Jacques Lacan's lectures and publications in Paris have been creating a specialized stir locally for nearly two decades. In France he has now published in one huge volume most of his writings, and the book has achieved the status of an intellectual happening in contemporary Paris. The width and breadth of Lacan's learning is matched only by the rhetoric of his style. Together they create an effect which it is well-nigh impossible to evaluate metapsychologically. That Dr Lacan has a devout passion for Freud's writings cannot be gainsaid, but it is difficult to define the nature of his use of Freud's researches, especially in their clinical aspects.

For the English readers perhaps the best guide at present to Dr Lacan's Écrits is the brilliant Front Article in the Times Literary Supplement of 25th January 1968 entitled "Healing words: Dr Lacan's structuralism".