How To Read Lacan

The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to ones 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 Zizeks 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. Review Zizeks books [are so] erudite and witty [that] theyre quite moreish. The range and scope of his analogies are tremendous -- Mark Wallinger artist ―On My Radar Observer Published On: 2016-02-28 Book Description These [How to Read] books let you encounter thinkers eyeball to eyeball by analysing passages from their work Terry Eagleton New Statesman About the Author Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is currently the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck University of London and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis Ljubljana. His numerous books translated into more than thirty languages include The Parallax View and Lacan: The Silent Partners.