This book explores the place of the flesh in the linguistically-inflected categories of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, drawing explicit attention to the organic as an inherent part of the linguistic categories that appear in the writings of Freud and Lacan. Lacan’s ‘return to Freud’ famously involves a ‘linguistic turn’ in psychoanalysis. The centering of language as a major operator in psychic life often leads to a dualistic or quasi-dualistic view in which language and the enjoyment of the body are polarized. Exploring the intricate connections of the linguistic and the organic in both Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis from its beginnings, Zisser shows that surprisingly, and not only in Lacan’s late teaching, psycho-linguistic categories turn out to be suffused with organicity. After unfolding the remnant of the flesh in the signifier as a major component of Lacan’s critique of Saussure, using visual artworks as objective correlatives as it does so, the book delineates two forms of psychic writing. These are aligned not only with two fundamental states of the psychic apparatus as described by Freud (pain and satisfaction), but with two ways of sculpting formulated by Alberti in the Renaissance but also referred to by Freud. Continuing in a Derridean vein, the book demonstrates the primacy of writing to speech in psychoanalysis, emphasizing how the relation between speech and writing is not binary but topological, as speech in its psychoanalytic conception is nothing but the folding inside-out of unconscious writing. Innovatively placing the flesh at the core of its approach, the text also incorporates the seminal work of psychoanalyst Michèle Montrelay to articulate the precise relation between the linguistic and the organic. Writing, Speech and Flesh in Lacanian Psychoanalysis will be indispensable to psychoanalysts, literary theorists, rhetoricians, deconstructionists, and those studying at the intersection of psychoanalysis, language, and the visual arts.

The Linguistic Turn of the English Renaissance: A Lacanian Perspective examines a selection of cultural phenomena of the English Renaissance, all of which include a focus on language, from a Lacanian perspective. The book examines four inter-related cultural symptoms of the English Renaissance: the paucity of painting, the interest in rhetoric, the emergence of a literary style focusing on form and a fascination with the myth of Orpheus. The book argues that the English Renaissance, an apex of rhetorical theory, can offer psychoanalysis further knowledge concerning the intrication of language and flesh, especially where feminine jouissance is at stake. These language-centred phenomena emerge against the backdrop of a peculiar configuration of the visual field, which in contrast to other cultures of the European Renaissance is largely barren of painting other than portraiture. The book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, scholars of Renaissance culture and those interested in the psychoanalytic study of culture.

Text into Flesh is concerned with implementing a post-structural, psycho-analytic examination of those short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer which address the discourse between language and the body. The connection between writing and the flesh insists, in the tales of Singer as in the Ecrits of Lacan, both of whom chronicle within their separate oeuvres the structure of complusion by which language may be imprinted on the body. Furthermore, Singer's stories with their magical resonances and fantastical configurations, would seem to yield to a psychoanalytic study, where myth, dream and fantasy are utilised as the instruments of psychic recovery. While studies of Singer's fiction have spanned historic, racial, generic and symbolic considerations, there is a lacunae in the body of theory which has neglected to explore the language of these tales and the cultural preoccupations inherent in the acts of speech, writing and exegesis in a particular community. This present study examines Singer's tales as cultural and linguistic artefacts by means of which a people's consciousness may be excavated. The task is in many ways facilitated by the specificity of Singer's enquiry. Whether his fictions describe the shtetl communities of Eastern Europe or the ghetto neighbourhoods of North America, the emphasis is on isolation, of a culture under siege and of the nature of their communications with the outside world.

The Linguistic Turn of the English Renaissance: A Lacanian Perspective examines a selection of cultural phenomena of the English Renaissance, all of which include a focus on language, from a Lacanian perspective. The book examines four inter-related cultural symptoms of the English Renaissance: the paucity of painting, the interest in rhetoric, the emergence of a literary style focusing on form, and a fascination with the myth of Orpheus. The book argues that the English Renaissance, an apex of rhetorical theory, can offer psychoanalysis further knowledge concerning the intrication of language and flesh, especially where feminine jouissance is at stake. These language-centred phenomena emerge against the backdrop of a peculiar configuration of the visual field, which in contrast to other cultures of the European Renaissance is largely barren of painting other than portraiture. The book will be of interest to psychoanalysts, scholars of Renaissance culture and those interested in the psychoanalytic study of 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 is the first to develop a Baudrillardian critique of the problematic way Lacanian psychoanalysis, as a clinical practice and by extension as a source of socio-cultural and philosophical theory, continues its vain attempt to (re)animate a subject of the unconscious. The text throws into question Lacan’s notion of the ‘real,’ the unconscious ‘structured as a language,’ and his construct of surplus, while interrogating the links between psychoanalysis and Marxism. It shows how Lacanian psychoanalysis, with its questionable ethics, transpires as an endlessly recursive simulation model. Lacan’s clinical seminar was influential in the intellectual milieu of Paris while Baudrillard was writing. Although frequently referring to psychoanalysis, Baudrillard never wrote a detailed critique of psychoanalysis; the scaffolding of such a work, however, transpires throughout the extent of his writing. The text also outlines Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of psychoanalysis stressing how the alternative they propose remains within the oppressive terms of our current world. This book is an essential resource for social, critical, cultural, literary, feminist, and psychoanalytic theory. While of interest to students, researchers, and scholars of Jean Baudrillard’s work and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this book particularly addresses those for whom not all is well with psychoanalysis, opening towards renewed directions through questioning.

This book provides an in-depth examination of Lacanian oriented psychotherapy and supervision, drawing on a wide range of Lacanian texts and rich interview data. Beginning with a comprehensive overview of the Lacanian psychoanalytic therapeutic process, it next considers this in relation to Lacanian texts – including, ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis’, ‘Direction of the Treatment’, ‘Lacanian Discourses’ and ‘Seminar XXIII’ – and interview data from ex-analysants and psychoanalysts.The second part of the book offers the first systematic discussion of Lacanian supervision. Through a sophisticated theoretical analysis and unique research material, Dries Dulsster has created an important reference point for students, scholars and clinicians that will appeal to those new to Lacanian practice, and those already deeply involved in it.