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The subject of this ambitious book is the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) and the applicability of Lacanian methods in psychotherapies. The book is largely an appeal to American clinicians, to discover within Lacan's work some useful tools that may assist them in their work with patients. The reader can benefit from the author's apparent conviction of the benefits of the use of Lacan's work in the field of psychotherapy; Miller passionately supports the idea that there are distinct and valuable benefits stemming from the experience of learning some of Lacan's methods, particularly from ‘following the letter’ of the patient's speech. Within Lacanian psychoanalysis, this means having an understanding of the signifiers that make up an analysand's speech and the formal features of the words used. I will illustrate what this means a little later.
Broadly speaking, I approached this review being sympathetic to the book's aims and its subject, even though occasionally perplexed by its style and theoretical points. It is a short and highly readable book which evidently conveys the author's substantial knowledge; this is successfully combined with a humane and thoughtful analysis of the subject. The book states its aim clearly, while the use of case discussions illustrates for the clinician possible routes for an application of ‘some Lacanian principles to relatively short-term psychotherapies’ (p. xviii).
If we are to consider Miller's book a successful project, then in my view we would need to accept certain compromises:
we should leave aside for a moment the problem of defining what ‘Lacanian’ is, since this is a contentious subject,
we should momentarily suspend Lacan's own belief that psychotherapy and Lacanian psychoanalysis are incompatible with each other and
we should instead focus on whether the book achieves its aim of providing clinicians with an opportunity for familiarisation with several of Lacan's central theories.
I am impressed by Mille