Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XII
1. Auflage 2027
ISBN: 978-1-5095-7098-0
Verlag: Polity Press

Buch, Englisch, 294 Seiten

'I will share with you an anecdote that Lacan confided to me. He admitted to his friend Roman Jakobson his difficulty with the title of his next Seminar. "Whenever this happens to me", replied the eminent linguist, "I always say 'Problems'".

I attribute this difficulty to the major turning point marked by this Seminar. Each of the early Seminars was appended to one of Freud's works, on which he offered an admittedly digressive, extensive commentary. Seminar XI, on The Four Fundamental Concepts, was effectively a final synthesis of this first period. The second begins with our Crucial Problems. From that point on, the Seminars will focus on Lacan's own original and unmediated contribution.

Despite the scattered themes in the present Seminar, consistent with its title, it nevertheless has a centre, according to Lacan, in "the being of the subject". But do pay attention! This subject is the Lacanian subject, $, which is to say, divided and split, and has nothing to do with the unity of the ego. Is it a concept? A writing, more likely, in multiple senses. It does not permit of being locked down in a definition; it is only to be approached by a series of formulas and figures.

One formula stands out: "the signifier represents the subject for another signifier", which is a transformation of the definition of a sign as representing something for someone. Topological figures, the famous Möbius strip first and foremost, illustrate different states of the subject's structure. Crucial Problems. constitutes a re-departure for Lacan's teaching. Many of the developments to come commence here.'

Jacques-Alain Miller

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lacan, Jacques

Miller, Jacques-Alain

Weitere Mitwirkende

Grigg, Russell

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Kulturphilosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologische Theorie, Psychoanalyse

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Translator's Note
Figures

THE SUBJECT IN RELATION TO LANGUAGE

I. Meaning and Non-Meaning
II. From Language to its Topology
III. The Subject's Implication in the Topological Structure of Language
IV. The Topology of Proper Names
V. Surface Subject

THE SUBJECT IN RELATION TO SIGNIFIERS AND THE object a

VI. The Topological Reversion of Identification
VII. The Efficacy of the Right Cuts
VIII. Numerical and Other Forms of Identification
IX. Topology of Demand
X. Topology of the Object Little a
XI. The Identificatory Suture of the Subject

SUBJECT, KNOWLEDGE, SEX

XII. The Supposed Subject of the Symptom
XIII. The Subject Avoids Knowledge About Sex
XIV. The Fallacy of the Subject Supposed to Know
XV. The Symptom between Subject and Knowledge
XVI. The Function of the Object Little a

Appendixes
Lacan at the Closed Seminars
Report on the Seminar, by Jacques Lacan
In the Margins of Topological Surfaces, by J.-A. Miller

Acknowledgements
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. His many works include Écrits, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis and the many volumes of the Seminar.