This essay is a review of Marcelle Marini's 'Jacques Lacan: The French Context' (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992).

1. 1
BOOK REVIEW
ON JACQUES LACAN
Marcelle Marini (1992). Jacques Lacan: The French Context, translated by Anne
Tomiche (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), pp. 302.
Jacques Marie Emile Lacan is also known as the ‘French Freud.’
This book explains why that is the case. The subtext of this book is important
because it explains that in order to understand a thinker it is important to appreciate
the contexts in which his theories were formulated and disseminated.
There is an important difference between the context in which a theory is formulated
and the context in which it is applied. This guide to the work of Jacques Lacan
explains what his theories meant when they were formulated and what readers will
make of it now.
The difference between ‘then’ and ‘now’ is important because Jacques Lacan is
always talking about the need to return to the Freudian text.
For Lacan, nothing in the history of psychoanalysis has been able to supersede the
Freudian text; so, in that sense, there is something ‘trans-discursive’ at stake in the
work of Sigmund Freud.
The main difference between reading Sigmund Freud without having read Lacan
and reading Freud after reading Lacan is that it is possible to appreciate ‘the poetics of
the Freudian corpus.’
This is tantamount to saying that what Lacan teaches us is to read Freud as though
he were a literary text. So, unlike Freud who thought that psychoanalysis should be
applied to read literature, Lacan was always saying that we should read
psychoanalysis as though it were literature.

2. 2
This is analogous to a comment that Harold Bloom made when he was considering
the relationship between the texts of William Shakespeare and psychoanalysis.
Bloom’s point is that we have too many applications of psychoanalysis to the texts of
Shakespeare. What is really required ‘is a Shakespearean reading of Freud rather
than a Freudian reading of Shakespeare.’ That is however easier said than done.
What Lacan attempted then was to read Freud in a way that had not been possible
before. The literary tool that opens up such readings is sensitization to the
‘differential’ function of language that is associated with the work of the European
linguists Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson.
The differential approach to texts is a way of asking how the text is organized as a
linguistic construct with all the effort that is required to read it with the attention
that is usually paid to close-reading a poem; hence the term ‘poetics of the Freudian
corpus.’
The first part of the book is titled ‘Lacan and Psychoanalysis’ and the second part of
the book is titled ‘Dossier.’
This is followed by appendixes, notes, bibliography, and an index. It is hard to say
whether this book is meant to be read as an expository book or used as a reference
book since it serves both these functions.
I read it as an introductory book since I have to review it, but that is not expected of
all readers. They can use it instead to look up whatever they want to on the life,
work, and texts of Jacques Lacan.
The first part describes Lacan’s life, work, and the theory of psychoanalysis. The
second part comprises a detailed listing and brief summaries of the most important
texts of Jacques Lacan.
The best use to which this book can be put is to actually use it to decide what to read
of the Lacanian corpus and to situate his texts more effectively. That is, it will serve
its function best as a reference book.
But, because the book is quite readable – despite the fact that it is a translation – the
first part can be read straight-through and the reader can then pick-and-choose
which texts to follow up after dipping into the summaries in the dossier section.
There are three chapters in the first part and two chapters in the second part.
The chapters in the first part describe the ‘theoretical itinerary.’ What that basically
means is that Marini is preoccupied with the fact that Jacques Lacan was extremely

3. 3
well-known. He was the best known psychoanalyst in the world though he did all
his work in France and many of his texts had not been translated in his lifetime.
In fact, most of Lacan’s seminars are yet to be published and the entire Lacanian
corpus is not available in any language – not even in French.
So it will take another generation before any psychoanalytic scholar can go through
the work in its entirety and assess the importance of Jacques Lacan’s work in
psychoanalysis.
This book is not meant to be an assessment of his work. The summaries are brief
rather than exhaustive and they are not in any way an attempt to subsume all the
concerns expressed by Jacques Lacan in any of his given texts.
It would be more accurate to say that this is an introduction to the work of Jacques
Lacan for those who would like to read further, but are not sure about how they
should go about doing so.
Marcelle Marini is a faculty at the University of Paris-VII and differentiates in her
introduction between the academic and institutional reception of Jacques Lacan.
What I mean by the latter is the reception accorded to the work of Lacan by the
institutes of psychoanalysis in France. So the introduction has a lot of information on
the institutional politics of Lacanian psychoanalysis.
It starts with his disagreements with the International Psychoanalytic Association;
his critique of ego-psychology; the any number of associations, institutions, and
schools that came up in the wake of the Lacanian intervention; and how they relate
to each other.
Marini is haunted by the fact that her own analyst, for instance, is not well-known
but was a good analyst for all that.
She feels that a good deal of the work done in clinics is not made known to the
public who are better acquainted with the polemics associated with psychoanalytic
institutes rather than with the fact that analysis can improve the lives of patients.
This book then is her way of working through this realisation - even amidst the
polemical dimensions, where the different schools of psychoanalysis fought for
international recognition and had to decide whether they should affiliate with larger
associations and societies or try to get on as autonomous institutions.
This makes it difficult not only for the analysts themselves but for the patients as
well who are not able to name their illnesses and identify the analysts who are best
equipped to help them when they want to start out on an analysis in France. This

4. 4
book should make it easier for them to figure out ‘who-is-who’ and ‘what-is-what’ in
the world of French psychoanalysis.
This problem of ‘who-should-be-in-analysis-with-whom’ is solved through a referral
system in Britain with the help of general practitioners, but that doesn’t seem to be
the case in France where the proliferation of approaches and methods is a cause for
concern.
It is as difficult for those who want to read up on psychoanalysis as for those who
want to be in analysis.
Marcelle Marini’s goal then is to provide a guide through the bewildering array of
choices that are available within the ranks of psychoanalysts and analytic theories in
France.
The notion of a context for Lacan however is not just about the problem of choosing
the right analytic approach or identifying the practitioners associated with these
approaches.
It is also related to understanding the following dimensions of psychoanalysis:
Relating Freud to Lacan; identifying the different Lacanian schools; differentiating
the ‘early’ Lacan from the ‘late’ Lacan; situating Lacan to the theories of
structuralism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology; and the political movements on
the French cultural left.
This book is especially good in relating psychoanalysis to psychiatry and in relating
Lacan’s early career at the Hôpital St. Anne where he practiced as a psychiatrist.
It also explains the significance of Lacan’s doctoral thesis on paranoia and the
relationship between the psychoses and paranoia considered as both theoretical and
clinical entities.
Marini’s main point is that whether or not the reader is a ‘Lacanian’ in the strong
sense, it will be difficult to deny the significance of his interventions in both
psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
What changed fundamentally in the wake of Jacques Lacan’s career was the image of
psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in France. That is something that all schools of
psychoanalysis are agreed upon.
Marini’s description of Lacan’s theoretical itinerary basically amounts to the
identification and discussion of the main axioms, themes, and precepts in
psychoanalytic theory. These descriptions have a broad focus and they prepare the
reader for the summaries that are featured in the dossier.

5. 5
The main difference is that the descriptions in the first part are broad-based whereas
the summaries in the second part are specific to particular texts. But it will be
difficult to get a hold of these ideas if the reader doesn’t relate the two parts to each
other.
Another important topic for Marini is the difference between what psychoanalysis
means in the university system in France and how it is transmitted in analytic
institutes.
Lacan put in a lot of effort to think about the integrity of analytic transmission from
one generation to another; hence the preoccupation with the notational structure of
‘mathemes.’
These are problems that have also been thought through within the context of
Lacan’s four discourses comprising those of the master, the hysteric, the analyst, and
the university.
One of Lacan’s achievements - despite his critique of the discourse of the university -
was the establishment of a department of psychoanalysis at the University of Paris
VIII at Vincennes-St Denis.
Marini also describes the institutional apparatus consisting of leading analysts who
gathered around Jacques Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller, their teaching programs,
and the publication houses that made it possible to disseminate Lacanian
psychoanalysis in France.
In other words, Marcelle Marini explains how the French Freud constructed ‘the
Freudian field’ and later ‘the Lacanian field.’
This is an extremely useful introduction to the work of Jacques Lacan and should
find a place in all libraries of psychoanalysis. I would urge anybody who is reading
Lacan for the first time to keep this book by his or her side and dip into it every now
and then.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN