The senseless Real: Introduction to the Thought of Jacques-Alain Miller

by Nicolas Floury

This book summarizes the essence of Jacques-Alain Miller's thinking. This thinking takes flight in philosophy and culminates in the development of a new clinical practice and new psychoanalytic concepts. It shifts psychoanalysis from the realm of meaning to the senseless and lawless order of the real. This means taking seriously the paradigm shift proposed by Lacan in his very last teaching. Is Miller's “turn towards the real” tenable? What are the implications for psychoanalytic practice? How can we understand this as abandoning the shores of meaning? And above all, what politics can we deduce from such a renewed practice of psychoanalysis? These are the main questions that this book, the first devoted entirely to the work of Jacques-Alain Miller, sets out to address. Readers will discover a colorful way of thinking that seeks to respond to the growing impasses of civilization, as well as some clarifications on the controversies that surround and have surrounded Jacques-Alain Miller. They will also discover, as if between the lines, an elucidation of certain obscure points in Jacques Lacan's thought. Nicolas Floury is a clinical psychologist.

115 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 14, 2025

Reviews

[Христо · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would you like a systematic exposition of Jacques-Alain Miller's psychoanalytic apparatus? This is as close as it gets. By proxy, you also get a demystified image of Lacan, through the Millerian lense, of course. In contrast to the Zizekian lense, we follow the logic of the Lacanian edifice to the end, and pull ethico-political corollaries from it. Rather than using psychoanalysis to justify our political presuppositions, we extrapolate political conclusions from it; they happen to be more conservative than Communist.

What I disliked was its heavy repetition, especially near the end. It reads well if you imagine it's a lecture you're listening to. It would probably work very well as an audiobook. But it's presented well enough, although there are some ambiguities, as is now tradition, with the usage of jouissance and "enjoyment" as a translated term; one needs to know what Lacanian jouissance is firsthand, lest one gets confused by the usage here. Other than that, it's a very lovely articulation of nearly the entire Lacano-Millerian edifice. Don't let its length fool you, it's rather tough if you don't take notes.