Lacan for Beginners (Trade)

Lacan for Beginners cartoonishly strolls through every core aspect of Lacan's thought and clarifies each along the way without wasting words, and in a way that is entertaining. This series does justice to Lacan's focal idea of the role of the Phallus in Desire and the true nature of what it really represents, unrealized freedom of choice/will, one's own feeling of power, as Nietzsche might say. He/she who holds the phallus, holds the Other in fascination, be it Mommy, Father, lover, spouse, etc. There is another level of this, however, and so it does not neccessarily end with a simple chaotic power struggle. Within this pulsing universal phallus contest, one may experience true peace by seeing into the illusory nature of the phallus. Truly, it is in the mind alone. Lacan thus cites Zen (and potentially other similarly structured activities) as a positive form of self-therapy and escape from the illusion of the phallus, capable of making one better prepared to tackle one's life and avoid being insnared by the Other's illusory phallus. No one has the phallus, and everyone has the phallus. The phallus is not a penis, but ultimately a hopelessly symbolic representation of the "power" over one's life that someone supposedly holds over me, limiting my happiness and holding it out over my head. Its the magical ability to self-move, to initiate change. The more you believe in the potential/power of your own phallus, the more empowered you are, and the more converts to your phallus you may accrue, but the phallus is still an illusion clothed in veils, and so attachment to any object or thought is ultimately vulnerability insofar as it is not under one's own control. It's like playing a guessing game with people; their task is to guess how to push your buttons and make you their slave. To avoid having a phallus is to avoid being enslaved to the Other (other people). It means to call the whole thing illusion and look beyond such power plays as ultimately fleeting and at best entertaining or "educational". The phallus is ultimately an instrument of enslavement, while What creates the illusion of the Phallus held by the Other? Desire. Desire, for Lacan, is ALWAYS the desire for someone ELSE to...desire you, to give you the confidence that you are already complete and desirable as you currently are. Desire thus tends to breed desire. Zennists should find this to be an oddly familiar concept. Since desire is inescapable, care is needed to properly attend to the desire, what is at the root of it, how it factors in to being creatively INTERdependent, rather than being "independent" and uncaused by anything, which no one and nothing ever has been. This series is the best I have ever found in terms of introducing relative neophytes to a thinker's significant ideas, and typically goes beyond to reflect significant criticisms and alignments along the way.

Even among French philosophers Lacan has a reputation for being impenetrable; folks who attended his lectures sometimes were unsure what language he was speaking! Despite this (or perhaps because of this) Lacan is among the most influential psychoanalysts, particularly in Europe and South America. He's also a major philosopher and cultural critic, whose ideas have played a major role in the work of people like Barthes and Zizek. If you want to understand Lacan, you're probably going to need a guide ... and Phillip Hill's *Lacan for Beginners* is an excellent place to start.Lacan's theories of psychoanalysis are strongly influenced by Freud, but also incorporated ideas from Socrates, Saussure, mathematics, and just about anything else that struck his fancy. Hill does a thorough job of discussing not just Lacan's Freudian roots but also his debt to the Socratic method, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Hegel's slave-master dichotomy, and the abtruse mathematics of topology. All this can help you follow the twists and turns of Lacanian thinking, and penetrate the dense underbrush of his verbiage. As with other "For Beginners" books, the illustrations are a mixed bag. Some are cute, while others are simply regrettable. Most help to illustrate and clarify some of the points raised, while others are merely cute, or, worse, unfunny jokes. The Max Ernst-influenced collages are clever but often serve little purpose, while multiple fonts smeared on one page evoke the bad old days of 90s zine design. My partner suggests that someone on the Writers and Readers staff study "Drawing for Beginners" and "Graphic Design for Beginners." Still, if you are at all interested in Lacan this volume will probably provide you with the best possible introduction... and you'll have little luck in Lacanian self-study without a guide.

The "...for Beginners" books all provide a fine introduction to their topics, enough to get one started thinking along the right lines at least. This volume is no different. My only complaint is that it is a bit abstruse at times; it may take more than one reading. Alas, this book is the only 'Lacan for beginners' sort of book that I know of, so if you want an introduction to his thought then this is really your only option.

A very useful introduction to the world of an complex and brillent thinker. Some background in Freud would probably been helpful in order to understand some of the clinical language, but for the educated person wishing to get a sense of Lacan (and not kill himself reading the Ecrits) its a godsend. And don't let the french name fool you; these ideas are really exciting...mindblowing if you will.