Lacan to the Letter: Reading Ecrits Closely

Rating:
Summary: Fink is the Man
Review: As an undergraduate philosophy student, I'll never forget the day I stumbled across Fink's "Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory." I remember reading the first couple of pages and being immediately sucked in. People come to therapy not because they want to rid themselves of their symptoms - they come to therapy, rather, because they can't get themselves to stop wanting to keep their symptoms! I was amazed at the profundity of this Lacanian insight. I knew I had to read on. So, this past year I picked up the Ecrits and Fink's commentary on it. Lacan's writing is nigh unto impossible to get through; but Fink's "Lacan to the Letter" is, again, some of the easiest reading I've ever done - and it blows my mind! For some of the most readable commentary on Lacan, you can't go wrong with Bruce Fink. What appeals to me the most, I think, about Lacan, is reading him as a philosopher, as someone who talks about the human condition - not so much as a "psychologist", but as a thinker who is doing a complex and amazing philosophical anthropology. He (accurately) shows how tied up with speech and language the being of the human being is. Lacanian theory astutely points out that we do not have a self outside of our linguistic contacts and exchanges with others, and of course, these exchanges largely shape how everyone, ultimately, thinks and feels about him or herself. Anyhow, if you are interested in knowing why people are crazy, healthy, or what the real (scandalous and negligible) difference between the two are, check this out. Fink offers clear readings of Lacan's phenomenological and anthropological explanations that shed light on the unconscious aspects of our being in ways that no biological-reductionistic or cognitive-behavioral approach ever could.