Lacan on Depression and Melancholia considers how clinical, cultural, and personal understandings of depression can be broken down and revisited to properly facilitate psychoanalytical clinical practice. The contributors to this book highlight the role of neurotic conflicts underlying depressive affects, the distinction between neurotic and psychotic structure, the nature of melancholia, and the clinical value of Freudian and Lacanian concepts - such as object a, the Other, desire, the superego, sublimation - as demonstrated via a variety of clinical and historical cases. The book includes discussions of bereavement and mourning, transference in melancholia, suicidality and the death drive, excessive creativity, melancholic identification, neurotic inhibition, and manic-depressive psychosis. Lacan on Depression and Melancholia will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in practice and training, Lacanian clinicians, and scholars of Lacanian theory.

This is the 3rd volume in the definitive guide to Lacan's work in English; Lacan is very influential in the fields of psychoanalysis, literary criticism and cultural studies, but poorly understood; Lacanian psychoanalysis is the single biggest school of thought globally

The Ecrits was Jacques Lacan's single most important text, a landmark in psychoanalysis which epitomized his aim of returning to Freud via structural linguistics, philosophy and literature. Reading Lacan's Ecrits is the first extensive set of commentaries on the complete edition of Lacan's Ecrits to be published in English. An invaluable document in the history of psychoanalysis, and one of the most challenging intellectual works of the 20th Century, Lacan's Ecrits still today begs the interpretative engagement of clinicians, scholars, philosophers and cultural theorists. The three volumes of Reading Lacan's Ecrits offer just this: a series of systematic paragraph-by-paragraph commentaries - by some of the world's most renowned Lacanian analysts and scholars - on the complete edition of the Ecrits, inclusive of lesser known articles such as 'Kant with Sade', 'The Youth of Gide', 'Science and Truth', 'Presentation on Transference' and 'Beyond the "Reality Principle"'. The originality and importance of Lacan's Ecrits to psychoanalysis and intellectual history is matched only by the text's notorious inaccessibility. Reading Lacan's Ecrits is an indispensable companion piece and reference-text for clinicians and scholars exploring Lacan's magnum opus. Not only does it contextualize, explain and interrogate Lacan's arguments, it provides multiple interpretative routes through this most labyrinthine of texts. Reading Lacan's Ecrits provides an incisive and accessible companion for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in training and in practice, as well as philosophers, cultural theorists and literary, social science and humanities researchers who wish to draw upon Lacan's pivotal work.

Lacan on Depression and Melancholia considers how clinical, cultural, and personal understandings of depression can be broken down and revisited to properly facilitate psychoanalytical clinical practice. The contributors to this book highlight the role of neurotic conflicts underlying depressive affects, the distinction between neurotic and psychotic structure, the nature of melancholia, and the clinical value of Freudian and Lacanian concepts - such as object a, the Other, desire, the superego, sublimation - as demonstrated via a variety of clinical and historical cases. The book includes discussions of bereavement and mourning, transference in melancholia, suicidality and the death drive, excessive creativity, melancholic identification, neurotic inhibition, and manic-depressive psychosis. Lacan on Depression and Melancholia will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in practice and training, Lacanian clinicians, and scholars of Lacanian theory.

This is the 3rd volume in the definitive guide to Lacan's work in English; Lacan is very influential in the fields of psychoanalysis, literary criticism and cultural studies, but poorly understood; Lacanian psychoanalysis is the single biggest school of thought globally

The Ecrits was Jacques Lacan's single most important text, a landmark in psychoanalysis which epitomized his aim of returning to Freud via structural linguistics, philosophy and literature. Reading Lacan's Ecrits is the first extensive set of commentaries on the complete edition of Lacan's Ecrits to be published in English. An invaluable document in the history of psychoanalysis, and one of the most challenging intellectual works of the twentieth century, Lacan's Ecrits still today begs the interpretative engagement of clinicians, scholars, philosophers and cultural theorists. The three volumes of Reading Lacan's Ecrits offer just this: a series of systematic paragraph-by-paragraph commentaries - by some of the world's most renowned Lacanian analysts and scholars - on the complete edition of the Ecrits, inclusive of lesser known articles such as 'Kant with Sade', 'The Youth of Gide', 'Science and Truth', 'Presentation on Transference' and 'Beyond the "Reality Principle". The originality and importance of Lacan's Ecrits to psychoanalysis and intellectual history is matched only by the text's notorious inaccessibility. Reading Lacan's Ecrits is an indispensable companion piece and reference-text for clinicians and scholars exploring Lacan's magnum opus. Not only does it contextualize, explain and interrogate Lacan's arguments, it provides multiple interpretative routes through this most labyrinthine of texts. Reading Lacan's Ecrits provides an incisive and accessible companion for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in training and in practice, as well as philosophers, cultural theorists and literary, social science and humanities researchers who wish to draw upon Lacan's pivotal work.

The Ecrits was Jacques Lacan's single most important text, a landmark in psychoanalysis which epitomized his aim of returning to Freud via structural linguistics, philosophy and literature. Reading Lacan's Ecrits is the first extensive set of commentaries on the complete edition of Lacan's Ecrits to be published in English. An invaluable document in the history of psychoanalysis, and one of the most challenging intellectual works of the twentieth century, Lacan's Ecrits still today begs the interpretative engagement of clinicians, scholars, philosophers and cultural theorists. The three volumes of Reading Lacan's Ecrits offer just this: a series of systematic paragraph-by-paragraph commentaries - by some of the world's most renowned Lacanian analysts and scholars - on the complete edition of the Ecrits, inclusive of lesser known articles such as 'Kant with Sade', 'The Youth of Gide', 'Science and Truth', 'Presentation on Transference' and 'Beyond the "Reality Principle". The originality and importance of Lacan's Ecrits to psychoanalysis and intellectual history is matched only by the text's notorious inaccessibility. Reading Lacan's Ecrits is an indispensable companion piece and reference-text for clinicians and scholars exploring Lacan's magnum opus. Not only does it contextualize, explain and interrogate Lacan's arguments, it provides multiple interpretative routes through this most labyrinthine of texts. Reading Lacan's Ecrits provides an incisive and accessible companion for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in training and in practice, as well as philosophers, cultural theorists and literary, social science and humanities researchers who wish to draw upon Lacan's pivotal work.

The Ecrits was Jacques Lacan's single most important text, a landmark in psychoanalysis which epitomized his aim of returning to Freud via structural linguistics, philosophy and literature. Reading Lacan's Ecrits is the first extensive set of commentaries on the complete edition of Lacan's Ecrits to be published in English. An invaluable document in the history of psychoanalysis, and one of the most challenging intellectual works of the 20th Century, Lacan's Ecrits still today begs the interpretative engagement of clinicians, scholars, philosophers and cultural theorists. The three volumes of Reading Lacan's Ecrits offer just this: a series of systematic paragraph-by-paragraph commentaries - by some of the world's most renowned Lacanian analysts and scholars - on the complete edition of the Ecrits, inclusive of lesser known articles such as 'Kant with Sade', 'The Youth of Gide', 'Science and Truth', 'Presentation on Transference' and 'Beyond the "Reality Principle"'. The originality and importance of Lacan's Ecrits to psychoanalysis and intellectual history is matched only by the text's notorious inaccessibility. Reading Lacan's Ecrits is an indispensable companion piece and reference-text for clinicians and scholars exploring Lacan's magnum opus. Not only does it contextualize, explain and interrogate Lacan's arguments, it provides multiple interpretative routes through this most labyrinthine of texts. Reading Lacan's Ecrits provides an incisive and accessible companion for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists in training and in practice, as well as philosophers, cultural theorists and literary, social science and humanities researchers who wish to draw upon Lacan's pivotal work.

This book explores the purpose of clinical psychological and psychiatric diagnosis, and provides a persuasive case for moving away from the traditional practice of psychiatric classification. It discusses the validity and reliability of classification-based approaches to clinical diagnosis, and frames them in their broader historical and societal context. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is used across the world in research and a range of mental health settings; here, Stijn Vanheule argues that the diagnostic reliability of the DSM is overrated, built on a limited biomedical approach to mental disorders that neglects context, and ultimately breeds stigma. The book subsequently makes a passionate plea for a more detailed approach to the study of mental suffering by means of case formulation. Starting from literature on qualitative research the author makes clear how to guarantee the quality of clinical case formulations.