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Interpreting Lacan is a generally successful attempt to help the reader achieve an understanding of one of the most debated
figures in psychoanalysis. The volume does not seek to bring the debate to a close, but rather to promote its continuation on a more highly informed level. It serves other purposes as well. In particular, it addresses the relation between psychoanalysis and philosophy. Its chapters on the influence of Hegel and Heidegger on Lacan, for example, leave the impression that serious psychoanalytic reflection cannot avoid consideration of such concepts as the self, being, and self-consciousness.
The volume is divided into three sections. The first, "Analysis," discusses the basic concepts of Lacanian theory, with some insight into their clinical use. It emphasizes Lacan's famous statement that the unconscious is structured like a language. The second and most lengthy section offers a look at Lacan's philosophical "source material" and discusses the philosophical grounding of some of his central concepts. The third section, "Lacan in Use," consists of only one chapter, which attempts to integrate Lacan's discourse into a study of Dickens's Bleak House.
The contributions by Kerrigan, Stanley Leavy, John Muller, Antoine Vergote, and Smith will be most helpful to a reader who is not familiar with Lacan. Kerrigan briefly summarizes the history of Lacan's writings and of their late appearance on the American scene. He chastises the analytic community for being too caught up in its own "domestic politics" to notice Lacan at a time when he was very influential in Europe and latin America. He goes on to trace the introduction of Lacan into America by scholars in the humanities.
Leavy makes a case for the uniqueness of Lacan's position as a psychoanalytic innovator. He argues: "Until Lacan, innovation in psychoanalytic theory consisted either of extensions of Freud's manifest meaning or of approximations to social science or biology"; Lacan, however