To assimilate a writer as allusive as Lacan is to enter into an entire culture. However firm their grounding in Freud, readers of Lacan must learn to rethink psychoanalysis with a speculative breadth sometimes exceeding that of Freud himself. This book, designed to clarify the works of a controversial and influential figure, is the first collection of critical essays to appear in English since Lacan's own writings began to be widely distributed in translation.

Drawing on psychology, philosophy, literary criticism, and clinical and theoretical psychiatry, this volume explores the full range of Lacan's thought. An introduction by Kerrigan is followed by three papers by Stanley Laeavy, John Muller, and Julia Kristeva centered on the application of Lacan to the work of therapy. The second section clarifies Lacan's Hegelian and Heideggerian roots, with contributions by William Richardson, Edward Casey and J. Melvin Woody, Wilfried Ver Eecke, André Green, and Antoine Vergote. The final article is a Lacanian interpretation of Bleak Houseby Christine van Boheemen-Saaf indicating the potential of this approach for applied psychoanalysis.