Review of The works of Jacques Lacan: An introduction.

Abstract

Thanks to its clarity, this is a book that allows us to raise the whole issue of Lacan's version of psychoanalysis."The aim of this book," its first sentence says, "is to give a clear introduction to the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan" (p. 9). In this, Benvenuto and Kennedy have succeeded admirably. If you are looking for a book to guide your students or yourself through Lacan's version of psychoanalysis, I know of none I would recommend more highly. Lacan's writing is witty and playful, but notoriously difficult. Benvenuto and Kennedy include just enough quotations from Lacan (notably in their chapters 9 and 10) to make one grateful one is reading a summary and not the original.Lacan is difficult to read because he limits his vocabulary to three fields: (a) the elements of the oedipal stage: father, mother, phallus, vagina, and castration; (b) emotionless words out of the French philosophical stylebook, disembodied, either/or words like: possibility, impossibility, absence, presence, lack, and desire (without a desirer); and (c) puns. With this sensational, if limited, lexicon Lacan discusses neurosis or psychosis (in just those global terms) or hysteria (which has come back into fashion in Lacanian circles). One will look in vain to Lacan for the careful, scientific distinctions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed.; DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980). Absent, too is the everyday language with which we discuss, no matter how lamely, love, sexu-Requests for reprints should be sent to

Lacan and the lack of humanity in HRM

“…The work of Barbara Townley, whose perspective has come to represents a dominant critical voice on HRM, provides a good example of the assumption of such a difference. Along with others, Townley (1993Townley ( , 1994Townley ( , 1999Grey, 1994;Hollway, 1991;Newton, 1994) has analysed HRM practices from a perspective inspired by Foucalt, taking as a starting point his critical analysis of power/ knowledge relationships (e.g. Foucault, 1977Foucault, , 1978Foucault, , 1980 in combination with his later work on the forms of subjectivity fostered within these relationships (e.g.…”

“…The hypothesis that the sense of incompleteness, which motivates the way the subject acts and behaves in the world, is generated by the early acquisition of language-the symbolic order, or 'the Other', as Lacan calls it (e.g. Lacan, 2006: 693)-has had a profound impact, not only on post-Freudian psychoanalysis (Holland, 1990;Parker, 2003), but also on post-structuralist and post-modernist thought as such (e.g. Butler, 1993;Žižek, 1989).…”

Comments on Norman Holland's book review of The works of Jacques Lacan: An introduction, by Bice Benvenuto and Roger Kennedy.

“…This article comments on Holland's (1990) review of Benvenuto and Kennedy's 1986 work, The Works of Jacques Lacan: An Introduction , contending that Holland dismisses Lacan's theory without taking into account Lacan's later concept of the Real, and that the review presents an oversimplified, misinformed view of Lacan's other concepts, such as the Symbolic and the Imaginary. It is not only language that is crucial for its psychic impact for Lacan, but also traumatic events which have their effects (the Real), the way unconscious family and cultural laws and expectations are signified (the Symbolic), and the way ideal images of self and other create ego fictions (the Imaginary).…”

A rejoinder to Gerard J. Pape's comments.

“…His ideas about the Real likewise rest on a pre-psychoanalytic idea of unmediated causality from external event to internal. Pape (1991) offers an almost sentence-by-sentence critique of my critique of Lacan (Holland, 1990). It seems a shame to use up the trees of America for my critique of his critique of my critique of Lacan.…”

“…Pape (1991) offers an almost sentence-by-sentence critique of my critique of Lacan (Holland, 1990). It seems a shame to use up the trees of America for my critique of his critique of my critique of Lacan.…”