Book: Lacan for Beginners

Philip Hill and David Leach, Lacan For Beginners (1999)

Chapter 1

"Ego psychology" holds that psychoanalysis can lead to a conflict-free ego, an idea analogous to Plato's proposal for a conflict-free state. Lacanian psychoanalysis, though, posits an ego always already in conflict.

Chapter 2

Words and images lack fixed meaning; meaning depends on shifting distinctions, in an endless chain: "the signifier is the subject of another signifier." Persons lack fixed desires and sense of being; relationships depend on shifting meaning: the subject is the signifier of another subject.

Dreams, jokes, and slips of the tongue should be studied as links between signifiers that help explain the conflicts within the subject.

Conflict in meaning is only possible in humans, who have the capacity for language. That is why only humans, of all the animals, ever commit suicide (the lemming story is a myth).