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Lacanian Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Introduction, by Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot and Uri Hadar, is part of the Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis 14-volume series (each with a 40,000-word limit) that covers major topics and theorists in psychoanalysis. The publishers state that the series is targeted “to both clinicians and the general educated public.”
Yadlin-Gadot and Hadar begin by asking, “Why do we need another introductory text for the work of Lacan?” Their answer is that major thinkers are viewed differently as knowledge and perspectives change and that different authors will select different emphases in their review of various theoretical fields.
The authors' goals are to (1) provide an accessible introduction to Lacan's work; (2) to allow for a “certain freedom and novelty” by compiling a child developmental perspective of Lacan's ideas; and (3) to express their belief that “Lacanian ideas may enrich the thought and work of analysts from many schools without demanding the adoption of Lacanian technique or methodology” (xiv–xv). Yadlin-Gadot and Hadar's little book—for the most part—admirably accomplishes each of these goals.
Chapter 1, Background and Influences. Yadlin-Gadot and Hadar state that Lacan was a “self-proclaimed Freudian” but that he departed from Freud in two fundamental ways. Freud considered “the subject” to be “monadic Cartesian” (i.e., self-contained) and Freud adhered to the “epistemology of science.” Lacan, on the other hand, anticipated the importance of social factors on the development of the self, with “the Big Other,” for example,
existing both inside and outside the subject. And Lacan divorced the biological body from his theories in exchange for a body that is inscribed by signifiers. Also differing from Freud, Yadlin-Gadot and Hadar define the Lacanian ego—the small child's false perception of itself in the mirror—as “a risky, tricky, symptom which distorts perception and creates narcissistic aggressivity” (p. 2).