Shiva Kumar Srinivasan has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Psychoanalysis from the University of Wales at Cardiff. This book review describes the theoretical challenges involved in incorporating the Lacanian model of the subject within mainstream American ego psychology (given the huge amount of philosophical knowledge that Lacan assumes in his readers). It will be of use to clinicians, literary critics, and philosophers who want to engage with Lacanian theory and practice.

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BOOK REVIEW
ON INTERPRETING JACQUES LACAN
Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan (Eds.) Interpreting Lacan, Forum on Psychiatry
and the Humanities Series, Vol. 6, The Washington School of Psychiatry (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), ISBN 0-300-03039-8
INTRODUCTION
This anthology of essays on Lacanian psychoanalysis was put together in 1983 to
demonstrate the importance of Lacanian theory for clinical practitioners in the
United States. Most of these practitioners were ego psychologists by training. Many
of them had either read about or heard about Lacan from literary critics, but were
not aware of how to go actually about applying or using Lacan as clinicians. They
also needed to understand what the differences were between ego psychology and
the clinical techniques associated with Lacanian psychoanalysis. The editorial
intention in this volume then should be clear. It is an attempt to clear the space
necessary for the incorporation of Jacques Lacan into mainstream American
psychoanalysis under the auspices of the Washington School of Psychiatry. This
book is the sixth volume of essays in this series published by the Forum on
Humanities and Psychiatry that is affiliated to the Washington School. It brings
together clinicians, literary critics, and philosophers in order to integrate their
respective insights on the human sciences. The essays collected here fall into three
categories. It starts with the clinical essays before situating the clinical dimension in
relation to philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. The third and final part is about
applying Lacanian theory in the context of literary criticism. There are twelve essays
in this volume including the introduction and epilogue. The contributors are mainly
drawn from the ranks of clinicians, psychologists, and philosophers in the United
States and Europe. The editors, needless to say, will gauge the success of their efforts
in this volume mainly in terms of making Lacanian insights attractive for clinical
work. But, in order to make this possible, they have to explain the linguistic and
philosophical background that animates Lacanian theory. So while they start by

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engaging with the clinical aspects, the better part of this volume is an attempt to
relate the structure of Lacanian theory to European philosophers like Hegel and
Heidegger. That is because Lacan takes for granted the reader’s familiarity with the
resonance of philosophical terms like ‘desire’ and ‘being’ in his seminars and
writings on psychoanalysis in France. But, as the editors know only too well, this
knowledge cannot be assumed outside the Parisian intellectual milieu in which
Lacan spent his entire career. An important editorial task for them is to find ways of
letting the philosophical knowledge that is necessary to situate Lacanian theory
percolate into the mainstream of American ego psychology without talking down to
their readers. Needless to say, this is not the only effort on the part of Smith and
Kerrigan to explain Lacanian theory to American audiences. Another important
aspect of their editorial efforts is to also provide a reception history of Lacanian
psychoanalysis in the United States. This they do in their comments in the
introduction and the epilogue by relating psychoanalysis to areas like biology, ego-
psychology, and the social sciences. The significance of this volume, we must note in
retrospect, is the fact that it met with considerable success. The editors did manage
to impress upon American clinicians that Lacanian theory is of interest to not only
linguists, literary critics, and philosophers; but has a lot to teach full-time clinicians
as well.
THE EDITORIAL INTENTION
The first part of this volume sets out some of the topics that were of immediate
interest to clinicians. These included but were not limited to terms like image,
language, the subject, the psychoses, the unconscious, the word, and the scope of the
‘talking cure.’ Another important analytic distinction is the difference between
empty speech and full speech since the cure depends on whether the patient is able
to go beyond the imaginary dimension of empty speech and embrace the symbolic
gains of full speech. I have not listed all the topics of interest to American clinicians
but mainly those which they felt the need to redefine in the light of the Lacanian
intervention. So, for instance, clinicians began to appreciate the ‘onto-theological’
dimensions of everyday terms like ‘image, language, and the word’ after reading
Lacan. It is important to remember that American theologians were as interested in
Lacan as were American philosophers teaching continental philosophy. While
describing the response of theologians to Lacanian theory is beyond the scope of this
review, we must at least note that learning to appreciate the onto-theological
dimensions of a theory of the subject made it easier for clinicians to appreciate that
while ‘the word’ is all that they really have to work with in the clinic, it is not
something that they should be ashamed of. The theoretical difference between the
neuroses and the psychoses was also important for the editors since most clinicians
who have a background in psychiatry (as opposed to psychoanalysis) have to take

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on a number of psychotics and patients afflicted with borderline phenomena. So it
become important to know whether French clinicians trained in the Lacanian
tradition recognize borderline phenomena (like English clinicians do). And what the
relevant cultural differences might be between the clinician traditions in England,
France, and America in matters pertaining to ‘differential diagnosis.’ Furthermore,
there is an important difference between merely situating the roles that words and
images play in constituting the patient’s unconscious, like Sigmund Freud himself
does when he differentiates between word and thing presentations; and relating
them, as Lacan does, to theories of the symbolic and the imaginary. That is why it is
important to understand that in addition to his knowledge of structural linguistics;
Lacan’s religious background as a Catholic; his interest in patristics (as a possible
source for his theories of the ‘name-of-the-father’); and the theoretical controversies
that bear an interesting parallel between doctrinal squabbles in the Church and
within and between the different schools of psychoanalysis. In other words, the
history of analytic doctrine cannot be wished away in the attempts to make a science
or a clinical practice out of psychoanalysis in America or Europe.
PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
The definition of the unconscious is also at stake in these editorial interventions
because invoking terms like the ‘discourse of the Other’ and the ‘desire of the Other’
have immediate theological implications; as does the relationship between the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the Catholic communion. So while we do not
expect ego-psychologists to be interested in literary criticism, philosophy, and
theology from a clinical point of view, these aspects of Lacanian theory occupy the
better part of what the contributors to this book are willing to engage with. That
then, briefly put, is the main challenge for the editors. There is a difference between
telling literary critics that they must brush up on philosophy and theology in order
to read Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, but saying that with a straight face to
practical clinicians is another ball game altogether. And, as if that educational
challenge were not enough, the editors also make it clear that Lacan has his own
interpretation of the structural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the
structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. In other words, the Lacanian theory
of the word, language, and the unconscious demands an understanding of the
linguistic dimensions of the unconscious. The main difficulty here is that ego-
psychologists had got used to conflating the id with the unconscious and would use
these terms as though they were synonyms or condense them into the ‘unconscious
id’ and the ‘conscious ego’ even though Freud explains that the better part of the ego
is itself unconscious. In other words, what was at stake for Lacan was the conflation
of the structural and descriptive models of the psyche in ego-psychology. If working
simultaneously with the structural, descriptive, and dynamic models was so difficult

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for clinicians, how will they find the intellectual means necessary to grapple with the
theories of Jacques Lacan? While the answer to this question is still not clear to those
who would like to explain or teach Lacanian theory, it is a question that we must
face up to with brutal honesty. It would not be a stretch to point out that this is the
main question that haunts this volume of essays.
LACANIAN THEORY & AMERICAN PRACTICE
Will the incorporation of Lacanian theory into American practice demand so much?
Furthermore, will all these intellectual demands have to be addressed at once?
Should analysts attempt to ‘use Lacan’ in the American clinic only when they have
learnt this much theory? Or, is it possible to incorporate Lacanian theory in a more
modest way? The impression conveyed in this volume is that Lacanian theory
cannot be separated from Lacanian practice. It is therefore important to take in all of
Lacan or as much Lacan as possible. This however does not mean that clinicians who
have never read Hegel, Heidegger, or any of the continental philosophers should
stay away from Lacanian psychoanalysis. But, at the same time, clinicians who do
not even suspect the existence of such philosophers or any of the existential and
structural dimensions of analytic theory will probably not find Lacan important in
their intellectual or clinical lives. That, simply put, is the editorial quandary in this
volume and in other books in this series on ‘interpreting Lacan.’ An interest in
continental philosophy, or the French model of the human sciences, cannot be
legislated into the history of clinical work in America; but it is nonetheless necessary
to some extent to avoid clinical mishaps. And, finally, Lacan assumes that psychiatrists
and ego psychologists with a medical background will begin to engage sooner or
later with the theoretical dimensions of clinical practice. The burden of this book
review is to argue that those who do not do this will simply not derive adequate
value in becoming either full-fledged Lacanians or in even engaging with Lacanian
theory. They will at best read Lacan for his polemics rather than for his far reaching
clinical insights.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN