| The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis |
|
|---|---|
1981 Norton edition, with variant spelling of psychoanalysis |
|
| Author(s) | Jacques Lacan |
| Original title | 'Les quatres concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse' |
| Translator | Alan Sheridan |
| Illustrator | Jay J. Smith |
| Cover artist | François Leclaire (photo) |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Series | Seminars of Jacques Lacan |
| Subject(s) | Psychoanalysis |
| Publisher | Éditions du Seuil |
| Publication date | 1973 |
| Published in English |
1978 |
| Media type | Hardback, paperback |
| Pages | 290 |
| ISBN | 0-393-00079-6 |
| OCLC Number | 8106863 |
| Preceded by | Seminar X |
| Followed by | Seminar XII |
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (French: Les quatres concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse) is the 1977 English translation of a 'transcription of the Seminar held by Jacques Lacan at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris between January and June 1964'.[1]
It was with the 1973 (French) publication that 'Lacan's oral teachings first began to reach the larger audience of the printed word'.[2]
The blurb describes the book as providing "illuminating insights into the mind of the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud"; and the Seminar, it has been suggested, 'marks the beginning of a new and difficult phase in Lacan's teaching...shift[ing] the central focus of his teaching away from the letter of Freud's texts'.[3]
The 1994 edition contains an introduction by David Macey.
Contents |
Lacan's "Seminar" - an annual occurrence over many decades, of which this is the first transcript to be published (though of the eleventh, not the first year) - was 'a central institution in Lacan's long and stormy career as the France's most prominent and most controversial psycho-analyst'.[4]
The Seminar 'was a forum for Lacan rather than for a collective exploration...and although the Seminar played a vital role in the education of a generation of psycho-analysts, it was not part of any formal training programme'.[5]
Lacan sought in his eleventh Seminar to cover what he called 'the major Freudian concepts - I have isolated four that seem to come within this category...the first two, the unconscious and repetition. The transference - I hope to approach it next time -...[&] lastly, the drive'.[6]
On the drive, 'Lacan reread Freud...in order to emphasize that the four components of the drive — pressure, object, aim, and source — are not natural phenomena: the drive is a montage'.[7]
The appearance during its course of what he called 'the newly published, posthumous work of my friend Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisble ' led Lacan however - 'free as I am to pursue...the way that seems best to me' - into a long detour midway upon 'the eye and the gaze - this is for us the split in which the drive is manifested at the level of the scopic field'.[8] In particular, 'Lacan spends some time on the "otherness" and alterity of mimesis in relation to the gaze'.[9]
R. Feldstein et al. eds., Reading "Seminar XI" (1995)