Five Lessons

In this first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work, Nasio eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments. Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan is the first English translation of a classic text by one of the foremost commentators on Lacan's work. Juan-David Nasio makes numerous theoretical advances and eloquently demonstrates the clinical and practical import of Lacan's theory, even in its most difficult or obscure moments. What is distinctive, in the end, about Nasio's treatment of Lacan's theory is the extent to which Lacan's fundamental concepts -- the unconscious, jouissance, and the body -- become the locus of the overturning or exceeding of the discrete boundaries of the individual. The recognition of the of the implications of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, then, brings the analyst to adopt what Nasio calls a "special listening".