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Sergio Benvenuto, reflecting on his relationship to Lacan, writes:
I'm a Lacanologist … I'm not a Lacanian, but let's say that I love Lacan. Lacan himself said that we should love our symptom and, indeed, I love Lacan as my symptom. But, as one does with a symptom, I keep at a necessary distance from him, with a sort of pain. Lacan is my joy and my pain (pp. 155-6).
Some readers may remember Beattie played by the comic actor Maureen Lipman in a TV commercial in 1987 who famously declared: ‘you get an ‘ology, you're a scientist!’ In so far as ‘science’ might be described as a systematic study, Benvenuto has, since 1967, undertaken such a study of Lacan and his praxis, including the translation of Lacan's Seminar XX: Encore into Italian in 1975. However, Benvenuto is not undertaking a ‘scientific’ reading of psychoanalysis. He sides with Lacan in a rejection of what he terms ‘In Awe Simulation of the Scientific Style’ (p. viii) deriding this approach that he sees frequently used by psychoanalysts today. Neither is he a fan of a reading of Lacan that he believes dominates the literature ‘usually … of a particular Lacanian school’ that he styles ‘Militant Exegesis of the Absolute Text’ (p. ix). He is critical of the literature about Lacan that errs towards the devotional, describing his own approach as one of ‘deconstructive piety’ (p. x); an approach he argues will influence psychoanalytic practitioners today. It is an approach that he seems to think has no need of capital letters. Benvenuto's lectures are delivered with incisive wit.