A complete translation of the seminar that Jacques Lacan gave in the course of a year's teaching within the training programme of the Socie'te' Francaise de Psychanalyse. The French text was prepared by Jacques-Alain Miller in consultation with Jacques Lacan, from the transcriptions of the seminar.
"The Seminar Books I and II have a special place because of their value as an introduction to Lacan. . . . [They] are a sure path of entry into Lacan's critique of ego psychology. . . . Lacan's work underscores that part of Freud's message that is most revolutionary for our time. The individual is 'decentered.' There is no autonomous self. What sex was to the Victorians, the question of free will is to our new Fin-de-Siecle." —Sherry Turkle, London Review of Books
"A rare opportunity to experience Lacan as a teacher. . . . The publication of these two early seminars . . . may allow Lacan's work to do what it does most remarkably: shed light on, and expand, the theoretical implications of psychoanalysis, but also train a new generation of psychoanalysts by asking again and again: what exactly do we do when we do psychoanalysis?" —Lisa Kennedy, Voice Literary Supplement
