Reading Lacan without giving up: Some organizing principles to help orient psychotherapists to the Lacanian tradition of psychoanalysis

This article is a primer to reading the primary texts of Jacques Lacan. I argue that there is an experiential dimension to the act of reading Lacanian texts that approximates the transmission of psychoanalysis in a clinical setting. A primary insistence is that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a fundamentally different relationship to knowledge than other therapeutic and theoretical traditions, and that therefore any emphasis on understanding is incongruous with the larger aims of the project. I discuss Lacanian conceptions of frustration and love in order to explore these ideas, before turning to a specific moment in the Lacanian corpus. I conclude by exploring implications for work in the public sector.