To read Lacan closely is to follow him to the letter, to take him
literally, making the wager that he comes right out and says what he
means in many cases, though much of his argument must be reconstructed
through a line-by-line examination. And this is precisely what Bruce
Fink does in this ambitious book, a fine analysis of Lacan's work on
language and psychoanalytic treatment conducted on the basis of a very
close reading of texts in his Icrits: A Selection.
As a translator and renowned proponent of Lacan's works, Fink is an
especially adept and congenial guide through the complexities of
Lacanian literature and concepts. He devotes considerable space to
notions that have been particularly prone to misunderstanding, notions
such as "the sliding of the signified under the signifier,"or that have
gone seemingly unnoticed, such as "the ego is the metonymy of desire."
Fink also pays special attention to psychoanalytic concepts, like
affect, that Lacan is sometimes thought to neglect, and to controversial
concepts, like the phallus.
From a parsing of Lacan's claim that "commenting on a text is like doing
an analysis," to sustained readings of "The Instance of the Letter in
the Unconscious," "The Direction of the Treatment," and "Subversion of
the Subject" (with particular attention given to the workings of the
Graph of Desire), Fink's book is a work of unmatched subtlety, depth,
and detail, providing a valuable new perspective on one of the twentieth
century's most important thinkers.
Bruce Fink is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst, analytic supervisor,
and professor of psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is
the author of A Clinical Introduction to LacanianPsychoanalysis (1997)
and The Lacanian Subject (1995). He has coedited three volumes on
Lacan's seminars and is the translator of Lacan's Seminar XX, On
Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge (1998), Icrits: A
Selection (2002), and Icrits: The Complete Text (forthcoming).
