How To Read Lacan
Aug 2011 · Granta Books
4.5star
10 reviewsreport
eBook
128
Pages
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About this eBook
'The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire' Jacques Lacan.
Is psychoanalysis dead or are we to read frequent attacks on its theoretical 'mistakes' and clinical 'frauds' as a proof of its vitality? Slavoj Zizek's passionate defence of Lacan reasserts the ethical urgency of psychoanalysis. Traditionally, psychoanalysis was expected to allow the patient to overcome the obstacles which prevented access to 'normal' sexual enjoyment. Today, however, we are bombarded from all sides by different versions of the injunction 'Enjoy!' Lacan reminds us that psychoanalysis is the only discourse in which you are allowed not to enjoy. Since for Lacan psychoanalysis itself is a procedure of reading, each chapter uses a passage from Lacan as a tool to interpret another text from philosophy, art or popular ideology, applying his ideas to Hegel and Hitchcock, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.
Is psychoanalysis dead or are we to read frequent attacks on its theoretical 'mistakes' and clinical 'frauds' as a proof of its vitality? Slavoj Zizek's passionate defence of Lacan reasserts the ethical urgency of psychoanalysis. Traditionally, psychoanalysis was expected to allow the patient to overcome the obstacles which prevented access to 'normal' sexual enjoyment. Today, however, we are bombarded from all sides by different versions of the injunction 'Enjoy!' Lacan reminds us that psychoanalysis is the only discourse in which you are allowed not to enjoy. Since for Lacan psychoanalysis itself is a procedure of reading, each chapter uses a passage from Lacan as a tool to interpret another text from philosophy, art or popular ideology, applying his ideas to Hegel and Hitchcock, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.
Ratings and reviews
4.5
10 reviews
Penelope
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6 December 2017
As usual Zizek is engaging as he makes understandable to the layman some core concepts of Lacan while providing some fresh insight into how his ideas are more crucial than ever in analysing society and ourselves.
About the author
Slavoj Zizek philosopher and psychoanalyst, heads the International Center of Humanities at Birkbeck College. His numerous books, translated into more than 30 languages, include The Parallax View and Lacan: the Silent Partners.
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