i am heavily indebted to versions of lacan, so I trudged through the 500 pages that comprise this, the only (is that possible?) biography of his life, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort. This book is like following the assorted life scenes of Lacan in a gritty paparazzi clip, captured through the hedges. A continuously streaming feed, it follows around all those he came in contact with as well. (and indeed, vignettes with contemporaries like althusser, Sartre and francoise dolto and as well as with his patients, were often more illuminating than things Lacanian). intermittently, when this film stubbornly dereels, we are shoved copy of roudinesco's work on the history of French psychoanalysis. not exactly my thing. these are some pay-off:
being pretentious, neurotic, hypocritical, self-aggrandizing, self-idolatrizing and plagued by the spectre of plagiarism, it became clear to me that fidelity to the truth (ie. Practicing what you preach) was not especially paramount for this Frenchman. and after years of wailing to myself “but how can I traverse the fantasy?”, this gives me a little humility.
Also, the oft occluded fact by cultural studies appropriations of lacan is that although his writings never included case studies proper, his thoughts were firmly grounded in clinical practice and the small-circle disputes of psychiatry (along with of course, currents of philosophy and surrealism).
The other influence I was searching for, and found, was lacan's connections with the east. these appear both in his near travels to, and research on, russia and china. we find here lacan working on texts like lao-tzu's: "the original Tao engenders the One/The One engenders the Two/The Two engenders the Three, The Three produces the Ten-thousand beings/The Ten-thousand beings lean on the Yin/and embrace the Yang/Harmony is born of the breath of the Median-Void".
This book is also helpful in that trivial details of his life can stand in as mnemonic devices, like: Not only did bataille and Lacan exchange philosophical ideas in their formative years, they shared a wife. Or, while conducting ultra short sessions in his lavish offices (referred to infamously as punctuation, much to the delight of literary critics)- lacan simultaneously saw barbers, pedicurists and tailors. Or better still, that the late Lacan topological graphs took the literal shape--broaching senility—of obsessions with little colored pieces of paper, inflatable tubes, napkins, plastic curtain rings, and string.
Here is a very pleasant exchange on these matters that purportedly went on between lacan and Salvador Dali:
“I make knots,” said the psychiatrist.
“Yes, of course,” said the painter. “The Borromean Islands.”
Lacan grabbed a napkin. Dali snatched it away from him.
“Let me,” said Dali. “You have to draw them in a certain order, otherwise it doesn’t work; you can’t separate them. I learned all about it in Italy. If you go to Charles Borromeo’s tomb you’ll see what I mean.”
Then, remembering the famous meeting about critical paranoia, he asked:
“Why didn’t you say anything that time we met and I had a bandage on my nose?”
“Because I knew there wasn’t anything wrong with you.”
“Fantasic! You’re the only one who didn’t say anything!”
I think this tragic-comic quote, too, goes to explaining confusions of post-structuralist praxis: “when lacan went deaf, some of his pupils refused to admit that the great and idolized ear could have failed: “He’s not deaf,” they said. “He’s just pretending not to hear.” Similarly, when the first signs of cardiovascular troubles appeared in 1978, Lacan’s “blanks,” his silences, his sudden rages and thumping with his fist were sometimes regarded as subtle “interpretations” (in the technical sense of an analyst’s attempt to convey to a patient the latent meaning of what the latter has said or done)…"