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This book is not so much a collection of papers as a book that did not know it had been written. It embodies the questions that Bruce Fink, as a psychoanalyst, has been pondering over the last 25 years, and when put together, the chapters demonstrate the coherence of his intellectual journey. In more than one way, this book reminds me of Freud’s Outline of Psychoanalysis, which seems to be the result of the reflection: what do I think others need to know and understand if they want to be psychoanalysts? In other words: it has taken me all my life to understand this, so you might as well benefit from it. Fink cares profoundly about psychoanalysis, and when he is asked to contribute a paper, he does it to the best of his abilities. This is not that common, and Lacan’s neological pun of “poubellification” for publication, which I might try to render in English as “pu-bin-ation” (or rubbish creation), has unfortunately remained meaningful, as the reading of some current psychiatric journals can confirm. Fink chose from the beginning to contribute to the development of Lacanian thinking, rather than to “know his place” and, instead, to devote his energy to producing commentaries upon commentaries on the original texts.
Regarding the book’s title, let’s note that on the first page, one finds the title Miss-ing. But something is indeed missing. On page 2, one can see the same title but this time it is followed
by a subtitle: Psychoanalysis 2.0. So, what was Psychoanalysis 1.0? I’ll let the reader make up their mind about it, but my reading is that Fink sees Lacan’s theory, which emphasises lack, as an important update. He then focuses on “lack” in all (?) its applications but particularly applied to the person of the psychoanalyst. In the long list of possible misses in the preface, Fink warns the reader that the risk of “misanalysing” is largely to be understood as the consequence of the analyst’s failure to recognise their failings. I find this a useful reminder at a