Dany Nobus

There are plenty of bad or mediocre books out there looking to explain Lacan's ideas, but this isn't one of them. Dany Nobus's book gathers together some of the best minds in the field of Lacan studies and has them explain eight of Lacan's key concepts, and they do so with panache. A warning, though: this is not a book for beginners, but a text that you should turn after reading the relevant seminars by Lacan and seeking further clarification.

Dylan Evans - the Judas priest of Lacanism - gives a workmanlike explanation of jouissance in a style that recalls his Lacanian dictionary. Given that jouissance is one of those ideas that has shifted and changed its meaning in Lacan's work, tracing this evolution across the body of his work is very useful, if not exactly revolutionary.

Bruce Fink looks at the master signifier and the four discourses, which are principally taken from Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Personally, I find the four discourses as they appear in that seminar incomprehensible, and the way that Lacanian critics assume that their meaning is "obvious" deeply problematic. Fink does a simply amazing job of going through each of the four formulae and showing how they work. Fink has his limitations as a theorist, but there are moments like this one where he really does shine as a pedagogue.

Russell Grigg examines the notion of foreclosure from Seminar III: The Psychoses. Grigg does a good job of showing the origins of this term, and how its mechanisms work in relation to the various subjective positions, although I felt it did not add a whole lot to what I already knew from reading the seminar itself.

Katrien Libbrecht looks at transference and the desire of the analyst, drawing mainly from Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Much of Libbrecht's analysis covered familiar ground, as far as I was concerned, but it was solid enough.

Dany Nobus gives a genealogy of the mirror stage. I suppose some of this is important context, but I was rather underwhelmed by this chapter.

Luke Thurston takes on the seriously difficult challenge of the Borromean knot from Seminar XXIII: R.S.I.. As with Fink's piece on the four discourses, Lacan's fascination with knots has always seemed to me rather opaque. However, Thurston does a fantastic job of showing how this period of Lacan's work opens up the radical move away from Oedipus and the symbolic in the late Lacan.

Paul Verhaeghe looks at the Lacanian subject, another one of those terms that shifts dramatically in the course of Lacan's career, although Verhaeghe draws mainly from Seminar XI.

Slavoj Žižek closes out the collection with an uneven essay on fantasy. The early parts of this piece are okay, but it is really the final parts of the essay on fantasy and the drive that are the chapter's strongest parts.

Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis is a really strong collection of work, with no really weak pieces. However, it is the pieces by Fink (on the four discourses) and Thurston (on knots) that really stand out here. Those two parts of Lacan's work are so incredibly difficult to grasp in detail, yet they did a masterful job of showing their meaning and importance.… (plus d'informations)