Suture is a Lacanian concept, but not a concept of Lacan’s. According to Alain Badiou, Jacques-Alain Miller’s paper, ‘Suture (Elements of the Logic of the Signifier)’ was “the first great Lacanian text not to be written by Lacan himself” (Badiou, ‘A Contemporary Use of Frege’, in Number and Numbers, p.25). In simple terms, the achievement of Miller’s text that

This is a wonderful story from Lacan’s clinic, as told by Suzanne Hommel, who was in analysis with Lacan in 1974. It gives us a rare insight into Lacan’s method and style and how, by intervening on a single signifier from his analysand’s speech, he was able to effect a therapeutic change. It is recounted in an interview that forms part of

A few people have contacted me recently via this site asking for suggestions of what to read, either by way of introduction to Lacan or for an alternative perspective on his work. The list below are some of the titles I usually recommend to them. By adding it to the site it will hopefully help others with the same question,

UPDATE  WEDNESDAY 16TH NOVEMBER 2011: RAFAH NACHED HAS BEEN FREED.    Announced on French-language news site Lacan Quotidien this evening: Rafah Nached is free! After having been informed that she could be on the list of prisoners to be released imminently by the Syrian authorities, Rafah Nached’s husband arrived earlier today at the prison 80km from Damascus to the pleasant surprise

This article will examine the concepts of the subject of the statement and the subject of the enunciation, the relationship between them, and look at three examples of where these ideas might be applied. A first general point to make is on the choice of translation. The English which is most often employed does not bring out the complementarity between the French

For English-speaking students of Lacan’s work it is unfortunate how little this book is known. This short post attempts to rectify that by giving a shout-out for Krutzen’s marvellous work and to encourage its dissemination amongst English-speakers. Firstly, to address the obvious problem: this is a French book and is written in French. But if you don’t speak French that hardly

There is no shortage of former Freudians who have abandoned the field and turned their talents to writing testimonies against Freudianism or psychoanalysis in general. Often these are semi-autobiographical accounts of their own shift in allegiance and recount in personal terms the reasons for their abandonment of the discipline. Perhaps the most celebrated amongst these is Jeffrey Masson thanks to

As I was looking up references to rhetoric in Lacan’s work for a post I am planning to write on the subject I stumbled upon this site: http://www.lacaninireland.com. For any English-speaker who has ever struggled to understand anything of Lacan’s work beyond the relatively meagre selection currently available in English, the name Cormac Gallagher will elicit immediate recognition. His unofficial

How would you answer the question ‘What is psychoanalysis?’ For anyone interested in psychoanalysis, having to explain concisely what psychoanalysis is and what it involves can elicit more than a little uncertainty and perhaps even some dread. If someone who knew something about psychoanalysis was asked this question in polite company how should they respond? First comes the problem that

Recently here in London the Freud Museum organised a three-day conference on the subject of Psychoanalysis, Money and the Economy. Amongst the keynote speakers was Bruce Fink, translator of Lacan’s Ecrits into English and author of many fine books on Lacan, including The Lacanian Subject and Lacan to the Letter. As he rarely speaks in the UK this was a