To assimilate a writer as allusive as Lacan is to enter into an entire culture. However firm their grounding in Freud, readers of Lacan must learn to rethink psychoanalysis with a speculative breadth sometimes exceeding that of Freud himself. This book, designed to clarify the works of a controversial and influential figure, is the first collection of critical essays to appear in English since Lacan's own writings began to be widely distributed in translation.

Drawing on psychology, philosophy, literary criticism, and clinical and theoretical psychiatry, this volume explores t...
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Jacques Lacan's commentaries on Freud had revolutionary implications not only for the analytic movement but also for contemporary philosophy and literary criticism. Lacan held that if the unconscious, as Freud described it, exists, it functions linguistically, rather than symbolically or instinctually. He refers to the unconscious as a language: "the discourse of the Other." In The Language of the Self Lacan offers a significant and fertile return to the heart of the Freudian texts.

Originally published in paperback under the title Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,...
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