The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan , Book 11) [Paperback]

Jacques Lacan (Author), Jacques-Alain Miller (Editor), Alan Sheridan (Translator)

Book Description

Series: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan | Publication Date: April 17, 1998

Jacques Lacan's writings, and especially the seminars for which he has become famous, offer a controversial, radical reappraisal of the legacy bequeathed by Freud.

This volume is based on a year's seminar in which Dr. Lacan addressed a larger, less specialized audience than ever before, among whom he could not assume familiarity with his work. For his listeners then, and for his readers now, he wanted to "introduce a certain coherence into the major concepts on which psycho-analysis is based," namely, the unconscious, repetition, the transference, and the drive. Along the way he argues for a structural affinity between psychoanalysis and language, discusses the relation of psychoanalysis to religion, and reveals his particular stance on topics ranging from sexuality and death to alienation and repression. This book constitutes the essence of Dr. Lacan's sensibility.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. His many published works include Ecrits and The Seminars.


Jacques-Alain Miller is Director of the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII and editor of Lacan's Seminars.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317757
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317756
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. His many published works include Ecrits and The Seminars.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Master - but not for all!, April 17, 2002

By 

Nessander - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan , Book 11) (Paperback)

Lacan must be read with care. He is not for everybody. He is for those who are interested in the mind, in desire, in language. Specifically, for those who have developed an interest in "theory" or "post-structuralism", which he helped to develop. In this volume Lacan sets out some key concepts in his thinking - but he does not do so systematically! Do not expect him to explain everything to you in a clear, linear fashion. Rather, he plays on words and on ideas, he maneuvers and evades, he skirts around the issue, and comes back to it. Have patience if you choose to read him - discuss his writings with others. If you do this, you may come to understand why Lacan is regarded with so much respect in France and has virtualy reared an entire generation of first-rate theorists and thinkers.

It will help (but will not guarantee understanding) if you have some background in Freud, even if it is only a slight one. Good luck!

94 of 132 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth the time and effort, May 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan , Book 11) (Paperback)

First, let me start off by saying that I am an intellectual historian with a great passion for the history of ideas, especially those dealing with the mind and how it works-- psychoanalytic thought in particular. I'm well used to reading works that are dense, difficult, and jargon-laden. I'm also quite familiar with intellectual traditions that Lacan is responding to, borrowing from, and those that he himself has inspired (most notably the tradition of French psychoanalytical feminism a la Irigaray, Cixous, Kristeva, etc). I say all this not to pat myself on the back, but to provide some context for this review: I am *not* someone who hates books just because they're difficult, or because they're about such rarefied subjects.

However, I cannot in good intellectual faith recommend this book to anyone. Partly, I freely admit, this is because I really don't think Lacan has really all that much to say. While I don't deny the fact that he *was* instrumental in putting a structuralist (and then post-structuralist) turn in psychoanalysis in some of his early essays (such as appear in "Ecrits") as well as pioneering contraversial new techniques of therapy, such as the variable-length session). But since those early daysthen, his reputation was due more to his charismatic personality and his influential friends within the French academic world, rather than because he had all that much to say.

This book is a perfect example of that. Taken from one of his mid-period seminars (essentially series of lecture courses), Lacan babbles, obfuscates, metaphorizes,and jokes his way through a set of vaguely philosophical points about the mind that could probably have been adequately summarized in a single lecture, or maybe 20-30 pages. (Note to readers of Freud, Jung, Adler, etc. Please be aware that, unlike those guys, Lacan makes no references whatsoever to practical therapeutic experiences to back up his claims; this is pure theoretical speculation. Also, don't expect Lacan's use of terms like 'drive', 'unconscious' or 'transference' to have anything in common with the more conventional psychoanalytical meanings of those terms.) His use of metaphors has a haphazard quality to it that, at times, borders on the nonsensical-- particularly when he starts borrowing them from fields that he clearly doesn't understand very well himself, such as topology. That said, it's undeniable that Lacan's audience was enamoured of his performance. The questions and answers that are included here show a rapt and almost fawning reverence for the man they affectionately refer to as "The Master". But what does a reader, not able to bask in the warm glow of Lacan's personal charisma, get out of this? Not much.... a tiny handful of rehashed ideas, and a few witty phrases here and there, but mostly one gets a lot of dense, pointless verbiage from a man who seems like he's trying to hide the fact that he's got nothing new to say .

If you're going to read Lacan, read some of the real stuff-- when he was actually putting forth new (and at the time, revolutionary) ideas like his essays on "The Mirror Stage", "The Form and Function of the Letter", and "Agressivity in Psychoanalysis"-- or, if you must, some of the early seminars. But by this point, Lacan had long since ceased to be someone worth paying attention to-- and this book simply isn't worth the trouble it takes to get through it. (There are a lot of difficult works that *are* worth the trouble-- Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit", Marx's "Das Kapital", Heidegger's "Being and Time", and even a lot of works by the other post-structuralists with whom Lacan is often associated-- but believe me, this just isn't one of them).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Guilty Pleasure, August 15, 2008

By 

Nikolas Adamsson "Lacanian psychoanalyst" (Stockton, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan , Book 11) (Paperback)

Lacan is not easy to follow, by intent, yet the elegance of his thought processes bring real depth to psychoanalysis and the limitations of language in expressing our evolutionary struggles to identify the conflict between our internal processes and the world outside. Multiple rereadings will bring clarity. I keep a copy in my office for reference.