Lacan in the German-Speaking World

Edited by Elizabeth Stewart, Maire Jaanus, and Richard Feldstein

Subjects: Psychoanalysis, Literary Theory, German Studies
Series: SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture
Paperback : 9780791460887, 326 pages, May 2004
Hardcover : 9780791460870, 326 pages, May 2004

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Table of contents

Acknowledgements

General Introduction

Part I: Cultural

Introduction

1. The Object of Jouissance in Music
Sebastian Leikert

2. On Murder, or: Tell's Projectile
Peter Widmer

3. Perversion: Tragedy or Guilt?
Raymond Borens

4. Identification in the Name of Lolita
Joachim Saalfrank

5. The Beauty behind the Window Shutters
August Ruhs

Part II: Sexual

Introduction

6. Sexual Identification and Sexual Difference
Rudolph Bernet

7. The Joys and Suffering of So-Called Interpretation or: The Soul of the Dress's Fold
Johannes Fehr and Dieter Strauli

8. Hysteria and Melancholia in Woman
Anne Juranville

9. Symbolic Mother--Real Father
Regula Schindler

Part III: Clinical

Introduction

10. "But It, the World . . . It Shames My Mute Pain": Some Thoughts on Melancholia and Depression
Christian Klaui

11. The Act of Interpretation: Its Conditions and its Consequences
Monique David-Menard

12. Castration and Incest Prohibition in Francoise Dolto
Elisabeth Widmer

13. Demand and Wish
Lucien Israel

14. Psychosis and Names
Andre Michels

Part IV: Philosophical

Introduction

15. Vertigo: The Question of Anxiety in Freud
Samuel Weber

16. From the Protective Shield against Stimuli to the Fantasm: A Reading of Chapter 4 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Hans-Dieter Gondek

17. Sacrifice and the Law
Bernard Baas

18. Freud and Democracy
Peter Widmer

19. The Lacanian Thing
Alain Juranville

Contributors

Index

Addresses Lacan's reception in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, offering new perspectives for American readers.

Description

This book offers a selection of the best work on Lacan that has been published over the past ten years by RISS, a Swiss journal of Lacanian studies. Though focused on Lacan and Freud, the collection is partly about Germany itself, addressing questions of trauma, historical memory, politics, fascism, and democracy. The essays range from investigations of particular art forms such as music and tragedy to clinical studies of melancholia, depression, anxiety, and other somatic phenomena that have a symbolic or psychic dimension. As a whole, the book explores the breakdown of meaning and the failure of social and political structures, which Lacan addresses through the category of the Real, and it offers English-speaking readers a variety of new perspectives on Lacan and psychoanalysis.

Elizabeth Stewart is Assistant Professor of English at Yeshiva University. Maire Jaanus is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard College. She is the coeditor (with Richard Feldstein and Bruce Fink) of Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: The Paris Seminars in English and Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan's Return to Freud, both published by SUNY Press. Richard Feldstein is Professor of English at Rhode Island College.