Lacan's four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. This book provides the first truly sustained commentary to appear in either French or English on Lacan's most important seminar, The Four Fundamental concepts of Psychoanalysis.

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.