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Psychoanalysts in the English-speaking world are indebted to Bruce Fink for his masterful translation of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's Écrits into English. The articles spanned thirty years of Lacan's work,
during which his rigorous and erudite style became ever more packed with literary, philosophical, and mathematical references whose pertinence are such that unless they are appreciated (and accurately translated), the text becomes incomprehensible. Bruce Fink's achievement in finally translating all of the articles (many had been left out of the first English edition) was considerable.
Much of the confusion about Lacan in the English-speaking world can be attributed to the inadequacies of the previous English language edition of the Écrits , which, along with the translations of “Feminine Sexuality” and “Television,” provided the gateway to Lacan for American analysts and scholars. Fink has subsequently published many interpretative works on Lacan. In addition to writing and translating, he is also a professor of psychology at Duquesne University and a practicing analyst.
Fink's deep knowledge of the French language and culture has found a delightful outlet in a series of novella-length stories about a French Secret Service agent named Inspector Canal, whose knowledge of human failings is indebted to his secret knowledge of Lacan. Rather like Fink, Canal seeks a way to make a great thinker more immediately applicable to the pathologies of everyday life. A subtle link exists between the work of the detective and the psychoanalyst. Historically, around 1870 the detective or private investigator, a specialist who is for hire and works independently of the police, begins to appear in newspaper accounts and in fiction. Around the same time a new kind of doctor, the alienist or neurologist—someone who specializes in specifically “mental” and psychic illness—begins to appear in both medical and popular literature.
Both the analyst and the detective try to find an