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Lacan, a despeito de tudo e de todos (Coleção Transmissão da Psicanálise)
Em 2011, completam-se 30 anos da morte de Jacques Lacan. Polêmico, excêntrico, genial, Lacan sacudiu a comunidade psicanalítica de seu tempo de modo tão violento que ainda desperta paixões radicais. A historiadora e psicanalista Elisabeth Roudinesco novamente se debruça sobre a trajetória do mestre para revelar seu legado intelectual, além de peculiaridades como seu mergulho nos neologismos, o gosto por roupas extravagantes e comidas exóticas, as crises de fúria. Roudinesco analisa de forma crítica a vida e a obra de Lacan, que empreendeu uma leitura estruturalista do pensamento freudiano. Segundo a autora, os seminários desenvolvidos por ele entre 1953 e 1963, época em que elaborou seus conceitos essenciais, são marcados pela ousadia de uma psicanálise que sonhava mudar o destino do homem. Se o século XX foi freudiano, diz Roudinesco, o XXI é, sem dúvida, lacaniano.
148 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
32 people are currently reading
374 people want to read
About the author
Élisabeth Roudinesco
76 books83 followersÉlisabeth Roudinesco est la seule à avoir su, avec la précision de l'historienne et l'expérience de la praticienne, faire revivre en une fresque documentée les doctrines, les hommes et les femmes qui ont incarné en France cette révolution de l'âme.
La seule aussi à avoir mis en perspective les théories, les mouvements et les débats qui n'ont cessé d'animer le milieu psychanalytique français depuis 1885 : de l'arrivée à Paris de Freud, venu assister aux leçons de Charcot à la Salpêtrière, jusqu'à la récente mise en cause des thérapies psychanalytiques, en passant par l'extraordinaire aventure lacanienne.
La seule aussi à avoir mis en perspective les théories, les mouvements et les débats qui n'ont cessé d'animer le milieu psychanalytique français depuis 1885 : de l'arrivée à Paris de Freud, venu assister aux leçons de Charcot à la Salpêtrière, jusqu'à la récente mise en cause des thérapies psychanalytiques, en passant par l'extraordinaire aventure lacanienne.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
October 23, 2014
First, what is "everything"? And second, how does le maître survive in spite of it?
"Everything" for Roudinesco includes Lacan's often obscurantist vocabulary; his late belief in mathematics as the key to formalizing his theories of subjectivity and society; his inability to run institutions (whether school or clinic) except for cultically; his encouragement of an elitist and asocial and apolitical psychoanalytic practice; and possibly, though Roudinesco doesn't come out and say it in so many words, his own personal appetites (for women, wine, shoes, rare editions, etc.) and his cynicism (his disbelief in love, his parvenu's fury against his small origins in a vinegar-merchant's family).
This is not necessarily how an Anglo-American intellectual would draw the bill of indictment against Lacan. Even those of us with far greater sympathy than your average Oxbridge empiricist for speculative thought and visionary prose may have a low tolerance for the abstraction seemingly endemic to Continental theory. Ours is a language shaped by poets who pitted the subjugated dialect of the northern tribes against a Latinity that will always strike the Anglophone ear as malignly elite, as well as somehow effete, queer--even those Anglophones (like myself) who are "ethnically" Latin and were reared in popery. And we certainly do not want psychoanalysts delivering political pronouncements!
But it is Lacan's speculative and social thought that Roudinesco appreciates most. She has little patience for his scientism or his avant-garde commitment to the neologism, but hails him essentially as a responsible heir to the adventure of philosophical modernity, and one who successfully managed to pass it on to the rest of us, despite the globalization of Anglo-Saxon ideology. ("Us" here means mainly the French intelligentsia; this is a very "French" book in ways I am hard pressed to define, but can nevertheless obscurely sense.)
Roudinesco honors Lacan for his defense of an "enlightened conservatism" in a century of extremes. He scorned those (fascists) who would simply restore the patriarchy that had been largely deposed in Europe by the end of the nineteenth century, even as he regarded as naive (and doomed to repeat the tyranny they wished to overthrow) those (communists and libertarians) who would put in its place the reign of absolute freedom. Lacan's was a mission to retain Law--conceived as the symbolic, the possibility of humans making sense at all--after the passing of the paternal imago, whether God or his surrogate, the paterfamilias. This freedom-within-law can only be achieved through the endless process of using language creatively and critically--in psychoanalysis, he thought, or, as I would amend, in imaginative literature.
This book is not exactly an introduction, and I found some of it rather abstract; the discussion of Antigone, for instance, eludes me and I hope to look up the relevant Lacanian text--or maybe just Judith Butler--someday. The section on Kant and Sade is suggestive though; I gather Lacan thought them the poles of modernity, Kant-as-authoritarian-modernism and Sade-as-capitalist-postmodernity, to both of which he would counterpose psychoanalysis to act as the new rationalism in which desire could be articulated within the bounds of the always incomplete symbolic. Contra his communist disciples, the Real is not representable and the attempt to manifest it will inevitably end in the catastrophic tyranny of a naively totalizing symbolic. I think--as I said, the book is suggestive, and that is what it suggested to me.
When it is not being polemical, this book occasionally indulges an idiom I associate with Borges or Calvino: long lists of exotica, the things Lacan loved or the things he owned. An illustrated book of Lacaniana might be interesting; the Jungians get such works published, why not the Lacanians?
This is the book of a partisan, so it isn't "objective," nor is it a very good primer. I suspect the target audience is probably someone like me--somebody who has studied the humanities extensively and knows a bit about Lacan but would like to know more. As the target audience, I enjoyed it; I'm not sure I'd recommend it to everyone. It made me want to seek out more of Lacan's works. Some more-or-less Lacanians were very influential in my undergraduate education--Colin MacCabe, Valerie Krips--and their way of thinking about literature still informs my own. But I was never able to make much headway with the texts of the man himself; his followers express themselves far more lucidly than he was concerned to. Nevertheless, I am stimulated by Roudinesco to go further, especially given her political polemic. I'd hoped for better in my receding youth, but it seems to me now that if the coming catastrophes of our civilization are as bad as some foretell, an "enlightened conservatism" may be the needed remedy.
"Everything" for Roudinesco includes Lacan's often obscurantist vocabulary; his late belief in mathematics as the key to formalizing his theories of subjectivity and society; his inability to run institutions (whether school or clinic) except for cultically; his encouragement of an elitist and asocial and apolitical psychoanalytic practice; and possibly, though Roudinesco doesn't come out and say it in so many words, his own personal appetites (for women, wine, shoes, rare editions, etc.) and his cynicism (his disbelief in love, his parvenu's fury against his small origins in a vinegar-merchant's family).
This is not necessarily how an Anglo-American intellectual would draw the bill of indictment against Lacan. Even those of us with far greater sympathy than your average Oxbridge empiricist for speculative thought and visionary prose may have a low tolerance for the abstraction seemingly endemic to Continental theory. Ours is a language shaped by poets who pitted the subjugated dialect of the northern tribes against a Latinity that will always strike the Anglophone ear as malignly elite, as well as somehow effete, queer--even those Anglophones (like myself) who are "ethnically" Latin and were reared in popery. And we certainly do not want psychoanalysts delivering political pronouncements!
But it is Lacan's speculative and social thought that Roudinesco appreciates most. She has little patience for his scientism or his avant-garde commitment to the neologism, but hails him essentially as a responsible heir to the adventure of philosophical modernity, and one who successfully managed to pass it on to the rest of us, despite the globalization of Anglo-Saxon ideology. ("Us" here means mainly the French intelligentsia; this is a very "French" book in ways I am hard pressed to define, but can nevertheless obscurely sense.)
Roudinesco honors Lacan for his defense of an "enlightened conservatism" in a century of extremes. He scorned those (fascists) who would simply restore the patriarchy that had been largely deposed in Europe by the end of the nineteenth century, even as he regarded as naive (and doomed to repeat the tyranny they wished to overthrow) those (communists and libertarians) who would put in its place the reign of absolute freedom. Lacan's was a mission to retain Law--conceived as the symbolic, the possibility of humans making sense at all--after the passing of the paternal imago, whether God or his surrogate, the paterfamilias. This freedom-within-law can only be achieved through the endless process of using language creatively and critically--in psychoanalysis, he thought, or, as I would amend, in imaginative literature.
This book is not exactly an introduction, and I found some of it rather abstract; the discussion of Antigone, for instance, eludes me and I hope to look up the relevant Lacanian text--or maybe just Judith Butler--someday. The section on Kant and Sade is suggestive though; I gather Lacan thought them the poles of modernity, Kant-as-authoritarian-modernism and Sade-as-capitalist-postmodernity, to both of which he would counterpose psychoanalysis to act as the new rationalism in which desire could be articulated within the bounds of the always incomplete symbolic. Contra his communist disciples, the Real is not representable and the attempt to manifest it will inevitably end in the catastrophic tyranny of a naively totalizing symbolic. I think--as I said, the book is suggestive, and that is what it suggested to me.
When it is not being polemical, this book occasionally indulges an idiom I associate with Borges or Calvino: long lists of exotica, the things Lacan loved or the things he owned. An illustrated book of Lacaniana might be interesting; the Jungians get such works published, why not the Lacanians?
This is the book of a partisan, so it isn't "objective," nor is it a very good primer. I suspect the target audience is probably someone like me--somebody who has studied the humanities extensively and knows a bit about Lacan but would like to know more. As the target audience, I enjoyed it; I'm not sure I'd recommend it to everyone. It made me want to seek out more of Lacan's works. Some more-or-less Lacanians were very influential in my undergraduate education--Colin MacCabe, Valerie Krips--and their way of thinking about literature still informs my own. But I was never able to make much headway with the texts of the man himself; his followers express themselves far more lucidly than he was concerned to. Nevertheless, I am stimulated by Roudinesco to go further, especially given her political polemic. I'd hoped for better in my receding youth, but it seems to me now that if the coming catastrophes of our civilization are as bad as some foretell, an "enlightened conservatism" may be the needed remedy.
May 6, 2014
In “Analysis of a case of Hysteria,” Freud writes, “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger tips; betrayal oozes out of him at ever pore.” If Freud brought our attention to unconscious, motivationally efficacious phenomena, then Lacan attempted to show that the human soul is always and everywhere chattering: The body speaks even in silence.
As is well known, Lacan’s preferred medium was his weekly lunch seminar. A roller coaster of oratory brilliance (Althusser: “a dumbshow equivalent of the language of the unconscious”), Lacan brought his listeners into his laboratory of the unconscious. Lacan’s method of presentation was just as important as the content; because of this, he was always anxious about the prospect of having his thoughts published—“Stécriture,” he said. I bring this out because a book that attempts to bring light to Lacan’s life and work must somehow straddle the crevasse between complex form and difficult content. Nowhere are these anxieties better-understood and mounted than in Roudinesco’s short book.
Lacan: In Spite of Everything is composed of 16 short vignette-chapters. Some chapters are fairly straightforward descriptions of Lacan’s teachings, other chapters present nothing more than aphoristic vignettes—the reader left with a seminar-like silence. Although this homage to Lacan’s style could quickly devolve into a puerile pastiche, Roudinesco’s beautifully written book pulls this style off majestically. One gets the impression that Roudinesco wants to let the reader glimpse—if only for a moment—into a seminar at Sainte-Anne. This is not an academic study (at least not in the normal sense) of Lacan’s psychoanalytic views. For anyone looking for an up-to-date discussion of Lacan’s work, this book will disappoint. In Spite of Everything is a fragment or a list—that is, incomplete. Roudinesco leaves the reader with a small kernel of Lacanian thought that can then blossom in the reader’s imagination. I found myself lost in the text, the scene brilliantly clear for a second, and then resonating softly for the rest of the day. Highly recommended.
As is well known, Lacan’s preferred medium was his weekly lunch seminar. A roller coaster of oratory brilliance (Althusser: “a dumbshow equivalent of the language of the unconscious”), Lacan brought his listeners into his laboratory of the unconscious. Lacan’s method of presentation was just as important as the content; because of this, he was always anxious about the prospect of having his thoughts published—“Stécriture,” he said. I bring this out because a book that attempts to bring light to Lacan’s life and work must somehow straddle the crevasse between complex form and difficult content. Nowhere are these anxieties better-understood and mounted than in Roudinesco’s short book.
Lacan: In Spite of Everything is composed of 16 short vignette-chapters. Some chapters are fairly straightforward descriptions of Lacan’s teachings, other chapters present nothing more than aphoristic vignettes—the reader left with a seminar-like silence. Although this homage to Lacan’s style could quickly devolve into a puerile pastiche, Roudinesco’s beautifully written book pulls this style off majestically. One gets the impression that Roudinesco wants to let the reader glimpse—if only for a moment—into a seminar at Sainte-Anne. This is not an academic study (at least not in the normal sense) of Lacan’s psychoanalytic views. For anyone looking for an up-to-date discussion of Lacan’s work, this book will disappoint. In Spite of Everything is a fragment or a list—that is, incomplete. Roudinesco leaves the reader with a small kernel of Lacanian thought that can then blossom in the reader’s imagination. I found myself lost in the text, the scene brilliantly clear for a second, and then resonating softly for the rest of the day. Highly recommended.
July 3, 2014
When I picked this up, I knew Roudinesco have been a qualified defender of Lacan and the writer of a massive biography of the man. I half-feared that this would either be mostly apologetics or it would be a condensed and abridged version of the longer work. It is neither. It is part biography, part criticism, part reflection, and, yes, part apologetics. Written in brief, poetic chapters which try to analyze and explicate a bit of Lacan's life, you get a feel for parts of the man. What stops this for being perfect is that it seems to have no particular audience in mind. It is by and large too basic for either psychoanalysis or cultural theorist already familiar with Lacan or one of the many schools of thought that developed out of that. It is a little too much for total layman. Enjoyable either way to read and written in very clear language, it seems only those who had interest in the man but almost gave up on his neologisms and poetic difficulty, but not enough to have written him off totally would benefit from the book the most.
July 25, 2018
Lacan'ın kuramından önce, Lacan'ı ve düşünce biçimini bir anlayalım kitabı... Önyargılarımdan biraz daha uzaklaşmamı ve Lacan'ı merak etmeye başlamamı sağladı. Tam olarak ne anladığımdan emin değilim ama daha ilk denemem, sakinim :)
October 9, 2014
Absolutely shit.
October 28, 2018
Bitirdim. Kısa bir kitap, ama okumam biraz uzun sürdü. Roudinesco Lacan'ı sevgi dolu, ama gayet nesnel bir şekilde ele almış. Özellikle son dönemine dair eleştirileri oldukça sert.
Notlarım şöyle :
... psikanalizi felsefe tarihi içine yerleştirdi.
... halk sağlığı alanına gerçek bir ilgisi vardı.
... Freud kadar Darwinci olan Lacan...
Lacancı perspektiften ayna evresi ruhsal, hatta ontolojik bir operasyona dönüşüyor, insanda varlığı da bu operasyon sayesinde kendi benzeriyle özdeşleşerek oluşuyordu.
...özne-ben'in işlevinin oluşturucusu olarak ayna evresi.
...böylece fenomenolojide temellenen varoluşçu bir özne anlayışından sıyrılarak, öznenin haberi olmadan kendisini belirleyen simgesel bir işlev içerisinde, yani dil içerisinde oluştuğu düşüncesine dayanan yapısal bir bakış açısına geçiyordu.
Ona göre cehennem başkaları değildir, çünkü kimliğe ulaşmak Yasa tarafından dolayımlanmış bir başkasıyla ilişki kurmayı varsayar daima.
Foucault, 1981'de Sarte ve Lacan'ın bir yerde "birbirlerine alternatif" iki çağdaş olduklarının altını çizer.
Sürekli olarak kendinin buluşu olan bu üç öğeyi gündeme getiriyordu : imgesel, simgesel, gerçek.
Hakikatin hiçbir zaman bütünüyle söylenemeyeceğini, yoksa ortaya bir saydamlık diktatörlüğü çıkacağını biliyordu.
O yıl felsefe tarihinin en güzel metinlerinden birinin muhteşem bir yorumunu sundu : Platon'un 'Şölen'iydi bu.
Klinik bakış açısından ele alınırsa kaygı, hastalık şeklinde yaşandığında, özne ancak bu travma yaratan gerçekten kendini ayırıp hayal kırıkılığına kaynak olan eksiklik dehşetine karşı mesafe alabilrse kaygıyı aşabilir.
Fredu'un özgürlük teorisinin temeli budur zaten : kaderin varlığını kabullenip ondan sıyrılabilmek.
Psikanaliz bir bilim değil, insanlık durumunun felsefi bir antropolojisidir.
Bir keresinde dağda geçirdiği tatilden hoşnut kalmayınca şöyle demişti : "Kış sporları orta sınıfın yaşlıları için bir tür toplama kampı".
Ölümünden sonra en Lacancı gazete olan Libération onu çok güzel uğurladı : "Herkes gibi Lacan da ölü taklidi yapıyor".
Notlarım şöyle :
... psikanalizi felsefe tarihi içine yerleştirdi.
... halk sağlığı alanına gerçek bir ilgisi vardı.
... Freud kadar Darwinci olan Lacan...
Lacancı perspektiften ayna evresi ruhsal, hatta ontolojik bir operasyona dönüşüyor, insanda varlığı da bu operasyon sayesinde kendi benzeriyle özdeşleşerek oluşuyordu.
...özne-ben'in işlevinin oluşturucusu olarak ayna evresi.
...böylece fenomenolojide temellenen varoluşçu bir özne anlayışından sıyrılarak, öznenin haberi olmadan kendisini belirleyen simgesel bir işlev içerisinde, yani dil içerisinde oluştuğu düşüncesine dayanan yapısal bir bakış açısına geçiyordu.
Ona göre cehennem başkaları değildir, çünkü kimliğe ulaşmak Yasa tarafından dolayımlanmış bir başkasıyla ilişki kurmayı varsayar daima.
Foucault, 1981'de Sarte ve Lacan'ın bir yerde "birbirlerine alternatif" iki çağdaş olduklarının altını çizer.
Sürekli olarak kendinin buluşu olan bu üç öğeyi gündeme getiriyordu : imgesel, simgesel, gerçek.
Hakikatin hiçbir zaman bütünüyle söylenemeyeceğini, yoksa ortaya bir saydamlık diktatörlüğü çıkacağını biliyordu.
O yıl felsefe tarihinin en güzel metinlerinden birinin muhteşem bir yorumunu sundu : Platon'un 'Şölen'iydi bu.
Klinik bakış açısından ele alınırsa kaygı, hastalık şeklinde yaşandığında, özne ancak bu travma yaratan gerçekten kendini ayırıp hayal kırıkılığına kaynak olan eksiklik dehşetine karşı mesafe alabilrse kaygıyı aşabilir.
Fredu'un özgürlük teorisinin temeli budur zaten : kaderin varlığını kabullenip ondan sıyrılabilmek.
Psikanaliz bir bilim değil, insanlık durumunun felsefi bir antropolojisidir.
Bir keresinde dağda geçirdiği tatilden hoşnut kalmayınca şöyle demişti : "Kış sporları orta sınıfın yaşlıları için bir tür toplama kampı".
Ölümünden sonra en Lacancı gazete olan Libération onu çok güzel uğurladı : "Herkes gibi Lacan da ölü taklidi yapıyor".
December 5, 2017
Concise introductory text, glosses a sampling of key points in the course of delivering a balanced memoir/encomium, perhaps even too basic if you're already fairly conversant in Lacaniana. Either way, it's a good start or good addition.
July 21, 2022
Continuando su otro gran libro sobre Lacan, acá la Roudinesco aclara que aquél no era una biografía, y presenta en este, mucho más breve, una serie de aspectos de la vida de Lacan, sin disculpas, sin censura, que me parece que contribuyen a dar una visión bastante menos santificada del personaje. Como en otras ocasiones, no deja títere con cabeza, le tira a sus seguidores con justa razón y sigue invitándonos a pensar en el psicoanálisis fuera de rigideces para mantenerlo vivo.
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June 17, 2016"The journalist had forgotten how popular Lacan was - not the Lacan of knots, Antigone or 'Kant with Sade', but the psychiatrist, the doctor of the insane, the one who for half a century, together with some fellow-travellers, supporters of the common good and public service, and embodied the ideals of an institutional psychotherapy and a humanist psychiatry, today in disarray."
It is clear to me after reading this text that it required an outside observer to capture the spectacularity of Lacan. Élisabeth Roudinesco is near enough to his life to know what few others could, but (arguably) not close enough to be utterly blinded by Lacan's seductive splendor.
This book is not a narrativized biography nor a theoretical engagement with Lacan's work, though it has elements of both. What this book does best is capture the spirit of the periods in which Lacan worked. Whether it's Lacan's reaction to WWII, the disagreements between Derrida and Foucault, or the scandalous love life of Lacan himself.
Roudinesco is an excellent writer who has a masterful sense of what is germane to include here. Her writing is as kinetic and brilliant as the man she profiles. Speaking of profiles, perhaps this text could be best described as an almost journalistic profile of Lacan. It speaks also to his psychological profile, the profile of his work, and gives a sense of what it might be like to gaze upon him.
The prose here is so immaculate and the subject so interesting, I believe this book to be of interest to anyone with even the vaguest inkling of an interest in philosophy, critical theory, or psychoanalysis. Roudinesco writes with an immediacy that demands immediate attention. For us who specialize in Lacan, there should be no delay, this is essential reading.
April 11, 2019
Uma pequena biografia de Lacan nos mostrando a evolução de seu trabalhos partir de seu retorno ao sentido de Freud e o que ele produziu para fazer avançar a teoria psicanalítica. Fatos de sua vida pessoal ajudam a pensar o mestre na sua vertente humana.
August 19, 2014
This book has one designated reader: Elisabeth Roudinesco.
For everyone else, it constitutes a rather worthwile collection of witticisms.
Something else: In Spite of Everything
For everyone else, it constitutes a rather worthwile collection of witticisms.
Something else: In Spite of Everything
May 30, 2025
Niye bu kadar Lacan okuyorsun diyenlere ben de Elisabeth Roudinesco gibi "Her şeye ve Herkese Karşı Lacan" diyorum.
Bizzat Lacan ile temas etmiş bir psikanalistin Lacan üstüne bir şeyler yazması her zaman daha etkili oluyor. Elisabeth Roudiesco da psinalizin tarihinde Lacan'a büyük önem veren psikanalistlerden. Ne Lacan karşıtları gibi onu yerden yere vuruyor ne de müritleri gibi onu göğe çıkarıyor. Yazdığı her şeyi objektif bir dille yazıyor. Ve psikanaliz tarihinde tabii ki Lacan' çok büyük önem veriyor. Bu kitapta da hem Lacan kuramına genel bir bakış veriyor. Hem de Lacan'ın hayatının kritik noktalarına değiniyor.
"Freud'un takipçileri arasında, dolayısıyla bir tek Lacan, psikanalize felsefi bir zırh vermiş, onu biyolojiye saplanmaktan kurtarmış ve bu arada da maneviyatçılığa yönelmemiştir. Lacan'ın yorumunun paradoksu, psikanalize, Freud'un mesafeli kaldığı Alman felsefesini geri getirmesidir. Sonraları kendisine "anti-filozof' diyerek iptal etmek istediği bu katkı, onu Fransa'da psikanalizin tek ustası haline getirdi, ama çok da düşman kazandırdı. Onu acımasızca hor görenlerin bir kısmı haksızlık ettilerse de, çevresine kullandıkları kapalı dille öğretisini iyice anlaşılmaz gösteren müritler toplayan Lacan da eleştirilere çanak tuttu. Daha kötüsü de şuydu: Hem bu müritlerden vazgeçemiyor, hem onlara kendisini taklit etmemeyi salık veriyor, hem de onları yok sayıyordu."
Bizzat Lacan ile temas etmiş bir psikanalistin Lacan üstüne bir şeyler yazması her zaman daha etkili oluyor. Elisabeth Roudiesco da psinalizin tarihinde Lacan'a büyük önem veren psikanalistlerden. Ne Lacan karşıtları gibi onu yerden yere vuruyor ne de müritleri gibi onu göğe çıkarıyor. Yazdığı her şeyi objektif bir dille yazıyor. Ve psikanaliz tarihinde tabii ki Lacan' çok büyük önem veriyor. Bu kitapta da hem Lacan kuramına genel bir bakış veriyor. Hem de Lacan'ın hayatının kritik noktalarına değiniyor.
"Freud'un takipçileri arasında, dolayısıyla bir tek Lacan, psikanalize felsefi bir zırh vermiş, onu biyolojiye saplanmaktan kurtarmış ve bu arada da maneviyatçılığa yönelmemiştir. Lacan'ın yorumunun paradoksu, psikanalize, Freud'un mesafeli kaldığı Alman felsefesini geri getirmesidir. Sonraları kendisine "anti-filozof' diyerek iptal etmek istediği bu katkı, onu Fransa'da psikanalizin tek ustası haline getirdi, ama çok da düşman kazandırdı. Onu acımasızca hor görenlerin bir kısmı haksızlık ettilerse de, çevresine kullandıkları kapalı dille öğretisini iyice anlaşılmaz gösteren müritler toplayan Lacan da eleştirilere çanak tuttu. Daha kötüsü de şuydu: Hem bu müritlerden vazgeçemiyor, hem onlara kendisini taklit etmemeyi salık veriyor, hem de onları yok sayıyordu."
June 21, 2025
Not a bad little work. I was hoping it'd engage more head-on with his ideas, but instead it reads like an indirect biography, sketching out some aspects of the man himself (in no particular chronological order, or with any desire for completeness). My virtually non-existent understanding of Jacques Lacan and his life has now been partially filled in, but not much more beyond that. Roudinesco is quite a fun writer, though, and this was both an enjoyable and - along with the short, thematic chapters - a rather easy read.
May 25, 2022
Light and irreverent — not adjectives you usually find connected to Lacan, his writings, and others’ writings about him. Especially good on Antigone, Kant, De Sade, and his famous personality ‘quirks’. I knew about the short session — I didn’t know that some of his sessions lasted one second. If your psychoanalytic session is so short, how do you find the time to sleep through it?!
March 28, 2018
This meandering collection of musings is hard to judge, as would perhaps be anything of quality on Lacan. I read pretty much a chapter every gloaming while scratching my scalp in the park, and the entire experience was highly satisfying.
December 14, 2019
Some motifs were interesting, but this was overall unsatisfying.
July 16, 2021
No geral, excelente.
December 19, 2021
Cet essai n’est certainement pas un moyen pour éclairer la pensée de Lacan. La personnalité devient plus tangible, mais l’univers intellectuel reste le grand Autre.
December 14, 2024
A incompreensão quanto ao papel da Topologia na Psicanálise desde Lacan deixa a historiadora devendo aos seus leitores.
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January 30, 2025je hais la psychanalyse
August 14, 2024
I have expected this book to have a more theoretical framework, yet it was enjoyable to read.
January 7, 2015
Vaguely posits the development of Lacan's thought in terms of his personal development, interesting where it discusses the uncredited (by Lacan himself) influences on his key concepts. Fairly understandable to people familiar w/ Lacan. It's not a difficult book at all, but it just assumes familiarity at times. Neither a thorough exposition/introduction to Lacan nor a biography as such; tries to do a bit of both, does neither very effectively. Her writing is often quite lyrical, but sometimes one might say it's a little hollow and pretentious (especially when discussing certain Lacanian concepts such as Das Ding, etc.). To her credit, a lot of the personal and professional anecdotes about Lacan which R. provides are fascinating and illuminating at times. If you are interested in and familiar enough with Lacan, it's definitely worth taking a look at, you'll find it a very light and fairly entertaining read. If you want to start into Lacan, or don't like his work but just want to know more about him, you will probably find it dull, infuriating, or both.
I quite enjoyed the book, but like I said, more for the entertainment value of it than anything. A lot of people won't like it.
It's by no means a worthless book, but perhaps a little useless.
I quite enjoyed the book, but like I said, more for the entertainment value of it than anything. A lot of people won't like it.
It's by no means a worthless book, but perhaps a little useless.
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