Against Understanding, Volume 1

Bruce Fink is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He trained as a psychoanalyst in France for seven years with and is now a member of the psychoanalytic institute Lacan created shortly before his death, the École de la Cause Freudienne in Paris. He is also an affiliated member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

• Figures, Preface, Acknowledgments, Commentary, Cases, Critique, References, Index

"Bruce Fink's longstanding efforts to translate and explain Lacan to an English-speaking audience in clear, concise, and communicative language culminates in this collection of his recent contributions. He successfully illuminates key Lacanian concepts from a clinical perspective, and provides extensive illustrative overviews of psychoanalytic treatment of severely ill patients. Several interviews by the author and a final summary of where he places Lacanian psychoanalysis in contrast to Freud's original formulations, on the one hand, and contemporary mainstream ego psychology/object relations theory approaches, on the other, provide a well-defined outline of the essential characteristics of contemporary Lacanian psychoanalysis. Regardless of where they might differ, psychoanalysts and psychodynamic psychotherapists of all contemporary schools will find this a clear and satisfactory introduction to the Lacanian approach." — Otto F. Kernberg, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University; Director, Personality Disorders Institute, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Payne Whitney Westchester; Training and Supervising Analyst, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research"Over the years, Bruce Fink has established himself as the key figure of Lacanian psychoanalysis in the English-speaking world. With this superb collection of papers and interviews, he once again demonstrates his virtuoso ability to extract the precious juice from Lacan’s texts in order to re-process it into a tasty psychoanalytic cocktail that will be greatly appreciated by aficionados and novices alike. And for all his clinical and theoretical brilliance, Fink never takes himself to be the One, but just as one amongst many, so that the reader never feels intellectually inferior and is always allowed to think along with him. As the French would have it: Chapeau!" - Professor Dany Nobus, Chair of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Brunel University London, UK