Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan

by Juan-David Nasio, David Pettigrew (Translator), François Raffoul (Translator)

Overview

Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan is the first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work. Juan-David Nasio makes numerous theoretical advances and eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments. What is distinctive, in the end, about Nasio's treatment of Lacan's theory is the extent to which Lacan's fundamental concepts—the unconscious, jouissance, and the body—become the locus of the overturning or exceeding of the discrete boundaries of the individual. The recognition of the implications of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, then, brings the analyst to adopt what Nasio calls a "special listening."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791438329
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	07/10/1998
Series:	SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Juan-David Nasio is a psychoanalyst in Paris and former member of the École Freudienne of Jacques Lacan. He teaches at the University of Paris VII (Sorbonne) and is the director of the Séminaires Psychanalytiques de Paris, a major center for psychoanalytical training and the dissemination of psychoanalytical thought to nonspecialists. David Pettigrew is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University. François Raffoul is Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy at California State University, Stanislaus. Pettigrew and Raffoul have cotranslated The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan by Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and coedited Disseminating Lacan, both published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

Translators' Introduction

Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan

Prefatory Remarks

First Lesson: The Unconscious and Jouissance

First Principle: "The unconscious is structured like a language"

Second Principle: "There is no sexual relation"

Second Lesson: The Existence of the Unconscious

When can the unconscious be said to exist?

The unconscious manifests itself in "lalangue"

The unconscious is a structure that actualizes itself

The unconscious is the displacement of the signifier between the patient and the analyst

The subject of the unconscious

Third Lesson: The Concept of Object a

The therapeutic goal of psychoanalysis

Object a

The problem of the other

The formal status of object a

The "corporal" status of object a

The breast as object a

Summary on object a: the need-demand-desire triad

Fourth Lesson: Fantasy

That which is proper to psychoanalysis

Clinical observations on fantasy

The body as a core of jouissance

Fifth Lesson: The Body

Sexual, symbolic, and imaginary body

Partial body and jouissance

A clinical vignette

Formations of object a

Appendix: The Concept of the Subject of the Unconscious

Translated by Boris Belay

The relation of the subject to unconscious knowledge

The relation of the subject to logic

The relation of the subject to castration

The layered subject of the unconscious

The concept of unconscious knowledge

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Nasio's Five Lessons provides an incisive entry into the densities of Lacan's difficult discourse. Focusing on the two principles of the unconscious as 'structured like a language' and of jouissance as signifying that 'there is no sexual relation,' Nasio takes up Lacanian theory in a refreshingly nondogmatic way. The complex role of the signifier, the vexing status of the subject of the unconscious, and the enigmatic object a are illuminated in the context of fantasy and the body. This is a remarkable work, as pithy as it is profound. The translation by Pettigrew and Raffoul makes Nasio's text—and thus Lacan's Écrits—lucidly accessible." — Edward S. Casey, State University of New York at Stony Brook

From the Publisher

Translation of a French text published in 1992 by <'E>ditions Rivages. Nasio (psychology, U. of Paris VII) demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory. Topics include the linguistic structure of the unconscious, the unconscious as the displacement of the signifier between the patient and the analyst, the therapeutic goal of psychoanalysis, fantasy, the symbolic and imaginary conceptions of the body, and . Appends a lecture by the author on the concept of the subject of the unconscious. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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