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Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan's Seminar VIII, Transference
Quintessentially fascinating, love intrigues and perplexes us, and drives much of what we do in life. As wary as we may be of its illusions and disappointments, many of us fall blindly into its traps and become ensnared time and again. Deliriously mad excitement turns to disenchantment, if not deadening repetition, and we wonder how we shall ever break out of this vicious cycle.Can psychoanalysis - with ample assistance from philosophers, poets, novelists, and songwriters - give us a new perspective on the wellsprings and course of love? Can it help us fathom how and why we are often looking for love in all the wrong places, and are fundamentally confused about "what love really is"?In this lively and wide-ranging exploration of love throughout the ages, Fink argues that it can. Taking within his compass a vast array of traditions - from Antiquity to the courtly love poets, Christian love, and Romanticism - and providing an in-depth examination of Freud and Lacan on love and libido, Fink unpacks Lacan's paradoxical claim that "love is giving what you don't have." He shows how the emptiness or lack we feel within ourselves gets covered over or entwined in love, and how it is possible and indeed vital to give something to another that we feel we ourselves don't have.This first-ever commentary on Lacan's Seminar VIII, Transference , provides readers with a clear and systematic introduction to Lacan's views on love. It will be of great value to students and scholars of psychology and of the humanities generally, and to analysts of all persuasions.
322 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 20, 2015
84 people are currently reading
755 people want to read
About the author
Bruce Fink
60 books163 followersBruce Fink is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor. He trained as a psychoanalyst in France for seven years with and is now a member of the psychoanalytic institute Jacques Lacan created shortly before his death, the École de la Cause freudienne in Paris, and obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII (Saint-Denis). He served as Professor of Psychology from 1993 to 2013 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is currently an affiliated member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center.
Dr. Fink is the author of six books on Lacan (which have been translated into many different languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese):
• The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
• A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997)
• Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)
• Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2007)
• Against Understanding: Commentary, Cases, and Critique in a Lacanian Key, 2 volumes (London: Routledge, 2013-2014)
He has translated several of Lacan’s works, including:
• The Seminar, Book XX (1972-1973): Encore, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge (New York: Norton, 1998)
• Écrits: A Selection (New York: Norton, 2002)
• Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (New York: Norton, 2006), for which he received the 2007 nonfiction translation prize from the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation
• On the Names-of-the-Father (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Triumph of Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Seminar, Book VIII: Transference (Cambridge: Polity Press, forthcoming)
He is also the coeditor of three collections on Lacan’s work published by SUNY Press:
• Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1995)
• Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (1996)
• Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality (2002)
He has presented his theoretical and clinical work at close to a hundred different conferences, psychoanalytic institutes, and universities in the U.S. and abroad since 1986.
In recent years, he has authored mysteries involving a character based on Jacques Lacan: The Adventures of Inspector Canal (London: Karnac, 2010, and translated into Finnish). A second volume, Death by Analysis, was published by Karnac in 2013, to be followed by two further mysteries in 2014 (The Purloined Love and Odor di Murderer).
Dr. Fink is the author of six books on Lacan (which have been translated into many different languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese):
• The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
• A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997)
• Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)
• Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2007)
• Against Understanding: Commentary, Cases, and Critique in a Lacanian Key, 2 volumes (London: Routledge, 2013-2014)
He has translated several of Lacan’s works, including:
• The Seminar, Book XX (1972-1973): Encore, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge (New York: Norton, 1998)
• Écrits: A Selection (New York: Norton, 2002)
• Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English (New York: Norton, 2006), for which he received the 2007 nonfiction translation prize from the French-American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation
• On the Names-of-the-Father (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Triumph of Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)
• The Seminar, Book VIII: Transference (Cambridge: Polity Press, forthcoming)
He is also the coeditor of three collections on Lacan’s work published by SUNY Press:
• Reading Seminar XI: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1995)
• Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (1996)
• Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major work on Love, Knowledge, and Feminine Sexuality (2002)
He has presented his theoretical and clinical work at close to a hundred different conferences, psychoanalytic institutes, and universities in the U.S. and abroad since 1986.
In recent years, he has authored mysteries involving a character based on Jacques Lacan: The Adventures of Inspector Canal (London: Karnac, 2010, and translated into Finnish). A second volume, Death by Analysis, was published by Karnac in 2013, to be followed by two further mysteries in 2014 (The Purloined Love and Odor di Murderer).
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
June 5, 2020
While I think Bruce Fink is a good translator of Jacques Lacan's texts, my reading of Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely gave me a fairly negative view of his work as a critic and commentator. For me, Fink is too much of a disciple, and that lack of a critical distance speaks to the weakness of his arguments.
Lacan on Love didn't really change my views on Fink - he remains too uncritical of Lacan for his books to be genuinely groundbreaking. Nonetheless, this particular work is unquestionably useful in certain respects. For the reader who is new or unversed in Lacanian concepts, Fink is almost painstakingly gentle, giving numerous examples that walk the reader through the various psychoanalytic concepts.
Now, as an advanced reader, there is a danger that I would find this book condescending or trite, but it is to Fink's credit that I did not. There are certain concepts of Lacan's that I am still struggling to clarify or articulate, and Fink's detailed explanations helped - this was particularly true with regard to the positions of the obsessional neurotic and the hysteric. I owe my clearer understanding of these terms to this book.
The text itself is divided into four sections, with the first three dedicated to looking at love through the Lacanian registers of the symbolic, imaginary, and real.
The first section, on the symbolic, explains love through the notion of structural positions. In these situations, the relational position between lover and beloved determines the nature of the emotional investment. This can be thought, for instance, from the aforementioned perspective of neurotic and hysteric. Neurotics tend to fall in love with people who are impossible or inaccessible: thus, their love is structural, rather than an indicator of the beloved's actual qualities. Similar structures can be seen in the Oedipus complex, or in the analytical transference, where desire largely ignores who the person actually is in favor of their position in the symbolic structure.
The second section focuses on the imaginary, thus turning the attention onto the subject's primary narcissism. Fink explains how love might be interpreted through either the fantasies we have about others, or as a reflection of our own self-image.
While these first two sections are detailed and convincing, the third section on the real is a disappointment. Fink begins well enough, pointing to examples like repetition compulsion (where someone repeats the same traumatic pattern over and over again without understanding why) and "unsymbolizable" factors that the subject cannot identify, but this chapter is brief, vague, and unsatisfying. Fink is clearly uncomfortable with the findings of the later Lacan, the Lacan of the real that is so central to Žižek's work, and it is reflected here.
The fourth section consists of "General Considerations on Love," a title that is as nebulous as it sounds. The first part talks about how difficult it is to define love, using numerous historical and cultural examples to show that it is a slippery term. The second part is an in-depth reading of Seminar VIII, at the beginning of which Lacan gives a detailed reading of Plato's The Symposium. If you've read Seminar VIII, you don't need to read Fink's piece-by-piece summary of it.
Overall, Lacan on Love was a book of two halves. The first two sections on the symbolic and imaginary were helpful and insightful, whereas the last two were vague and mostly unnecessary. Fink is a good, low-level commentator on Lacan's work, but as I said before, his books are never going to be genuinely groundbreaking.
Lacan on Love didn't really change my views on Fink - he remains too uncritical of Lacan for his books to be genuinely groundbreaking. Nonetheless, this particular work is unquestionably useful in certain respects. For the reader who is new or unversed in Lacanian concepts, Fink is almost painstakingly gentle, giving numerous examples that walk the reader through the various psychoanalytic concepts.
Now, as an advanced reader, there is a danger that I would find this book condescending or trite, but it is to Fink's credit that I did not. There are certain concepts of Lacan's that I am still struggling to clarify or articulate, and Fink's detailed explanations helped - this was particularly true with regard to the positions of the obsessional neurotic and the hysteric. I owe my clearer understanding of these terms to this book.
The text itself is divided into four sections, with the first three dedicated to looking at love through the Lacanian registers of the symbolic, imaginary, and real.
The first section, on the symbolic, explains love through the notion of structural positions. In these situations, the relational position between lover and beloved determines the nature of the emotional investment. This can be thought, for instance, from the aforementioned perspective of neurotic and hysteric. Neurotics tend to fall in love with people who are impossible or inaccessible: thus, their love is structural, rather than an indicator of the beloved's actual qualities. Similar structures can be seen in the Oedipus complex, or in the analytical transference, where desire largely ignores who the person actually is in favor of their position in the symbolic structure.
The second section focuses on the imaginary, thus turning the attention onto the subject's primary narcissism. Fink explains how love might be interpreted through either the fantasies we have about others, or as a reflection of our own self-image.
While these first two sections are detailed and convincing, the third section on the real is a disappointment. Fink begins well enough, pointing to examples like repetition compulsion (where someone repeats the same traumatic pattern over and over again without understanding why) and "unsymbolizable" factors that the subject cannot identify, but this chapter is brief, vague, and unsatisfying. Fink is clearly uncomfortable with the findings of the later Lacan, the Lacan of the real that is so central to Žižek's work, and it is reflected here.
The fourth section consists of "General Considerations on Love," a title that is as nebulous as it sounds. The first part talks about how difficult it is to define love, using numerous historical and cultural examples to show that it is a slippery term. The second part is an in-depth reading of Seminar VIII, at the beginning of which Lacan gives a detailed reading of Plato's The Symposium. If you've read Seminar VIII, you don't need to read Fink's piece-by-piece summary of it.
Overall, Lacan on Love was a book of two halves. The first two sections on the symbolic and imaginary were helpful and insightful, whereas the last two were vague and mostly unnecessary. Fink is a good, low-level commentator on Lacan's work, but as I said before, his books are never going to be genuinely groundbreaking.
November 30, 2024
Lacan’ı bir türlü anlayamıyorum diyenler; arzu, eksiklik, aşk kavramları etrafında psikanalitik bir okumanın ilgi çekici olacağını düşünenler, bunu yaparken Spinoza’ya, hatta Platon’a uğramaya üşenmeyecekler buyursun. Ben üşenmediğim için pek memnunum. #okumaönerisi #bookstagram #lacandaaşk #okudumbitti
December 27, 2019
Kitap Bruce Fink'in aşk tanımlarının ve buna yüklediği anlamların açıklamaları üzerinden ilerliyor. Tamamen Lacan'da aşk demek büyük haksızlık bence. Arada cidden keyif aldığım birkaç bölüm olmuştur belki ama bütününe baktığımda aynı şeyi söyleyemeyeceğim.
December 31, 2023
After a small hiatus from reading theory, I fell in love (at first sight) with the cover of this book, ‘Lacan on Love’ by Bruce Fink. Meant as a exploration on Lacan’s seminar VIII on Transference, Fink admits in the last several paragraphs that this book is still a work in progress. I really enjoyed the first three sections on the Symbolic, the Real, and the Imaginary. Anyone beginning their trek into Lacan should familiarize themselves with Fink’s work, specifically because he provides great general outlines on Lacanian concepts which are imperative to comprehending Lacanian psychoanalysis. When I first started to learn about Lacan, I was completely struck by the quote: “Love is a change of discourses.” Fink reminds us throughout the novel that love consists of particularity and difference, and that to love someone is potentially love the very thing(s) you hate in them. As an aspiring analyst, I was enamored by Fink’s insistence on position of the analyst in the transference, as the analyst must find something to love in the analysand, in order for the latter to really enact a “change in discourse”. I will contend that I thought some chapters went on for too long and perhaps could’ve been better designated as potential reflections on Seminar XX, and that a necessary separation between the mid-Lacan and later-Lacan could have prevented this from happening (chapters on Courtly Love seemed to go on for longer than chapters on transference did).
June 4, 2020
The only thing I would add to Peter's review is that Fink squirrels away the more clinically dicey (what is to say, interesting) issues to the Notes at the back, leaving the rather pedestrian commentary undisturbed. I'm sure this volume will be helpful to those newly struggling with Lacan, but if you're even modestly conversant in Lacanese you're likely to find this brisk volume a tad prosaic. Which is not to say "don't read it," just that you may get the feeling you've read it before. For myself, having read the Symposium recently and already pretty familiar with Lacan's analysis of it through various secondary sources, and read "The Direction of the Treatment" in Ecrits, and fresh off S.VIII, I kept waiting--Erwartung!--for something more... Not entirely Fink's fault, however, for a similar experience of dulled expectations accompanied me throughout the sections of textual commentary in S.VIII itself, as I'll repeat over there when I get around to it, if I don't let the lure of S.IX lull me into blissful readerly silence first.
March 2, 2024
Excellent exploration of Lacan on love and desire. Fink is so great at teasing out Lacan’s opaque statements.
March 13, 2016
Great book. I have come to understand what Lacan means now when he says "love is giving what you don't have". Very interesting observations on the dynamics of love. A must read along with Jacques Lacan's Seminar VIII. It has helped with my own journey as I imagine it will help with future Lacanians.
February 25, 2025
"Αγάπη είναι να δίνεις αυτό που δεν έχεις."
Αυτό ακριβώς που λέει ο τίτλος, μια εισαγωγή στο VIII σεμινάριο, πολύ βατή (αν και δεν θα την πρότεινα σε άτομα που δεν έχουν ξαναδιαβάσει ψυχαναλυτική θεωρία), χωρίς να γίνεται απλοϊκή. Ο Fink αναλύει τον Λακάν όμορφα και μη φανατισμένα, χωρίς να παραλείπει να προσθέσει τις προσωπικές του δημιουργικές πινελιές στο κείμενο. Τα κεφάλαια για το Συμβολικό και το Φανταστικό ήταν πλήρη και ενδιαφέροντα, τα δυνατά σημεία του βιβλίου κατ' εμέ. Το ίδιο, από τη μία, και το κεφάλαιο του Πραγματικού, απλώς το συγκεκριμένο το διέκρινε αυτή η... παγωμάρα που συναντιέται συνήθως σε κάθε (στη δική μου αναγνωστική πορεία, μέχρι στιγμής) απόπειρα προσέγγισης αυτής της έννοιας. Το εισαγωγικό και το επιλογικό κεφάλαιο εξυπηρετούσαν τον σκοπό τους ως τέτοια, χωρίς όμως το "ζουμί" που βρίσκεται στα άλλα κεφάλαια (ειδικά το τελευταίο έχει αρκετό μπλα μπλα, το οποίο, όμως, δεν είναι και περιττό). Πρέπει να πω επίσης ότι εκτίμησα το γεγονός πως ο τίτλος "Για τον Έρωτα" δεν ήταν (μόνο) clickbait, καθώς το κείμενο όντως επικεντρώνεται σ' αυτή την έννοια, χωρίς να υποβιβάζει τη σημασία της ή να προσποιείται ότι αναφέρεται μόνο στον έρωτα της μεταβίβασης ή δεξερωτι.
3.5 - 4☆, θα ξαναδιαβάσω σίγουρα Fink.
Αυτό ακριβώς που λέει ο τίτλος, μια εισαγωγή στο VIII σεμινάριο, πολύ βατή (αν και δεν θα την πρότεινα σε άτομα που δεν έχουν ξαναδιαβάσει ψυχαναλυτική θεωρία), χωρίς να γίνεται απλοϊκή. Ο Fink αναλύει τον Λακάν όμορφα και μη φανατισμένα, χωρίς να παραλείπει να προσθέσει τις προσωπικές του δημιουργικές πινελιές στο κείμενο. Τα κεφάλαια για το Συμβολικό και το Φανταστικό ήταν πλήρη και ενδιαφέροντα, τα δυνατά σημεία του βιβλίου κατ' εμέ. Το ίδιο, από τη μία, και το κεφάλαιο του Πραγματικού, απλώς το συγκεκριμένο το διέκρινε αυτή η... παγωμάρα που συναντιέται συνήθως σε κάθε (στη δική μου αναγνωστική πορεία, μέχρι στιγμής) απόπειρα προσέγγισης αυτής της έννοιας. Το εισαγωγικό και το επιλογικό κεφάλαιο εξυπηρετούσαν τον σκοπό τους ως τέτοια, χωρίς όμως το "ζουμί" που βρίσκεται στα άλλα κεφάλαια (ειδικά το τελευταίο έχει αρκετό μπλα μπλα, το οποίο, όμως, δεν είναι και περιττό). Πρέπει να πω επίσης ότι εκτίμησα το γεγονός πως ο τίτλος "Για τον Έρωτα" δεν ήταν (μόνο) clickbait, καθώς το κείμενο όντως επικεντρώνεται σ' αυτή την έννοια, χωρίς να υποβιβάζει τη σημασία της ή να προσποιείται ότι αναφέρεται μόνο στον έρωτα της μεταβίβασης ή δεξερωτι.
3.5 - 4☆, θα ξαναδιαβάσω σίγουρα Fink.
December 11, 2023
A useful if pedantic guide, divided into four sections: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real, and a final section titled, “General Considerations on Love.” As a beginner, the first half of the book was really intriguing and inspired many notes and marginalia. The feeling of intrigue definitely declined as I went on and, by Fink’s close reading of Lacan’s reading of Plato's The Symposium in Seminar VIII, I was ready to be done. Probably has been at my bedside for over a year, so it’s a real achievement to finally shelve it.
September 9, 2020
Great survey of the notion of love in Lacan and Freud. At times it gets a bit pedantic, but it is a good counter to Lacan's Seminar VIII which, like a lot of Lacan, is contrastingly cryptic and meandering. Having read both around the same time is a great experience overall. I would like to go back to Seminar VIII, with a little of Fink's perspective, and reread some sections. I would definitely recommend this as a relatively accessible intro to both Lacan and Freud on this subject.
September 19, 2025
Lacan icin baslangic kitabi niteliginde diyemem, bence psikanalitik acidan cok yuzeysel bi kitap. Degindigi noktalar bazen cok ilgi cekici gelebiliyor ama ardindan keskin bir gecisle baska bir konuda bulabiliyorsun kendini. Bruce Fink’in objektif baktigini da soyleyemecegim, Lacan’i cok hissedemedim.
Ancak psikanaliz ve lacan’i gormezden gelirsek “ask” kavramini hemen hemen her dusunure,felsefeye,edebiyata ve mitolojiye ugrayarak okudugum ve dahasini istedigim bir kitap oldu.
Ancak psikanaliz ve lacan’i gormezden gelirsek “ask” kavramini hemen hemen her dusunure,felsefeye,edebiyata ve mitolojiye ugrayarak okudugum ve dahasini istedigim bir kitap oldu.
August 27, 2020
I read this book with a colleague I met with online over a couple of years, an hour a week. It is a rambling exploration of Lacan and Fink's thoughts on Love and really interesting and stimulating, if at times very opaque! I 'loved' it.
April 12, 2021
Helped me fairly enough with my Lacanian reading of one of Woolf's novels. If it wasn't for that, I would hardly have spent time on this book as I don't find it well structured, and it was littered with tersely argued points in some sections which forcefully grated on me.
June 5, 2024
bir tane sorunlu psikanalist okumak yetmez diyenler için freud 2.0 yapmışlar. lacan'ın fikirleri çok boğucu olabilse de bruce fink adım adım güzel çözümlemiş lacan'ın kendi düşüncelerini okumak kadar yorucu olmayan tatlı çerez bir çözümleme.
March 6, 2025
读得好开心,尤其是谈三角恋把阿西比亚德 比作 苏格拉底与阿伽松爱的精灵的论题极有意思：拉康的爱涉及第三个人（不必具象化）,弗洛伊德的爱涉及六个人（双方、及父母）。整体的大他者享乐始终是不完满的,在原乐与欲望的调和下浪漫爱才得以实现,爱源自无意识的能指。爱是转移之爱,客体a作为转喻的欲望在新出现的对象间流通;对象a是挚爱的存在,只有在施爱者的他者性降格时,被爱者才变为施爱者,爱的主体要去成为欲望的成因而非对象/载体,即从象征界到实在界。
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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May 16, 2025The earlier sections summarizing Lacan on love, interspersed w/ observations from Fink's practice as an analyst, are really good. The latter parts regarding broader cultural ideas of love lose the plot though and aren't all that interesting.
March 20, 2019
Makes you think about different types of love. Extremely detailed and super interesting. Tries to make sense of the why do we love and the what do we love.
June 2, 2025
Bruce Fink çevirisiyle Lacan'ı okumak biraz daha kolaylaştırıcı bir hale gelse de psikanaliz okumanın dürtüklemelerini hissetmekten hoşlananlar okusun, iyi bir başlangıç kitabı da olabilir kitaptan yola çıkarak pek çok şeyin detayını merak edeceğinizi düşünüyorum.
October 4, 2025
I like to learn about love!
December 19, 2025
An exceptionally well-written book on a very engaging subject. If you want to fall in love, do not read this beforehand. Otherwise, it may serve as a good treatment for sore and broken hearts.
April 6, 2025
Like all of Fink’s books on Lacan, he achieves the incredible feat of making Lacan intelligible, with a style of prose that still leaps off the page and has a lovely literary quality. Instead of coming to any definitive psychoanalytic theory on love, he explores multiple interpretations of love in the psychoanalytic tradition. Is love narcissistic, merely a demand to be loved in return? Or is love the opposite, a demonstration of our fundamental lack and castration? Ultimately, Fink concludes that like analysis itself, universal conclusions about love are impossible because everyone’s ideal love story will be shaped by their singular unconscious. Perhaps most interesting is his development of the argument that the relationship between analyst and analsyand is a type of love relationship (“transference love”). The analyst must find something to love in the analysand if they are to listen unconditionally to their dreams, fantasies, and free associations, or the analysis is almost certain to be a failed one.
February 9, 2024
My favorite author on Lacanian psychoanalysis used to be Todd McGowan - while he's still top two, I find myself preferring Fink as I read more psychoanalytic thought. This book proves why - Fink explains that love is located within different registers, using Lacan's work in Seminar VIII instead of focusing on Seminar XX (which explicitly delves into the relationship between love and sexuality). By doing so, Fink can argue that most love is more akin to obsession, and that "real" love consists of giving nothing of what one has.
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June 22, 2025Great but needs an editor lowkey
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews