This work presents thoughts on the Lacanian subject: What are we as a speaking being? What makes us a human subject from a psychoanalytic perspective? Is it feelings and affect that make us a human? Or was it the Freudian invention of the unconscious that drew a line between human and a non-human? What can be learnt from the subject of the unconscious in the clinic of psychoanalysis that can help us to approach these questions? Berjanet Jazani takes examples from the psychoanalytic clinic as well as cultural references ranging from ancient Persia to London’s Theatreland in order to elaborate the question of subjectivity, reality and truth from a psychoanalytic perspective. In the era of hyperreality, the agency of branding and marketing strategies has overshadowed the reality of a human being, his true nature and agency. The hyperreality of contemporary society creates in each individual a false hope of becoming a high-fidelity copy of their idols, and such a fallacy has led many to believe that this is what determines their being in a social bond. Jazani explores the question of the reality and mortality of a subject through a Lacanian prism, from the theorising of analytical subjectivity that starts with the Freudian Oedipal myth more than a century ago to the futurist aspiration to fabricate human beings according to some ideal model. This book will be important reading for students and academics of Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as professionals concerned with complex social problems.

The Perfume of Soul from Freud to Lacan seeks to understand the human sense of smell and its marks on our subjectivity from a psychoanalytic perspective. Accessibly written, the book considers whether our understanding of the sense of smell and odours in culture has changed over time, and where we locate olfaction in theories of psychoanalysis. Beginning with the theorisation of the sense of smell in philosophy and medicine, Berjanet Jazani explores what treatment of this sense we can find in historical and contemporary linguistic and cultural context. Jazani then takes examples from the psychoanalytic clinic as well as cultural references, from cinema to ancient literature, to elaborate the marks of the olfactory experiences on our subjectivity and sexuality. Lacanian theories, clinical anecdotes and autobiographical references are woven together to raise some critical questions about the law of odours as well as the invisible marks of breathing on subjective position, body, and symptom. The Perfume of Soul from Freud to Lacan will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, academics, and all readers who are interested in psychoanalysis, philosophy, and culture.

Originally published in 1991, this volume tackles the diverse teachings of the great psychoanalyst and theoretician. Written by some of the leading American and European Lacanian scholars and practitioners, the essays attempt to come to terms with his complex relation to the culture of contemporary psychoanalysis. The volume presents useful insights into Lacan’s innovative theories on the nature of language and the subject. Many of the essays probe the importance of psychoanalysis for problems of signifier and referent in the philosophy of language; others explore the difficulties men and women have in negotiating the sexual differences that divide them. A major contribution to the new reception of Jacques Lacan in the English-speaking world, Lacan and the Subject of Language will challenge those who believe that they have already ‘mastered’ Lacanian thought. The insights offered here will pave the way for further developments.

This book presents the radically new theory of subjectivity found in the work of Jacques Lacan. Against the tide of post-structuralist thinkers who announce "the death of the subject," Bruce Fink explores what it means to come into being as a subject where impersonal forces once reigned, subjectify the alien roll of the dice at the beginning of our universe, and make our own knotted web of our parents' desires that led them to bring us into this world. Lucidly guiding readers through the labyrinth of Lacanian theory--unpacking such central notions as the Other, object a, the unconscious as structures like a language, alienation and separation, the paternal metaphor, jouissance, and sexual difference--Fink demonstrates in-depth knowledge of Lacan's theoretical and clinical work. Indeed, this is the first book to appear in English that displays a firm grasp of both theory and practice of Lacanian psychoanalysis, the author being one of the only Americans to have undergone full training with Lacan's school in Paris. Fink Leads the reader step by step into Lacan's conceptual system to explain how one comes to be a subject--leading to psychosis. Presenting Lacan's theory in the context of his clinical preoccupations, Fink provides the most balanced, sophisticated, and penetrating view of Lacan's work to date--invaluable to the initiated and the uninitiated alike.

In Essays on the Pleasure of Death, Ellie Ragland discusses the interconnection of Freud and Lacan's theories, while maintaining that crucial differences between them still exist. Ragland argues, however, that Lacan's "return to Freud" gave coherence to concepts which Freud could never explain: psychosis, narcissism, the body and the death drive. Drawing upon Lacan's untranslated seminars through 1981, Ragland analyzes his theories of the death drive and the concept of jouissance, the driving force behind language and libido. Along with her examination of Lacanian theories about the body, meaning systems, and how they shape reality, Ragland also discusses the ethical problems of psychoanalysis and the ways in which Lacan's work points to the inadequacies of terms like "sexuality" and "gender."

The immensely influential work of Jacques Lacan challenges readers both for the difficulty of its style and for the wide range of intellectual references that frame its innovations. Lacan’s work is challenging too, for the way it recentres psychoanalysis on one of the most controversial points of Freud’s theory – the concept of a self-destructive drive or ‘death instinct’. Originally published in 1991, Death and Desire presents in Lacanian terms a new integration of psychoanalytic theory in which the battery of key Freudian concepts – from the dynamics of the Oedipus complex to the topography of ego, id, and superego – are seen to intersect in Freud’s most far-reaching and speculative formulation of a drive toward death. Boothby argues that Lacan repositioned the theme of death in psychoanalysis in relation to Freud’s main concern – the nature and fate of desire. In doing so, Lacan rediscovered Freud’s essential insights in a manner so nuanced and penetrating that prevailing assessments of the death instinct may well have to be re-examined. Although the death instinct is usually regarded as the most obscure concept in Freud’s metapsychology, and Lacan to be the most perplexing psychoanalytic theorist, Richard Boothby’s straightforward style makes both accessible. He illustrates the coherence of Lacanian thought and shows how Lacan’s work comprises a ‘return to Freud’ along new and different angles of approach. Written with an eye to the conceptual structure of psychoanalytic theory, Death and Desire will appeal to psychoanalysts and philosophers alike.

This book weaves together three themes at the intersection of Jacques Lacan and the philosophical tradition. The first is the question of time and memory. How do these problems call for a revision of Lacan’s purported “ahistoricism,” and how does the temporality of the subject in Lacan intersect with the questions of temporality initiated by Heidegger and then developed by contemporary French philosophy? The second question concerns the status of the body in Lacanian theory, especially in connection with emotion and affect, which Lacanian theory is commonly thought to ignore, but which the concept of jouissance was developed to address. Finally, it aims to explore, beyond the strict limits of Lacanian theory, possible points of intersection between psychoanalysis and other domains, including questions of race, biology, and evolutionary theory. By stressing the question of affect, the book shows how Lacan’s position cannot be reduced to the structuralist models he nevertheless draws upon, and thus how the problem of the body may be understood as a formation that marks the limits of language. Exploring the anthropological category of “race” within a broadly evolutionary perspective, it shows how Lacan’s elaboration of the “imaginary” and the “symbolic” might allow us to explain human physiological diversity without reducing it to a cultural or linguistic construction or allowing “race” to remain as a traditional biological category. Here again the questions of history and temporality are paramount, and open the possibility for a genuine dialogue between psychoanalysis and biology. Finally, the book engages literary texts. Antigone, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Hamlet, and even Wordsworth become the muses who oblige psychoanalysis and philosophy to listen once again to the provocations of poetry, which always disrupts our familiar notions of time and memory, of history and bodily or affective experience, and of subjectivity itself.