Lacanian psychoanalysis is well
known in our days as one of the most complicated traditions in the contemporary
theory. Apart from its being so complicated and so hermetic, it is also very
popular. There is absolute hyperproduction of Lacanian and (I believe this
could be proper name for them) semilacanian books and articles all around us.
And off course, one must admit that their quality is too often problematic. There
is lot of empty mannerism, mystification’s, obscurantism…

Leupin’s book is different. It is
well written, clear minded and free from all possible mystifications. This book
is much more than just introduction in Lacan’s theory. Leupin’s text could be
seen as his (more or less) original attempt to give one possible and coherent
interpretation of Lacan’s discourse.  In other words, he is (between pages of
his book) critically rethinking one of Lacan’s most fundamental concepts and
ideas. I will just mention some of them: the structure of subject,
epistemology, dialectics, sexuality, even god… This book could be seen as Leupin’s
own contribution to Lacanian critique of the Western metaphysical tradition.

Leupin’s model (his hermeneutic
credo) for reading Lacan is none other than his own (Lacan‘s) reading
of Freud. Beyond the now trivial return to Freud lies a paradigm for
an interpretation of Lacan, if we turn on him the interpretation he applied to
his master. First of all, for Lacan, the Freudian corpus is not a Bible… If
we can extract an interpretative model for Lacan in his reading of Freud, then
of course the way, Lacan maps out Freudian texts is most important. He reads
Freud’s texts through their structure, not, again, through their imagery or
their historical evolution. It means that we have to insert concepts in
something that could be called a coherence, and then work their definitions out
through their oppositions and parallels. In other words, no glossary of formal
definitions will do: they freeze and isolate what are dynamic concepts, whose
force can be grasped only through their contextual mapping out; the concepts
have to be considered from the point of view of their respective relations.

Lacan warned his students very
early not to be idolaters, that is not to concede to the tendency to use
expressions that were too full of imagery. On the same page, he warned about
the idolatry of Freud, that is, Freud’s confidence in the image as being able
to render an accurate picture of the psyche. Lacan’s aim was, Leupin concludes,
to remove this idolatry from his disciples minds. Of course, to move away from
the image not only has the effect of promoting a more rigorous and abstract
discourse on the unconscious, but also ultimately offers one the chance to
liberate oneself of the notion of a sacred text delivered by an all-knowing
master. This was Lacan’ hermeneutic credo. The same warning about idolatry
applies of course to Leupin’s reading of Lacan.

If we want to understand Lacan, we
must do it with our own words. In particular, the only way to be faithful to Lacan’s
thought is to betray its expression. Lacan cannot be translated. He has to be
rethought in English through, and through, and basically rewritten. To read Lacan
is to betray him æ at last in regard to his style. Too often, Lacan has been
translated by "biblical" exegetes who were loath to modify even a
single comma from the original text. If Lacan smashed the idols, why shouldn’t
we be inspired by him, to the point where we will not idealize the letter of
his work?

The theory is therefore constantly
redrawn, modified, reformulated, but very rarely put in contradiction with
itself; the movement of Lacan’s thinking is more expansion and redirection than
an outright rejection of his own antecedents. The doctrinal core is constantly
redrawn, but its coherence is maintained. What permits this evolving coherence
is an early choice by Lacan, a choice that is at the same time pedagogic and
conceptual: the reference that will formalize psychoanalysis will be modern
logic and mathematics. As early as 1953, in his Function and Field of Speech
and Language, Lacan refers to a topological model æ and this in a nonmetaphorical
way, contrary to what would be the habit among humanists. From then on, the
mathematical model will never be far away in his works; it will give Lacan an
unparalleled coherence when he explores the intersections between the
humanities and science.

Starting from this basic Lacan’s
insights and ideas, Leupin has developed his own discourse. 

© 2006 Petar Jevremovic

Petar Jevremovic: Clinical psychologist and practicing
psychotherapist, author of two books (Psychoanalysis and Ontology, Lacan
and Psychoanalysis), translator of Aristotle and Maximus the Confessor,
editor of the Serbian editions of selected works of Heintz Kohut, Jacques Lacan
and Melanie Klein, author of various texts that are concerned with
psychoanalysis, philosophy, literature and theology. He lives in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Categories: Psychoanalysis