Overview

""Alcibiades attempted to seduce Socrates, he wanted to make him, and in the most openly avowed way possible, into someone instrumental and subordinate to what? To the object of Alcibiades's desire – ágalma, the good object. I would go even further. How can we analysts fail to recognize what is involved? He says quite clearly: Socrates has the good object in his stomach. Here Socrates is nothing but the envelope in which the object of desire is found. It is in order to clearly emphasize that he is nothing but this envelope that Alcibiades tries to show that Socrates is desire's serf in his relations with Alcibiades, that Socrates is enslaved to Alcibiades by his desire. Although Alcibiades was aware that Socrates desired him, he wanted to see Socrates's desire manifest itself in a sign, in order to know that the other – the object, ágalma – was at his mercy. Now, it is precisely because he failed in this undertaking that Alcibiades disgraces himself, and makes of his confession something that is so affectively laden. The daemon of Αἰδώς (Aidós), Shame, about which I spoke to you before in this context, is what intervenes here. This is what is violated here. The most shocking secret is unveiled before everyone; the ultimate mainspring of desire, which in love relations must always be more or less dissimulated, is revealed – its aim is the fall of the Other, A, into the other, a."" Jacques Lacan

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"""In this extraordinary text Lacan teaches us that to become Lacanians would be to miss the point. To understand transference, Lacan shows us with his usual wit and precision, is to understand how and why people get stuck in their relationships to people, and to ideas. This is Lacan at his breeziest and most incisive. He reveals once again, in his own inimitable way, that to talk well about psychoanalysis is always to talk about so much more than psychoanalysis."" —Adam Phillips, Psychoanalyst and writer"

It is to the benefit of the broader Lacanian world that this pitch-perfect translation ? a decade or more in the making ? is now available. Longtime Lacan translator, Bruce Fink, and Polity Press, both deserve commendation for this new addition to the series of Lacan's seminars available in English. The scrupulous attention that has been dedicated to translating Lacan's French into idiomatic English, the research evident in the detailed translator's end-notes, and the formatting and finish of the final product (which includes a beautiful detail of Raphael's School of Athens as a cover illustration) warrant it a special place in this series. Psychodynamic Practice

In this extraordinary text Lacan teaches us that to become Lacanians would be to miss the point. To understand transference, Lacan shows us with his usual wit and precision, is to understand how and why people get stuck in their relationships to people, and to ideas. This is Lacan at his breeziest and most incisive. He reveals once again, in his own inimitable way, that to talk well about psychoanalysis is always to talk about so much more than psychoanalysis. Adam Phillips, Psychoanalyst and writer

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Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was one of the twentieth–century's most influential thinkers. His works include Écrits, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis and the many other volumes of The Seminar.

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