Lacan developed his theory and practice of psychoanalysis on the basis of Freud's original work. In his "return to Freud" he not only elaborated and revised some of Freud's innovative ideas, but turned to important questions and problems in Freud's theory that had remained obscure and unresolved, and provided a new way of articulating these issues and their implication for psychoanalytic theory and practice. This book offers a selection of chapters about some of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. The authors aim to explore the trajectory of the development of these concepts from their original basis in Freud's work to their elaboration by Lacan. The book will be of interest to readers from different backgrounds, including the clinical and academic field, social and cultural studies and the arts, for whom psychoanalytic ideas may be a relatively new field to explore, or who are looking for new perspectives to develop their ideas about psychoanalysis.

Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan brings a unique, non-partisan approach to the work of Jacques Lacan, linking his psychoanalytic theory and ideas to broader debates in philosophy and the social sciences, in a book that shows how it is possible to see the value of Lacanian concepts without necessarily being defined by them. In accessible, conversational language, the book provides a clear-sighted overview of the key ideas within Lacan’s work, situating them at the apex of the linguistic turn. It deconstructs the three Lacanian orders – the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real – as well as a range of core Lacanian concepts, including alienation and separation, après-coup, and the Lacanian doctrine of temporality. Arguing that criticism of psychoanalysis for a lack of scientificity should be accepted by the discipline, the book suggests that the work of Lacan can be helpful in re-conceptualizing the role of psychoanalysis in the future. This accessible introduction to the work of Jacques Lacan will be essential reading for anyone coming to Lacan for the first time, as well as clinicians and scholars already familiar with his work. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and scholars of philosophy and cultural studies.

In reasoned progression he outlined core psychoanalytic concepts, such as repression, free association and libido. Of the various English translations of Freud's major works to appear in his lifetime, only one was authorized by Freud himself: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud under the general editorship of James Strachey. Freud approved the overall editorial plan, specific renderings of key words and phrases, and the addition of valuable notes, from bibliographical and explanatory. Many of the translations were done by Strachey himself; the rest were prepared under his supervision. The result was to place the Standard Edition in a position of unquestioned supremacy over all other existing versions. Newly designed in a uniform format, each new paperback in the Standard Edition opens with a biographical essay on Freud's life and work --along with a note on the individual volume--by Peter Gay, Sterling Professor of History at Yale.

Arguably the most profound psychoanalytic thinker since Freud, and deeply influential in many fields, Jacques Lacan often seems opaque to those he most wanted to reach. These are the readers Bruce Fink addresses in this clear and practical account of Lacan's highly original approach to therapy. Written by a clinician for clinicians, Fink's introduction is an invaluable guide to Lacanian psychoanalysis, how it's done, and how it differs from other forms of therapy. While elucidating many of Lacan's theoretical notions, the book does so from the perspective of the practitioner faced with the pressing questions of diagnosis, which therapeutic stance to adopt, how to involve the patient, and how to bring about change.

"A major and long overdue addition to the America/English psychoanalytic literature. . . . All major concepts—among them the mirror stage, the Name-of-the-Father, metaphor and metonymy, the phallus, the foreclosure of the subject—are developed in depth." -Nicholas Kouretsas, Harvard Medical School

Designed for novices as well as students of psychology and literary criticism, these systematic lectures do much to clarify Lacan's groundbreaking work on the birth of the subject and its links with Freud's theory of drives. Moreover, they answer some of the criticisms that have been leveled at Lacan by forms of psychoanalysis unable or unwilling to incorporate his ideas.

Psychoanalysis―Lacan said―is a practical way to feel better. This book can be considered an explanation of this sentence. Based on two seminars held at San Francisco, it explains how psychoanalysis improves and enhances our style of enjoying life. A detailed study of the different ways in which words impact the body makes the dynamics of interpretations that animates the economy of "jouissances" in a psychoanalytic treatment easily understandable. Structured like most seminars in the Freudian Field, this study is self-contained, does not presuppose previous training, and in a short time pushes the reader to the current state of the art in the issue at hand.