Genius and charismatic leader of a psychoanalytic movement that in the 1950s and 1960s provided a focal point for the French intelligentsia, Jacques Lacan attracted a cult following. Ecrits is his most important work, bringing together twenty-seven articles and lectures originally published between 1936 and 1966. Following its first publication in 1966, the book gained Lacan international attention and exercised a powerful influence on contemporary intellectual life. To this day, Lacan's radical, brilliant and complex ideas continue to be highly influential in everything from film...

A charismatic and controversial figure, Lacan is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century and his work has revolutionized linguistics, philosophy, literature, psychology, cultural and media studies.

He gained his reputation as a lecturer, disseminating his ideas to audiences that included Jean-Paul Sartre and Luce Irigaray amongst other hugely influential names. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis is a transcript of his most important lecture series.

Including influential readings of Sophocles' Antigone and Elizabethan courtly love poetry in...

Bringing together three previously unpublished lectures presented to the public by Lacan at the height of his career, and prefaced by Jacques-Alain Miller, My Teaching is a clear, concise introduction to the thought of the influential psychoanalyst after Freud.

What does Lacan show us? He shows us that desire is not a biological function; that it is not correlated with a natural object; and that its object is fantasized. Because of this, desire is extravagant. It cannot be grasped by those who might try to master it. It plays tricks on them. Yet if it is not recognized, it produces symptoms. In psychoanalysis, the goal is to interpret-that is, to read-the message regarding desire that is harbored within the symptom. Although desire upsets us, it also inspires us to invent artifices that can serve us as a compass. An animal species has a single...