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To read Lacan is to enter an almost century-long, nonlinear conversation, sometimes evolving into a debate when things get interesting — especially when the debate is within Lacan himself. Those writing about Lacan who turn out to be the most engaging and thoughtful are those who can discuss him objectively and even argue with him, rather than just pray at his altar while nervously keeping a hawk eye on how close they and others are to “the original Lacan,” whoever that might be.
One of the engaging writers is Sergio Benvenuto, an Italian psychoanalyst who lives in Rome and is the author of Lacan, Kris, and the Psychoanalytic Legacy: The Brain Eater (2024; The Brain Eater from here on). Benvenuto defines himself as “not a Lacanian” — which is curious since he definitely leans that way and is quite articulate and erudite on Lacanian theory. But then again, not so curious because Benvenuto eschews the dogmatic religiosity that any “-ian” or “-ism” in psychoanalysis can generate.
In an earlier writing, Conversations with Lacan (2020), Benvenuto provides a context for the curiosity that led him to write The Brain Eater. He says:
Lacan consistently, systematically and almost punctiliously subverts everything, or nearly everything, that we learnt in the healthy faithful textbooks of psychoanalysis, and everything that common sense would suggest.
“‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English)” (Carroll, 1865, p. 11).
Page 46When as a young student I approached Lacan for the first time, I already had a good knowledge of psychoanalytical literature. I had built for myself an image of psychoanalysis that is still today largely that of an analyst member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, the IPA, which continues to be the most respected psychoanalytic association. At the time, Lacan's punctual subversion of everything about psychoanalysis that I had learnt to take