A2: Translations of Lacan’s written work – ecrits
Most of the written work Lacan produced has been published in Ecrits (1966) and Autres Ecrits (2001). The short list of texts given below has been chosen since despite their density and obscurity students and colleagues have found them better guides to their work than the secondary sources available in English.
- The family (1938)
- Written for a major French encylopedia when Freud was nearing the end of his life and Melanie Klein had already produced much of her best work, this is a synthesis of classical psychoanalytic thinking organised around the maternal, fraternal and oedipal complexes. It anticipates Lacan’s later thinking on the Name-of-the-Father and his engagement with anthropology and linguistics.
- The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power (1958)
- This trenchant and extensively documented critique of post-Freudian psychoanalysis condenses and articulates the themes that Lacan had dealt with in his seminars of the 1950’s e.g the graph of desire, the technique of operating with the signifier. Its rejection of the accepted view of the analyst as master and teacher foreshadows later discussions on transference and the Four Discourses.
Proposal on the psychoanalyst of the school (1967)
A proposal made by lacan
Italian Note (1973)
A letter to Italian analysts
L’etourdit (1972)
Lacan claimed that this last great synthesis of his work had found its inspiritation and verification in his weekly case presentations of patients in St. Anne. The despair of many French readers these translations are mainly inspired by the commentary of Christian Fierens and is the fruit of 5+ years of reading and discussion, correction and re-correction with a small group of colleagues.
- 1964: a) The founding act; b) Adjunct; c) Preamble.
- 1967: The proposal on the analyst of the School
- 1973: The Italian note.