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This unusual book on psychoanalysis and music exemplifies the problems and dilemmas of interdisciplinary studies in psychoanalysis. More than that, it compounds them by its very erudition and scope. Further still, access to its considerable insights is hampered by two obstacles. The first, a stylistic one, might perhaps under other circumstances be more familiarly dealt with, as one not uncommonly reads psychoanalytic literature in translation. But here a second, technical, obstacle is in itself intimately related to language, inherent in the Lacanian orientation of this work. Thus, we find not only a terminology that may be unfamiliar to even the experienced psychoanalytic reader, but also the association of this terminology, and pari passu the concepts it represents, with the French language, linguistic nuance, and metaphor.
To begin a review as I have is tantamount to a “reader response” suggesting the experiential aspect of the “read,” at least for me. To suggest that perhaps only a Lacanian psychoanalyst would be the appropriate critic demonstrates only one of the underlying problems in applied psychoanalytic studies. At the heart of the issue is interdisciplinary literacy. With regard to the book at hand, the issue of literacy involves both intramural and extramural issues, not only the variety of psychoanalysis that is being applied (or, as the Lacanians prefer, implied) but also the area of application—here, music in general and opera in particular.
With the foregoing complexities in mind, I believe that “full disclosure” at the outset is orienting for the reader, helpful to the reviewer, and courteous to the author. Michel Poizat is identified on the book jacket as a researcher with Psychanalyse et Practiques Sociales de la Santè, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. The translation, by Arthur Denner, renders the text