Jacques Lacan's Return to Freud

by Julien, Philippe; Simiu, Devra Beck

• ISBN13: 9780814741986
• ISBN10: 0814741983
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-06-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

Among the numerous introductions to Lacan published to date in English, Philippe Julien's work is certainly outstanding. Beyond its conceptual clarity the book constitutes an excellent guide to Lacanian psychoanalytic practice. --Andr Patsalides, Psychoanalyst and President, Lacanian School of PsychoanalysisFrom 1953 to 1980, Jacques Lacan sought to accomplish a return to Freud beyond post- Freudianism. He defined this return as a new convenant with the meaning to the Freudian discovery. Each year through his teaching, he brought about this return. What was at stake in this renewal?Philippe Julien, who joined Lacan's Ecole Freudienne de Paris in 1968, attempts to answer this question. Situtated in the period after-Lacan, Julien shows that Lacan's return to Freud was neither a closing of the Freudian text by responding to questions left unanswered nor a reopening of the text by giving endless new interpretations. Neither dogmatic nor hermeneutic, Lacan's return to Frued was the return of an inevitable discordance between our experience of the unconscious and any attempt to give an account of it. For the unconscious, by its very nature, disappears at the same moment as it is discovered. It is in this sense that the author can claim that Lacan's return to Freud will have been Freudian.Constantly challenging the reader to submit to the rigors of Lacan's sinuous thinking, this penetrating work goes far beyond being a mere introduction. Rendered into elegant English by the American translator, who added numerous footnotes and scholarly references to the French original, this study brings Lacanian scholarship among English readers to a new level of sophistication.Neither dogmatic nor hermeneutic, Lacan's return to Freud was the return of an inevitable discordance between our experience of the unconscious and any attempt to give an account of it. For the unconscious, by its very nature, disappears at the same moment as it is discovered. It is in this sense that the author can claim that Lacan's return to Freud was Freudian.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Introduction	p. 1
The Shadow of Freud
The Pain of Being Two	p. 15
My Dearest Counterpart, My Mirror	p. 28
Paranoic Knowledge	p. 36
A Return to Freud
The Lacanian Thing	p. 45
Exhaustion in the Symbolic	p. 55
The Making of a Case of Acting-Out	p. 65
The Transference
A Change of Place	p. 77
An Ethical Question	p. 83
A Metaphor of Love	p. 92
Toward the Real
A Cartesian Approach	p. 105
A Literal Operation	p. 118
The Drive at Stake	p. 140
Another Imaginary
A Hole in the Imaginary	p. 153
Imagination of a Triple Hole	p. 165
An Imaginary with Consistency	p. 172
Conclusion: The Psychoanalyst Applied to the Mirror	p. 185
Notes	p. 195
Index	p. 215
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