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CLINICAL NOTES SERIES (September 2016)
KEY CONCEPTS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS: A LEXICAL ESSAY
Charles Rycroft (1995). ‘Introduction,’ A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London:
Penguin Books), pp. ix-xxx.
Daniel Lagache (1973, 1988). ‘Introduction: The History and Origins of This Work,’
The Language of Psychoanalysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, edited by Jean
Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (London: Karnac Books), pp. vii-ix.
Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1973, 1988). ‘Foreword,’ The Language of
Psychoanalysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, introduction by Daniel
Lagache (London: Karnac Books), pp. xi-xiii.
Dylan Evans (1997). ‘Preface,’ An Introductory Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London:
Routledge), pp. ix-xiv.
INTRODUCTION
These clinical notes attempt to explain in the form of a lexical essay what exactly is
involved in defining the key concepts in psychoanalysis. In order to do so, I will
summarize the main points raised by psychoanalysts who have attempted to put
together a dictionary of psychoanalysis; or, who have explained what exactly is at
stake in doing so. The first of these three dictionaries was written in its entirety by
the English psychoanalyst Charles Rycroft who practiced at the Maudsley Hospital,
the Tavistock Clinic, and then became a Fellow at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
The second dictionary was put together by French academics and psychoanalysts
like Daniel Lagache, Jean-Bertrand Pontalis and Jean Laplanche. The third dictionary
of psychoanalysis was written by Dylan Evans, a contemporary Lacanian
psychoanalyst and academic. The date of publication of all these dictionaries is given
above. Each of these dictionaries has a lexical philosophy that is set out in the form
of an introduction or a preface. Reading these prefatory texts in the original; or the
summary of the main points raised in these texts here will give readers a feel for the

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conceptual structure of psychoanalytic theory. The scope of these dictionaries varies
depending on what these psychoanalysts are trying to accomplish by putting these
lexical entries together in the form of a dictionary. What all these three dictionaries
have in common is their preoccupation in the main with the theoretical and clinical
work of Sigmund Freud. The second and third dictionaries however incorporate the
work of Jacques Lacan as well. Reading these texts in sequential order will give us an
idea of how lexical approaches to the conceptual structure of psychoanalysis have
evolved over the years in the history of the psychoanalytic clinic.
THE SCOPE & AIMS OF PSYCHOANALYTIC DICTIONARIES
The first thing that the reader will notice is that Rycroft’s dictionary is broad based in
its ‘scope and aims.’ He begins with Freudian analysis but like most English analysts
is keen on including the schools of analysis that split from Freudian analysis. This
means that he is able to find the space for concepts relating to the work of Alfred
Adler, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicot and those associated with the
British Institute of Psychoanalysis. The second dictionary focuses mainly on the
work of Freud and Lacan and takes a comparative perspective. It also includes two
indexes of analytic concepts in German and English. While Rycroft takes a British
approach, the French take a European approach. This can be discerned from the fact
that all the psychoanalytic concepts in their dictionary are listed at the very outset in
English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Any speaker of these
languages who also knows English will be able to use this dictionary. It will also be
of use to students of comparative literature who would like to find points of entry
into the interpretation of literary texts by using the conceptual resources of this
dictionary. The third dictionary by Dylan Evans is an attempt to render in English
the concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis that were originally formulated in French.
The main difficulty for Lacan’s translators in English is that they do not use a
common vocabulary or translate exactly. These semantic differences between
translators from the French to English; and the reasons for the variations in the
choice of words that they use to render French concepts into English is itself worthy
of a theoretical inquiry within the context of translation.1 This is not unlike the
controversies that attend to translating Freud’s texts from German to English2 and as
1 Bruce Fink (2014). ‘The Task of Translation,’ Against Understanding: Cases and Commentary
in a Lacanian Key (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 151-157.
2 Bruno Bettelheim (1991). Freud and Man’s Soul (London: Penguin Books). See also the essays
in Darius Gray Ornston, Jr. (1992). Translating Freud (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press).

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a transaction between two different systems of mental functioning (i.e. consciousness
and the unconscious).3
RYCROFT’S APPROACH
Charles Rycroft’s aim is to produce ‘a critical dictionary of psychoanalysis.’ What
this means is that Rycroft does not restrict any given entry to a technical definition;
instead he includes ‘the origin, the connections, and the controversies’ that attend to
any given concept. Rycroft also uses cross-references to help the reader situate any
given lexical entry within the space of the dictionary as a whole. Psychoanalysts are
not formally trained in lexicography; so it is interesting to unearth their lexical
approach in essays like this. This involves not only identifying their linguistic
assumptions but also the lexical justification that they provide for how they go about
their task of defining the key concepts of psychoanalysis. Rycroft states, for instance,
that the dictionary began out of notes that he kept about aspects of psychoanalysis
that were not clear to him; he inferred from this that it might be the same case for the
reader as well. Rycroft points out that his dictionary is broader in its scope than that
of Laplanche and Pontalis because in addition to non-Freudian schools of
psychoanalysis, he includes key concepts from psychiatry as well. That is because
Rycroft expects most British psychoanalysts to have a medical or a psychiatric
background. Another reason for including these psychiatric terms is that they have
percolated into the vocabulary of the layperson (who will not necessarily be aware of
their technical meanings). The layperson may therefore have an illusion of
understanding these concepts. In such cases, Rycroft would like to ensure that his
definitions will be able to clarify the meaning of these concepts. Rycroft is also keen
to define the concepts of ‘existentialist psychoanalysis’ since this school of analysts
have argued that psychoanalysis should be a form of humanism rather than aspire to
be a science. If they are right, it will have implications for Rycroft’s approach to
definitions. Existentialists also point out that the model of ‘causal determinism’ that
is built into psychoanalysis cannot be taken in the literal scientific sense of the term.
THE STRUCTURE OF CONCEPTS
Psychoanalytic concepts then must be thought of as forms of literary figuration for
differentiating between the different parts of the psyche rather than as akin to an
exact (albeit descriptive) science like anatomy. Rycroft also includes concepts from
anthropology, biology, and Jacques Lacan. Rycroft cautions the reader about the
3 Andrew Benjamin (1989). ‘Psychoanalysis and Translation,’ Translation and the Nature of
Philosophy: A New Theory of Words (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 109-149. See also
Shiva Kumar Srinivasan (2002). ‘Freudian Slips: The Psychopathology of Translation,’
Translation, Text and Theory: The Paradigm of India, edited by Rukmini Bhaya Nair (New
Delhi: Sage), pp. 267-288.

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prevalence of jargon which amounts to no more than invoking a word from Greek to
describe a patient’s ailment. This form of labelling is not equivalent to a diagnosis in
either psychiatry or psychoanalysis though it gives the patient precisely that fantasy.
Rycroft also calls attention to Freud’s habits of invoking concepts in the form of
metaphysical dualisms. These concepts then are subject to reification in the
grammatical form of gerunds (i.e. as nouns derived from verbs); they then give the
impression that they are abstract explanatory categories. The German language, for
instance, facilitates this form of abstraction and reification. It is therefore important
to be sensitive to the use of concepts in psychoanalysis of medical and philosophical
origins. Bettelheim was keen to point out that Freud actually wrote in the language
of the layperson, but was medicalized beyond recognition in the Strachey translation
that constitutes the Standard Edition of his collected works. Theoretical
disagreements between competing schools of psychoanalysis are also related to
resolving conceptual differences that emerge in acts of translation. The textual
dimensions of psychoanalysis (involving the definition and translation of concepts)
are important because analytic theory is not empirical in its origins; it is inferred or
reconstructed from what patients tell their analysts. The conceptual structure of
analytic theory itself is split between being rooted in a ‘theory of the instincts’ and in
a ‘theory of object relations’ without the timely emergence of a ‘final theory’ that can
subsume both these theories. That is why it is important, as Rycroft points out, to
clarify the history, meaning, and function of psychoanalytic concepts in his
dictionary of psychoanalysis.
THE SPECIAL VOCABULARY
Daniel Lagache begins his introduction to Laplanche and Pontalis by pointing out
that every new science needs its own ‘special vocabulary.’ The main innovation in
psychoanalysis is not so much the emphasis on sexuality, but in the pervasiveness of
‘unconscious phantasy’ in the mental life of the subject. Since this approach to
subjectivity is counter-intuitive, it has become necessary to invent a large number of
concepts to make sense of it. The purpose of a psychoanalytic dictionary is to explain
these new concepts that were not available previously in the form in which analysts
use them. The importance of the Laplanche-Pontalis volume was necessitated by the
paucity of dictionaries of psychoanalysis (at the time of its original publication in
French in 1967). Lagache points out that most of Freud’s concepts were Germanic in
origin; he did not borrow the bulk of his vocabulary from the classical languages.
The main difficulty in rendering Freud’s concepts in English relate therefore to the
‘multiplicity of meaning’ within the Germanic language itself. Mining Freud’s
collected works for these new concepts is no easy task because of the sheer bulk of
the analytic texts therein. Furthermore, these lexical translations involve both a
clinical and a philological dimension. So it was not possible to outsource the

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translation to professional translators who lacked a formal background in
psychoanalysis. The lexical model that is used in this dictionary is based on André
Laland’s vocabulary of concepts in philosophy. Though such a dictionary of
psychoanalysis was originally envisaged as early as 1937, it bore fruition only much
later. The proposal for such a dictionary was revived in 1958; the French edition
appeared in 1967; and the English edition appeared in 1973. Laplanche and Pontalis
spent eight years in putting together this dictionary in close consultation with
Lagache.
STRUCTURE, HISTORY & PROBLEMS
The focus in this dictionary is not only on the origins of the concepts, but also on the
semantic vicissitudes that constitute their use. Laplanche and Pontalis were, for
instance, affected by the belated publication of Freud’s 1895 ‘Project for a Scientific
Psychology’ in 1950. The dictionary, as Lagache points out, is mainly for researchers
and students who want to think through the conceptual structure of psychoanalysis.
The task of the dictionary is to explain and treat the analytic concepts in the
dictionary as cognitive tools and explain their genesis. This was thought to be
important because of the proliferation of analytic schools and the controversies that
would usually precede their formation. That is why Melanie Klein’s work is
accorded importance alongside those of Sigmund Freud. Laplanche and Pontalis
invoke three principles to explain their choice of concepts. They are: the inclusion
and definition of concepts introduced for the first time in the history of
psychoanalysis; analysis of the differences between psychoanalytic and psychiatric
concepts; and the definition of concepts relevant for ‘analytic nosology.’ The
arrangement of the lexical entries involves both alphabetic listing and cross
references to other concepts so that the reader can appreciate how these concepts
related to each other. The lexical entries include both a definition and a commentary
of a given concept. The former is the technical meaning of a concept in the history of
psychoanalysis; the latter is what Laplanche and Pontalis have to say about it. The
commentary includes three dimensions; they are referred to as the ‘historical,
structural, and problematic’ aspects of the concepts. The historical aspect refers to
both the origins of the concept and its evolution; the structural aspect involves
relating a concept to the conceptual structure of psychoanalysis as a whole; and the
problematic aspect is about the shades of meaning that differentiate between terms
like ‘drive’ and ‘instinct’ which have been rendered problematic because of
inadequate translations or initial misunderstandings by the early Freudians
themselves. The function of the commentary then is to guide the reader into thinking
about the contradictions that emerge in these problematic areas and to find a more
effective way of thinking about them in both theory and practice.

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THE CONTEMPORARY LEXICON
Dylan Evans’s approach to defining Lacanian concepts is topological; in other
words, he points out at the very outset that the meaning of an analytic concept can
only be understood in relation to other concepts. It is therefore not possible to
exhaust the meaning of any given concept within the space of a lexical entry. The
entire Lacanian gambit was to assume that the meaning of a concept should emerge
in the act of reading; it should not be isolated in a dictionary. Nonetheless, the
practical necessity of reading, or preparing to read, the Lacanian text means that a
reader should have at least a preliminary idea of what any given concept means in
practice. Evans’s preface to his dictionary is influenced by the Saussurean model of
language as a play of differences without any positive terms. If this model is taken
literally, it will not be possible to write a dictionary of concepts. That is the problem
which Evans seeks to overcome by pushing a pragmatic approach to lexicography.
Unless this is done, it will not be possible to make the Lacanian text available for
‘critical engagement’ with a wide variety of readers. The difficulty in defining
concepts is that there is bound to be a deferral of meaning in terms of ‘continual
metonymy.’ No single concept can serve as an absolute point of entry into Lacanian
discourse; all points of entry are identified through a process of semantic retroaction.
The two axes of language are synchrony and diachrony; these then are what are
represented in the structure of a dictionary. The former relates to the arrangement of
the lexical entries; the latter to the etymological exploration of each concept.
DEVELOPING LACANIAN CONCEPTS
The development of Lacanian concepts is an ongoing process given that Lacan
would continually revise their scope to encompass a greater range of meaning.
Lacan was more interested in the ‘accretion’ of meaning than in the ‘mutation’ of
meaning. Furthermore, concepts like ‘the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic’
would have the appearance of everyday terms while those like objet petit a sounded
like algebraic terms. It is therefore important to understand that Lacanian semantics
was preoccupied with the ‘integral transmission’ of meaning across the generations.
Lacan argued that the algebraic representation of concepts would make it more
likely to ensure the preservation of his meaning across translations. That is because
the algebraic terms would remain untranslated and serve as Kripkean ‘rigid
designators’ rather than function as Russellian ‘descriptors.’ Though Evans does not
pick up this distinction from the philosophy of language in his preface, we can infer
that the main problem in translating or defining concepts is not reducible to their
differential function, but must account for the differences between the function of
designation and the role of descriptions as well. The concepts chosen for inclusion
were mainly those which are used frequently by Lacan rather than those that were
invoked occasionally. Evans also includes entries on Kleinian psychoanalysis since

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Lacan was influenced by the theoretical debates between Anna Freud and Melanie
Klein in the British Society. Evans does not pretend that an exhaustive dictionary is
either necessary or possible; his aim is to merely alleviate the reader’s anxieties while
reading the Lacanian text by providing an introduction to Lacanian concepts.
CONCLUSION
This book is structured like a reference book and is meant to serve as a companion to
anybody who embarks on the onerous task of reading Lacan in the original. Evans is
mainly concerned with the work of Lacan and does not include the texts of those
described as Lacanians since that would greatly expand the scope of his book. The
main focus is on the clinical dimension of Lacan’s work since that aspect is easily
misunderstood by newcomers. Furthermore, Evans is trying to make his book useful
to those who might want to do inter-disciplinary research.
In order to make the book comprehensible for those who might lack familiarity with
the precepts of psychoanalysis, Evans starts by first defining a concept from a
Freudian point of view before comparing it to a Lacanian treatment to identify the
similarities and differences therein. Evans concludes by noting that just as it is not
possible to speak a language by reading dictionaries; likewise in order to deploy
Lacanian concepts it is important to observe them in actual use. Evans does not
prescribe the ideal path through the dictionary for newcomers to Lacanian
psychoanalysis; he leaves it to readers to explore it so that each reader is propelled
by his own ‘desire to know.’ What is at stake in the lexical approaches of these
dictionaries then is the structure of desire itself. A dictionary of psychoanalysis must
not merely define the relationship between language and desire; it must embody
that desire in the act of looking up the concepts that animate the history of
psychoanalysis; these clinical notes constitute an attempt to gesture in precisely that
direction.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN