Name: How to read Lacan
ISBN: 9780393329551

How to read Lacan

The How to Readseries provides a context and an explanation that will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. These books use excerpts from the major texts to explain essential topics, such as Jacques Lacan's core ideas about enjoyment, which re-created our concept of psychoanalysis. Lacan's motto of the ethics of psychoanalysis involves a profound paradox. Traditionally, psychoanalysis was expected to allow the patient to overcome the obstacles which prevented access to "normal" sexual enjoyment; today, however, we are bombarded by different versions of the injunction "Enjoy!" Psychoanalysis is the only discourse in which you are allowed not to enjoy. Slavoj Zizek's passionate defense of Lacan reasserts Lacan's ethical urgency. For Lacan, psychoanalysis is a procedure of reading and each chapter reads a passage from Lacan as a tool to interpret another text from philosophy, art or popular ideology.

What Hacker News says

omezeApr 2022

I found “How to Read Lacan” by Zizek a great introduction as someone who has 0 psychology or philosophy background. As another poster mentioned Im still not sure how much “there is”, but I found the concept of the Other to be interesting. But I also don’t think it’s too healthy outside of a clinical setting to try and reduce human desire to a formula. People should try to understand each other one-on-one without diagnosing or labeling either party’s behavior. It feels like a lot of interest in Girard and Lacan stem from trying to manipulate or predict people, which may be a useful tool some of the time (doctor <> patient) but is no way to live day-to-day!

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cyber_kinetistNov 2021

I’m currently reading How to Read Lacan (which is basically how to read Zizek’s interpretation of Lacan), and am having an absolute blast. It’s short, full of witty jokes, and is still packed of insightful thinking. (And you’ll probably get something out of it even without any background on continental philsophy)

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