. These pages will, the editors hope, open the reader's eyes to the fertility and importance of the Lacan tradition and bring it closer into the fold of psychoanalytic thought.
Table of Contents:
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS x
PREFACE x
Lionel Bailly
INTRODUCTION x
Lionel Bailly, David Lichtenstein & Sham Bailly
PART I: SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS
CHAPTER ONE
The Changing forms of a research programme x
Bernard Burgoyne
CHAPTER TWO
French Psychoanalyis and Lacan x
Sara Flanders
CHAPTER THREE
The Founding Act, the Cartel and the riddle of the PLUS ONE x
Cormac Gallagher
PART TWO: SOME CENTRAL CONCEPTS
CHAPTER FOUR
Lacan’s version of the Oedipus Complex x
Lionel Bailly
CHAPTER FIVE
Object a x
Alain Vanier
CHAPTER SIX
An Essay on Transitivism
Jean Berges and Gabriel Balbo x
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Logical Time of Diagnosis: Terms and Conditions of the Symptom
in the Lacanian Tradition x
Dany Nobus
PART THREE: SOME CLINICAL REFLECTIONS
CHAPTER EIGHT
The borderlines between psychiatry and psychoanalysis x
Néstor A. Braunstein
CHAPTER NINE
Two Affects: Love and Hate x
Colette Soler
CHAPTER TEN
The Desire Of The Analyst And Counter-Transference
From the mirror analyst to the desiring analyst x
Maurice Khoury
PART FOUR: BEYOND THE CLINIC
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The letter against literary interpretation: Lacan’s critique of literature x
Jean-Michel Rabaté
CHAPTER TWELVE
A New Psychic Economy x
Charles Melman
