Lacan in the German-Speaking World

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

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.