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The French title of this study, Jacques Lacan: Esquisse d'une vie, histoire d'un système de pensée (Jacques Lacan: Outline of a Life, History of a System of Thought) by Elizabeth Roudinesco, is evidently more precise than the English, and more revealing of the nature and structure of the work. A superficial look might raise the expectation that it is essentially a biography, whereas it simply contains a sketch or an outline of a life, a sketch or an outline requiring contexts, in order to be understood. At the same time, noting that it is also a history of a system of thought, a potential reader might infer that one should expect some tough going through some highly conceptual material. In fact, though there are some elements in the material presented that would exceed the facile comprehension of most readers, Roudinesco has succeeded well in providing ready access to the contexts necessary for understanding those elements. A reader of this book will find, therefore, not only the story of Jacques Lacan, but also the story of those ideas and cultural movements within which his own story emerged. So far as I can determine, practically no major writer, artist, playwright, or philosopher who had an effect on French culture in the twentieth century is missing from these pages. They are presented, moreover, not just as influences on Lacan, but also as they developed in their own varied contexts of creativity, independently of the developing lines that came eventually to intersect the lines of Lacan's own development. One