You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Perhaps my reluctance to write this review can be explained by my deep reaction to the split of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society which took place some years ago. For these volumes represent the new platform of the Société Française de Psychanalyse whose philosophy is laid down in the Preface to Volume One. It announces that the series will be devoted to the publication of research and teachings inspired by the newly formed group, which will aim at a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and other sciences, and 'put an end to the extraterritorial position upon which psychoanalysis has long presumed by using the ambiguity of its allegiances as a pretext to dispense with them all'.
This point of view evidently governed the selection of contributions by nonanalysts as well as analysts to the first volume, entitled, On the Use of Speech and the Structure of Language in Psychoanalysis, edited by Jacques Lacan. Among the most interesting papers are Remarks on the Function of Language in Freud's Discoveries by Émile Benveniste, Comments on Freud's Verneinung by Jean Hyppolite, Logos by Martin Heidegger, and On Polyglotism in Analysis by Daniel Lagache. But actually the central and the most important article in this volume is Lacan's Function and Scope of Speech and of Language in Psychoanalysis. A dialectical essay, which he calls a 'discourse', it is itself a document of great linguistic sophistication, typical of this author; but it makes most difficult reading.
When Lacan presented this 'discourse' at the Congress held by the Société Française de Psychanalyse in September 1953 in Rome, it aroused a heated discussion and considerable criticism even among his friends. The entire discussion, fortunately, is included in the volume. Lagache's succinct and lucid comments are of particular help in clarifying the highly complicated theoretical assumptions of Lacan. Lagache points to the author's purely phenomenological and descriptive approach, and discerns a strong existen