Reviews for Jacques Lacan

The average rating for Jacques Lacan based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-03-09 00:00:00 Jason Raynes This is really one of the best books on Jacques Lacan I have ever read, if not the best --and I have read several (including two by Bruce Fink and two by Slavoj Zizek). Grosz does a fantastic job placing all of Lacan's major ideas into their properly Freudian context, and for me shed significant new light on the most important of them. In particular, she completely changed the way I look at such fundamental concepts as the Mirror Stage, the relationship between signification and the unconscious, and that "there is no such thing as a sexual relationship." The chapter titled "Sexual Relations" is an absolutely fascinating, devastating exploration on the difficult topic of sexual difference, and her discussion is really some of the most clearly written and insightful that I've come across. If anything, I might criticize Grosz's tendency to forget Lacan's strenuous differention between the phallus and the penis. She clearly understands the distinction, but seems ready to ignore it when feminist critique calls for it. I also wouldn't say that this book is fully comprehensive. No book on Lacan is, but there's less discussion here than I'd expect on objet petit (a) or the four discourses (mercifully, in the latter case). But what the book does covery, it covers very well. Lastly, I loved the last section of the book which deals with post-Lacanian French feminism. This is a remarkable area of thought that is nonetheless very hard to break into without formal academic training. I've been looking for a way in and this book really provides that. Personally, I enjoyed her discussion of Julia Kristeva much more than that of Luce Irigaray, whom I like but have a very hard time grasping. That may be just personal taste or simply because Irigaray is just much harder to understand. This was a difficult read for sure, but if you're familiar with Freud and basic Lacan and take it slowly, this will be a very useful thing to read.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-10 00:00:00 Bryan Rice This is one of the very best books I've read on Freud or Lacan. It serves as an excellent introduction to both thinkers, with each chapter treating a different subject within psychoanalysis by focusing, first, on two contrary views of the subject that can be found in Freud's work, and second, by showing how one of these lines of thinking on the subject is further pursued by Lacan. This structure allows one to get a sense of Lacan's views in relation to Freud without obscuring the other tendencies within Freud's thought. I don't know that I have ever read a book that is as generous to Freud and Lacan, and as grounded in their texts, while at the same time being wholly critical of the ways in which they elevate historically and geographically limited conceptions of gender, sexuality, and family life into a priori structures. One really gets a sense of the value of psychoanalysis and of its limits, at least in the forms that it has had up 'til now. The readings of Kristeva and Irigaray towards the end of the volume are an extra treat.