The Cambridge Companion to Lacan

Description

This collection of specially commissioned essays by academics and practising psychoanalysts, explores key dimensions of Jacques Lacan's life and works. Lacan is renowned as a theoretician of psychoanalysis whose work is still influential in many countries. He refashioned psychoanalysis in the name of philosophy and linguistics at the time when it underwent a certain intellectual decline. Advocating a 'return to Freud', by which he meant a close reading in the original of Freud's works, he stressed the idea that the unconscious functions 'like a language'. All essays in this Companion focus on key terms in Lacan's often difficult and idiosyncratic developments of psychoanalysis. This volume will bring fresh, accessible perspectives to the work of this formidable and influential thinker. These essays, supported by a useful chronology and guide to further reading will prove invaluable to students and teachers alike.

Jean-Michel Rabate is Professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent books are Joyce and the Politics of Egoism, and The Future of Theory.

"Superb... this book shoud appeal to anyone interested in the development of Freudian thought and the history of ideas concerning human subjectivity. Highly recommended." Choice