You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Jacques Lacan's influence derives as much from what he does not say as it does from the ideas he has promulgated. His school's popularity in Paris and its environs accrues in part from a fortuitous combination of timely sociological events, but to a large extent it is attributable to his personal magnetism and to the mystical incomprehensibility of the ideas expressed in his lectures (see Silverman, 1981). The latter two factors in combination offer the rare opportunity of embracing an awesomely powerful master whose forceful leadership is welcome but who does not require a rigorous understanding of his ideas. In fact, Lacan permits more or less individual interpretation, according to the tastes and tolerances of each student.
Lacan combines the approach of a surrealist poet and existential philosopher with a keen intellect, an intuitive feel for deeply unconscious desires and fears, and the charismatic appeal of an aggressive leader. He possesses a trenchantly acerbic wit, unbounded audacity, a haughty contempt for authoritative rules and order, a performer's penchant for playful puns and dancing words, and a remarkable capacity for linguistic legerdemain, which he is free to employ without constraint, heedless of the danger of internal inconsistency. Lacan uses his linguistic skills to shroud his ideas in abstruse, mystifying obscurity. At the same time his language sparkles with poetic imagery, melodious assonance, and inspired reverence for words—qualities that delight the cultured French ear and arouse the French spirit. Indeed, Lacan's expression is fashioned much more for the ear than for the eye. He has committed relatively little to paper, and the bulk of his recorded ideas reside in the paradoxically titled Écrits (Lacan, 1966), i.e., in the transcribed, edited notes of his many, often very lengthy, lectures. Only a small portion of the Écrits and, until now, almost none of the writings of Lacan's followers have been translated into English, althou