Publisher's Synopsis
English summary: How could Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) be one of the greatest thinkers of our time and yet consider thought to be an illness ? Was he a guru trailing in his wake enthralled young followers ? A charlatan who misused scientific truths and manipulated philosophic tradition in a very unacademic way ? A surrealist who accidentially drifted into serious thought ? His personality was certainly baffling - he never seemed to fit the labels people wanted to assign him. This someone who read Freud, as he liked to refer to himself, was also someone who, in doing so, unquestionably reinvented psychoanalysis. This book does not attempt to explain Lacan the Man, but rather introduces us to some of his major concepts - Real-Symbolic-Imaginary, Mirror Stage, Subject, Signification, Other, Object A, Unary Mark, Phallus, Name-of-the-Father, Matheme, Borromean Knot, etc. - by which he baffled and led us into uncharted territory - previously known, however, only by his followers. This was the psychoanalyst role which Lacan uncompromisingly incarnated.Alain Vanier, a psychoanalyst and former hospital psychiatrist, is a senior lecturer at the Universite de Paris VII-Denis Diderot. French description: Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) etait-il un des grands penseurs de notre epoque, lui qui considerait la pensee comme une maladie ? Un gourou, entrainant a sa suite une jeunesse fascinee ? Un charlatan usant de facon illicite des enonces de la science, manipulant de facon peu academique la tradition philosophique ? Un surrealiste egare dans la pensee serieuse ? Une figure deroutante, assurement, n'occupant jamais la place a laquelle on voulait l'assigner. "Celui qui a lu Freud", disait-il de lui, et qui a ainsi, incontestablement, reinvente la psychanalyse. On ne trouvera pas ici une explication du personnage Lacan mais une presentation de ses concepts majeurs - Reel-Symbolique-Imaginaire, stade du miroir, sujet, signifiant, Autre, objet a, trait unaire, phallus, Nom-du-Pere, matheme, noeud borromeen, etc. - avec lesquels il a deroute et entraine sur des chemins ignores - qui n'appartenaient pourtant qu'a ceux qui le suivaient: tache du psychanalyste que Lacan a incarne sans concession.
