The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis

Le Séminaire #17

by Jacques Lacan

Revolutionary and innovative, Lacan's work lies at the epicenter of modern thought about otherness, subjectivity, sexual difference, and enjoyment. This new translation of Jacques Lacan's deliberation on psychoanalysis and contemporary social order offers welcome, readable access to the brilliant author's seminal thinking on Freud, Marx, and Hegel; patterns of social and sexual behavior; and the nature and function of science and knowledge in the contemporary world.

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, France

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. His yearly seminars, conducted in Paris from 1953 until his death in 1981, were a major influence in the French intellectual milieu of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly among post-structuralist thinkers.

Lacan's ideas centered on Freudian concepts such as the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, focusing on identifications, and the centrality of language to subjectivity. His work was interdisciplinary, drawing on linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, amongst others. Although a controversial and divisive figure, Lacan is widely read in critical theory, literary studies, and twentieth-century French philosophy, as well as in the living practice of clinical psychoanalysis.

Reviews

[Shruti Buddhavarapu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ya know, for whatever it's worth, this dude was a pompous show off but he got some chops.

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the book recently. I think to have lost it. This séminar, the XVII, is,from my point of view the only one readable. It was in 1970. Of course there is all the lacanian language. Nothing there misses. Word games, the vocabulary crypto-Christian (assumption of image of the mother)
The seminars were events chic and society. People pressed there to listen to the Master. Lacan puted on airs and behaved like an old capricious actor. He took pleasure in diverting his audience by digressions. It's the difficulty to read the seminars. It's not rigorous.
It is imagined that this audience was comparable with the Sartre's one "Existentialism is an humanism" described by Vian with irony in "Ecume des jours".
The interest is that he shows brilliantly the mistake of Freud in "Totem and taboo". No, in the primitive horde the old father did not have the monopoly of the women. He fixes the concept of segregation to go to beyond of Oedipus. He sees in this segregation like the origin of fraternity.
On this point,Girard will see the origine of sacral. But from my point of view, the best confrontation is with Lévinas.
Whatever his defects I cannot to prevent me to be fascinated by him. "The origin of world" of Courbet (now at Musée d'Orsay) was fixed on the wall in his office.
I imagine an analysis in this athmosphere.

[Micah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't say I managed to extract much from this difficult book. It supposedly contains Lacan's response to the events of May 1968, but the oblique references to Kojeve's master-slave dialectic, Marx, and capitalism tell me little. I seemed to glean that surplus value is really surplus jouissance. It is supposedly Lacanian doctrine that the signifier can't be pinned to the signified, and he seems more than willing to demonstrate that here. He wanders through different registers, philosophical, psychoanalytic, political, historical, without pausing long in any one and remaining elliptical.

The book centers on Lacan's theory of the four discourses that condition all that is sayable - the "other side" is apparently the master's discourse, along with the university's, the hysteric's and the analyst's. Each discourse is in turn made up of four algebraic elements, the a - cause of desire; S1, master signifier; S2, field of knowledge; and $, the divided subject. As these elements rotate and make a "revolution," Lacan muses on them. Apparently it has been claimed, in Zizekian style, that Lacan is arguing that the university discourse is replacing the master's discourse, technocracy is replacing patriarchal authority, and we are becoming compelled to enjoy rather than experience shame. While this isn't implausible, I'm baffled that I found no such straightforward thesis in the book, unless it has to do with the sections where Lacan points out the father is impossible and castrated.

I'm going to read some commentaries on this seminar and see if I can make heads or tails of it.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would read an entire book of Lacan’s interactions with students. Also, this book is everything you ever wanted to read about the four discourses.

[Billie Pritchett]

Weird, wild stuff. Don't know how to put it all into words, but here goes. This seminar is mostly about what Lacan calls "the four discourses," which Lacan labels the Master's discourse, the Hysteric's discourse, the University's discourse, and the Analyst's discourse. Lacan thinks we're all caught up in one of these discourse patterns in one way or other.

He says the Master's discourse is the overarching discourse, maybe ultimately inescapable, whereby some source of authority extracts knowledge from his or her subordinates. The subordinates produce the knowledge, the authority enjoys the fruits of labor.

Harder to say what the Hysteric's discourse is, exactly, although Lacan says it's tied up with figures like Socrates, Marx, and Freud, who demand the fruits of knowledge, I suppose.

The University's discourse is also pretty unclear, but from Lacan's description, it seems to mean that people in their role as university students are reproduced by society as obedient in the mold of what university authorities hold up as knowledge. Again, guesswork here.

The Analyst's discourse is the position the therapist occupies, and Lacan clearly thinks that if any paradigm is to allow for breakthroughs, it's this one. Here, the therapist takes up the role of authority figure but does not reveal to the patient what it is he or she, that is, therapist qua person, actually desires. The therapist is only supposed to guide the patient along the patient's own speech paths, which hopefully will eventuate in the patient coming to terms with him- or herself as the closest thing to be an authority figure. At the very least, he or she is supposed to realize the fact that we are all in this position in life of moving around in the dark and trying to find our way.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 2 out of 5]

I haven't been so attracted to the beauty of a book and the elegance of its typeface and ink since I was reading Derrida books in my late teenage years and early twenties, years I spent at Bard College and Wake Forest University but, in both situations, never have I got so little out of reading them. Even the student in Lacan's lecture hall of 1969 France seemed share my "anxiety" about not getting an education by reading this text, which addressed psychoanalysis in an oblique, sideways fashion. Perhaps the concept of the university was, in fact, overthrown permanently in those heady, revolutionary days on occupations and protests over an intellectual curriculum of a Marxism made "safe" by means of general education. Flash forwards twenty-five years: students at Princeton University read Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and discuss it in academic terms with their professor while, at Bard, I read Volosinov's "Marxism and the Philosophy of Language" and, by contrast, we write essays on it (but do not discuss it in class). Flash forward another twenty-five years: the works of Jean Jaures and available on Amazon.com, yet only in French.

[leren_lezen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wowie, this is a very nice and beautiful Lacan. Calling the Hegelian master (in the m/s dialectic) the 'magnificent cuckold of history,' (which nicely shows how the slave is always mastering the master), how this slave is the subject of the Lacanian discourse of the hysteric, comparing 1970s academica to agricultural shows (as it is more about who is the prettiest (smartest) show pony rather than curiousity and daring to actually think or subvert), the discourse of the hysteric as a starting point for 'truth' and political critique, the unnaturalness of sexuality, why the Father always fails, the discourse of the capitalist, the alethosphere as an increasingly technological environment and the relationship between technology and science (technoscience), lathouses and gadgets, how feminine jouissance lacks nothing because it is impossible, what makes the human being human is that they are sexed (castrated) and mortal, the Real as the impossible, masculine impotence, calling the Oedipus complex Freud's dream... absolutely beautiful.

[jorge kyriakides · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think reading him without chatgpt would be a terrible idea. But with it such an enlightening one.

Its just how Lacan deliberately and constantly tries to evade explaining his own theory framework. Every time the train of talk leads to a further explanation of his theories, he promptly, quick and succinctly does so (just barely btw), and then he suddenly quickly diverts to another topic (usually an anecdote or a more simplistic theme that's not intrinsically related to his theories).

Probably dude by the time, was drowning to his very throat by the intricate enmeshing of his own theories and by putting them on full display in front of his audience really could have put him in question. (Not to mention that his audience at the time were largely intellectuals, thus further positing his standing among the intelligentsia).

But all in all the subjects at work, (if you get to understand them) are quite enlightening, and I would say the very culmination of structuralist thought.

[Tosol-san]

I've
understood
N O T H I N G

[Matt Feltman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I re-read this gem. I always refer to this as Lacan's joke-book, and boy did it make me laugh when I re-read it.

[Sean Connett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lacan is half stupid.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

3rd reading was good - read this whole thing again for one specific part (where he claims to “color” Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit with his addition of the object-a, which I would say he certainly succeeds at); however, that was actually his …or Worse seminar, so I had to then re-read that one after.




Upon second reading, this one had less jouissance than the first reading - however, I do believe I will be returning to this seminar over and over again as it is the most applicable to Marxist, Hegelian, and communist theory.



This one took me places. The four discourses are a fantastic and exciting breakthrough; his elaborations on surplus jouissance and his first steps towards “libidinal logic” were extremely enlightening.

[Leonardo]

Lacan desarrolla la matriz de los cuatro discursos (discurso del amo, de la histeria, universitario y del analista)...

Visión de Paralaje Pág.443-444


concepto de significante-amo

Sobre la violencia Pág.48

[Sébastien · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most interesting things I've read so far. I got the French version in PDF format from the Lacan school website. This is relevant not only to psychoanalysis but to learning, assessment, real knowledge and real teachers! The book can also serve as a warning to amateurs psychoanalysts.

[Luke Echo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult. I can't imagine what it would have been like in the Seminar.

[Kevin Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic dance of danger along the outer limits of the Continental thrust.