Does the Woman Exist?: From Freud's Hysteric to Lacan's Feminine [Paperback]

Paul Verhaeghe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1999

"A miraculous answer to the confusions surrounding Freud's and Lacan's theory of feminine sexuality. . . . A must for anyone who wants to grasp what psychoanalysis has to say today."
-Slavoj Zizek

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A miraculous answer to the confusions surrounding Freud's and Lacan's theory of feminine sexuality. . . . A must for anyone who wants to grasp what psychoanalysis has to say today."
-Slavoj Zizek

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Dutch --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Other Press; Revised edition (May 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892746158
• ISBN-13: 978-1892746153
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #363,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does the Woman Exist?, December 13, 1999

By 

Barnet D. Malin, M.D. (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Does the Woman Exist?: From Freud's Hysteric to Lacan's Feminine (Paperback)

A Lacanian colleague recommended Paul Verhaeghe's book to me, and I am forever grateful for that recommendation. Verhaeghe's accomplishment goes far beyond simply offering a synthesis of Lacan's work. His Freud scholarship is impeccable, demonstrating to the non-Lacanian psychoanalytic reader his thorough grounding in Freud as understood by British and American analysts (in fact, Verhaeghe's explication of Freud is one of the best I've read). He takes pains to articulate how Lacan studied this Freud and re-discovered another immanent in the pattern of development of Freud's work. Set within this detailed context, Verhaeghe's synthesis of Lacan has tremendous breadth and depth, particularly for a psychoanalytic reader new to Lacanian ideas. Verhaeghe's extraordinarily clear writing style, sharp sense of humor and obvious passion for his subject made the book impossible for me to put down. I am a training and supervising analyst in Los Angeles with an eclectic outlook shaped by Klein, Bion, and some American relational perspectives, and I found this to be one of the most stimulating psychoanalytic books I have read.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lacan, Freud, Femininity, and the Problem of the Father, December 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Does the Woman Exist?: From Freud's Hysteric to Lacan's Feminine (Paperback)

Does the Woman Exist? by Paul Verhaeghe is in my view one of the best available introductory works on Lacan and Freud. It is especially clear on the topic of femininity and the complicated problem of the father in Totem and Taboo.

Verhaeghe comes across as a caring teacher who is interested in sharing with others the fruit of his research, and his analytic acumen, in order to offer a step by step explanation of what was at stake for Freud as he struggled with the difficult question, "What does a woman want?" Not only does Verhaeghe make Freud's question our own, but he also takes the trouble to explain both how Lacan dealt with the Freud's question, as well as why Lacan had to change gears as new problems arose. It is true that in reading Verhaeghe's work one needs to leave at the door all prejudices and misconceptions about both Freud and Lacan, because for Verhaeghe neither ideology nor personal recognition are at the forefront of his preoccupations. I had been struggling for a long time with the writings of Lacan,and Verhaeghe is one of the few authors who actually addressed my concerns and my questions.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hysteria stripped bare, December 13, 1999

By 

Jonckheere Lieven (Gent, Belgium) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Does the Woman Exist?: From Freud's Hysteric to Lacan's Feminine (Paperback)

In a rare moment of optimism French psychoanalyst Lacan reassured that his difficult writings would become comprehensible to everyone within 10 years. That was 1966. Now, at the end of the century, it seems that his stylistic example, Joyce, was more realistic with his prospect of occupying universities for at least 100 years. Indeed, discussion about Lacan is still very much alive (cfr internet 'flame wars' about his controversial ideas on the end of psychoanalytic cure). Today psychoanalysts, but also other intellectuals, are still struggling with Lacans ideas and their relation to Freud - one of the main problems being how to 'transfer' what they have understood of Lacan to colleagues, other sciences, students, public. One of the first to show the way has been Jacques-Alain Miller. But someone like Slavoj Zizek is also making his own way, in the English speaking world. Now, with this book of Paul Verhaeghe, we witness the beginnings of another promising 'particular and problematic reading' of Lacan. Having read Freud in German and Lacan in French, PV reintroduces psychoanalysis in the anglosaxon world, but in a more subversive way than before. PV has understood that the beginning of subversion is the conceptual and clinical 'stripping bare' - very carefully, very slowly - of the inexistence of The Woman behind the different veils of hysterical masquerade. Consequently, readers may experience the reading of this book as one long pleasure ... preliminary to the next book of PV. Indeed, als PV demonstrates, the fact that The Woman does not exist (in the symbolic of unconscious) does not dispense from relating to one or several women in one way or another. A rich book from the conceptual and clinical point of view, which opens the question of sexual ethics.