This
book is built on the paradox. It is meant to be an acceptable exposition of
psychoanalytic theory and technique inspired and by the original  structural,
logical, mathematical, and philosophical ideas of the French school of
psychoanalysis, particularly Jacques Lacan, Jacques Alain Miller and other
European and Latino-American post-Lacanian thinkers. It is designed almost like
a lexicon.

Reading
Lacan is far from being easy and without any serious problems. Lander’s highly
personal style is hermetic, to often surrealistic. The logic of his thinking is
rather idiosyncratic, lucid and original, but not easy to follow. Thinking
about Lacan’s psychoanalytic legacy, thinking about his school, is far from
being something selfunderstanding.  Many volumes of his opus are still waiting
to be decently prepared for official publishing and for its further critical
reception. There has been many controversies concerning his school in last few
decades.

One
of the most important characteristics of Lacan’s way of doing and thinking
psychoanalysis was something that we could really name as the authentic
speculatively of his thought. Or, speaking in another words, there were no easy
(no self-evident) solutions for him. During his famous seminars he had
articulated something that today we could call his own style of reading and
understanding Freud himself and psychoanalysis in general. Historically
speaking, he was one of the most controversial figures in all history of the
psychoanalysis. Doctrinally speaking, he is one of the most productive authors
in psychoanalysis. During last decade his influence had spread  all over the
world. His opus is no longer just one of most bizarre and most autistic
representatives of French (surrealistic and post-surrealistic) style. Lander’s
book is (I believe obviously) highly affected with this peculiarity of Lacan’s
and of Lacanian’s discourse.

Lander’s
text  is really reader friendly. It is understandable, clear and
logically organized, easy to follow. Chapters are ordered in systematic
fashion: The logic of Desire, The logic of Signifier, The Three Orders (RSI)
and the Borromean Proposition, The Logic of Anxiety, The Logic of Phallus, The
Logic of the Object,  The Logic of the Subject, The Logic of the Other, The
Logic of Object (a), The Logic of Jouissance, The Logic of the Cause, The Logic
of Symptom, The logic of Fantasme, The Logic of Symphantasme, The Logic of
Hysteria, The Logic of Phobias, The Logic of the Obsessive, The Logic of
Depression, The Logic of the Suicidal Act, The Logic of Borderline States, The
Logic of Psychoses, The Logic of Perversion, The Logic of the Perverse
Structure, The logic of Transference, The Logic of Transference Structure, The
Logic of Negative Transference, The Transference Graph, The Logic of the
Analytic Act (I), The Logic of the Analytic Act (II), The Logic of Specificity,
The Logic of Psychoanalytic Supervision.

In
some points Lander is really convincing and creative. He is especially good
when he is interpreting and elaborating Lacan’s well known (and far from being
easy to grasp) graphical schemes. This could be also said about his
understanding of the relation between object and desire. Great quality of this
text is Lander’s didactic approach. He is clear, systematic, and almost always
practical. Disparate speculativity and all divergent associations of Lacan’s
discourse are here reduced to the minimum.

This
volume is (as far as I know) the first handbook on Lacanian clinical practice
specifically designed for American readers. Dispensing with jargon and elliptic
formulations, Lande accomplishes the tour de force of making Lacanian discourse
sound like something that is (as I already said) really  user friendly. 
Of course, it is not always clear enough is he writing about Lacan himself, or
about Lacanians. Also, when it is obvious that he is writing about Lacan
himself, it is not always clear enough what period of Lacan’s work he is having
in his mind. Problem is that Lander’s Lacan is much more coherent, even
pragmatic, then Lacan himself ewer was. As it is well known, Lacan’s discourse
was intentionally problematic. And it was never (also intentionally) pragmatic
in Lander’s (or in the American) sense. 

Lander’s
simplification and pragmatization of Lacan’s theory and practice could be
misleading. His (Lacanian) understanding of psychopathology (especially
of the borderline and narcissistic personality structures and disorders) are
far from being convincing. The same could be said about his understanding of
the psychoanalytic situation and of the transference.

© 2007 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, Psychotherapy