Sean Homer

Not *bad* exactly - I got a better understanding of Lacan's ideas, but quite a few bits were confusing (for example, what exactly the Other is - of course this could be partially down to me being a bit thick). The "After Lacan" section tried to cover a lot of people and given that most of the ideas were pretty complicated, the attempt at a half-page summary of each was pretty poor. It's sort of understandable given that Lacan's ideas are pretty complicated and I admit I didn't like what I understood much. The author presents a quote near the start where Lacan says something about how his works aren't meant to be understood easily or whatever, which always sounds like a pretty pathetic out to me. Lacan's constant changing of his ideas is talked about but when referencing back what conception is being used isn't stated, leading to confusion. The further reading section is great though.

Again, not a bad introduction, but not one that presents his main ideas understandably and coherently for a beginner - needs other stuff to complement it I think.… (más)

"The mirror stage is a drama in which the inner thrust bursts from insufficiency to anticipation—and for all subjects caught in the trap of spatial identification, this creates (fragmented body-image) to a series of fantasies of its holistic form that I will call orthopaedic—and finally to the armor of alienated identities, a drama that will mark the infant with its solid structure The entire psychological development of the psychic development. By means of the mirror stage, the infant imagines itself gaining mastery over its body, but this mastery is acquired in a position detached from itself. In Lacan, "alienation" is precisely This "absence of being" through which the infant's "knowledge" or "realization" exists there, that is, in the place of an Other. In this sense, the subject is not alienated by something or itself Rather, it is alienation that constitutes the subject—the subject is alienated in its own being."

"Masquerade is an appearance of femininity, but then femininity becomes appearance, the appearance of a woman" (Heath 1986: 53). The concept of "disguise" emphasizes not the "essential" identity of women, but the "constructed" nature of women's identity: "disguise means that women exist, but as a disguise, it simultaneously And shows that women do not exist” (Heath 1986: 54). P139

Fantasy: the staging of desire Cinema: the setting of the audience's desire Cinema provides a complex set of locations and underlying relationships through which audiences can enact their own desires. The role of narrative is central here, as it provides some recognizable structure and coherence on both fantasy and cinematic levels. The pleasure we derive from fantasy is not so much the result of its attainment of its goal, its object, as the way in which desire can play itself out through narrative structures.… (más)

A quite decent and succinct introduction into Lacan, requiring almost no prior knowledge of psychoanalysis in general. But it would be ideal if you read one or two other introductory books on Lacan, which may be these two:
- The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, by Bruce Fink (highly recommended)
- Introduction to the Reading of Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a Language, by Joël Dor

Together, the three would admit you properly into the obscure Lacanian realm.… (más)