Becoming familiar with Lacan’s thoughts can be like a maze if you don’t know where to look. To go straight to Lacan\u2019s work, without the complement of secondary resources to make a bit sense of it all, is a brave and difficult endeavour. There are of course many books out there so\u00a0I thought I would share some of the references which\u00a0have been of great help to me at the start of my ‘journey’, and some of which still are,\u00a0and that I know other people around me have also benefitted from. Here is my list of suggestive starting points:<\/p>\n
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If you’re serious about getting your teeth into Lacanian theory, Freud is an essential and logical starting point, which Lacan stresses with his ‘Return to Freud’ project. Freud’s<\/strong> The Interpretation of Dreams<\/em><\/a> provides a great basis for starting to understand Lacan’s ideas, specifically his\u00a0famous maxim “the unconscious is structured like a language”.<\/p>\n While all books mentioned above are more or less clinically relevant, if you’re a practitioner with little time to spare, here\u00a0are some more clinically focused introductory books:<\/p>\n Lacan\u00a0did not establish a way of conducting discourse analysis that goes under the name\u00a0‘Lacanian Discourse Analysis’. However he did offer conceptual tools which others have built on in developing a Lacanian approach to discourse analysis, specifically David Pavon Cuellar, Ian Parker and Calum Neill. Here are their\u00a0core writings on the topic of doing discourse analysis ‘Lacanian style’:<\/p>\n Lacan held\u00a0annual seminars in Paris which have been\u00a0transcribed, and some of which have been edited and published by Jacques-Alain Miller (and translated into English). Those which\u00a0have not been published can be found online<\/a> and have been translated into English by Cormac Gallagher. Each seminar has a title that indicates the theme of the seminar. For example seminar X is called ‘Anxiety’.<\/p>\n Lacan’s core writings are collected and published under\u00a0\u00c9crits<\/em><\/a>. This\u00a0is not an\u00a0easy reading by all means\u00a0(be warned), but there are secondary resources\u00a0making sense of some of the essays which can be helpful, for example Bruce Fink’s Lacan to the Letter: Reading \u00c9crits Closely<\/em><\/a>. Similar close readings\u00a0are currently\u00a0on the way under the title\u00a0Reading the \u00c9crits collection, the first complete guide to Lacan’s core writings<\/em>,\u00a0which is co-edited by our very own Calum Neill.<\/p>\n Are you currently reading or have read\u00a0an introductory book\/article on\u00a0Lacanian theory which\u00a0has been useful for you?\u00a0We would love to hear from you!<\/p>\n By Amanda Diserholt<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Becoming familiar with Lacan’s thoughts can be like a maze if you don’t know where to look. To go straight to Lacan\u2019s work, without the complement of secondary resources to make a bit sense...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":374,"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacaninscotland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}General Books on Lacanian Theory<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nA very accessible book that works well as a first contact with the theory.<\/li>\n
\nIntroduction to Lacan’s ideas through the lens of popular culture and ideology.<\/li>\n
\nInvaluable book for grasping complex, core ideas.<\/li>\n
\nA unique\u00a0book containing clear and in-depth\u00a0readings of\u00a0Lacan’s essential concepts.<\/li>\n
\nWhile the focus is mainly on psychosis, this\u00a0is one of the best books which\u00a0coherently outlines the development of Lacan’s thoughts\u00a0in relation to his\u00a0general theory.<\/li>\n
\nIf you’re looking for specific concepts to learn about briefly, this dictionary is a valuable partner which outlines over 200 Lacanian terms and how they were developed.<\/li>\n
\n<\/em>If you prefer something graphic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nClinically Oriented Introductory Books<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nA more practical and highly accessible book for those who wish to apply Lacanian ideas in their practice, or are just interested in how the theory is applied in practice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLacanian Discourse Analysis\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\n<\/em>Excellent introduction that does not presuppose knowledge of Lacanian theory.<\/li>\nLacan’s Seminars & Writings<\/strong><\/h4>\n