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Anyone who has attempted to read Lacan's works and has become lost in his language and concepts will welcome this book. In the very clear introduction to the book, we are reminded that Lacan presented his theories from a psychoanalytical perspective and that at the heart of his work was a return to Freud in an attempt, by using structural linguistics, to remedy the gap in Freud's linguistic formalisation. Lacan also emphasised the essential split in the human subject which is seen as alienated or de-centred. The authors add a brief but useful summary of the different chapters of the book, chapters which are based on some of Lacan's essays and seminars, and which they put in their historical context.
I attempt to provide a summary of the main theories expressed in these chapters, recognising at the outset that, as regards Lacan, any such attempt is bound to be inadequate. The first chapter has a particular interest. Based on Lacan's doctoral thesis on psychosis, it represents the first French attempt to explain psychosis in terms of the total history of the patient. His concept of personality rested on three parameters: the subject's history, self-image, and social relations. He tried to establish that madness has a meaningful structure and emphasised the role played by méconnaissance, which could be approximated to defensive denial.
The second chapter examines a paper, well-known in England, on the ‘mirror stage’. Seeking to make Lacan's ideas clearer for the reader, the authors recall the different models implicit in the relevant classical, psychoanalytical theories which place special emphasis on the concept and role of the ego. For Lacan, an infant looking at itself in the mirror sees itself as a totality and has the mastery of its own image at a time when the infant experiences a lack of co-ordination and when its functions are still fragmented. This leads to a fundamental alienation, a ‘lack of being’. The formation of the ego begins at this point, but, as it is