In 1956 Jacques Lacan proposed as interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Purloined Letter" that at once challenged literary theorists and revealed a radically new conception of psychoanalysis. Lacan's far-reaching claims about language and truth provoked a vigorous critique by Jacques Derrida, whose essay in turn has spawned further responses from Barbara Johnson, Jane Gallop, Irene Harvey, Norman Holland, and others. The Purloined Poe brings Poe's story together with these readings to provide, in the words of the editors, "a structured exercuse (...) in the elaboration of textual interpretation. The Purloined Poe reprints the full text of Poe's story, followed by Lacan's "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,'" along with extensive commentary by the editors. Marie Bonaparte's and Shoshana Felman's discussions of traditional and contemporary approaches to "psychoanalysing" texts precede Alan Bass's new translation of Derrida's "Purveyor of Truth." The subsequent essays join the Lacan-Derrida debate and offer alternative readings by literary theorists, philosophers, psychologists, and psychoanalysts. The Purloined Poe convenes much of the most important current scholarship on "The Purloined Letter" and presents a rich sampling of poststructuralist discourse. (shrink)

Este ensaio examina o relacionamento possível entre o pensamento de Martin Heidegger enquanto emerge no Zollikon Seminaire na sua troca de idéias com Medard Boss e a perspectiva da psicanálise como aparece através do prisma da releitura de Freud oferecido por Jacques Lacan. Heidegger entende Freud como vítima de uma compreensão positivista da ciência que procura explicar o comportamento humano patológico por um complexo de causas discerníveis conscientemente. Quando determinados fenômenos não podem ser explicados desta maneira, Freud postula um jogo (...) de causas psíquicas que não são conscientes, cuja soma ele chama o "inconsciente". Desde que todos os fenômenos humanos são, para Heidegger, discerníveis via uma profunda fenomenologia do ser humano como o ser-no-mundo, a construção hipotética de Freud é desnecessária e, a longo prazo, perniciosa. Mas Lacan propõe uma nova maneira de compreender o inconsciente descoberto por Freud, a saber, que não deve ser entendido como um sistema físico de forças hidráulicas, mas como um processo que seja estruturado como um idioma. A pergunta levantada neste ensaio é se Heidegger seria ou não igualmente hostil à hipótese de Freud, apresentada a ele dentro da forma de Lacan, como algo "estruturado como um idioma". O ensaio sugere que a resposta poderia ser "provavelmente não". Baseado num exemplo clínico altamente simplificado, este ensaio esforça-se para mostrar a compatibilidade entre determinados conceitos básicos de Heidegger e diversos, de Lacan, em especial as noções da verdade e da liberdade.This paper examines the possible relationship between the thought of Martin Heidegger as it emerges in the Zollikon Seminaire through his exchange with Medard Boss and the perspective of psychoanalysis as it appears through the prism of Jacques Lacan's rereading of Freud. Heidegger takes Freud to be victim of a positivist conception of science that seeks to explain pathological human behaviour by a complex of consciously discernible causes. When certain phenomena cannot be explained in this way, Freud postulates a set of psychic causes that are not conscious, the sum total of which he calls the "unconscious." Since all human phenomena are, for Heidegger, discernible through a thorough-going phenomenology of human being as being-in-the-world, Freud's hypothetical construct is unnecessary and, in the long run, pernicious. But Lacan proposes a new way to understand the unconscious that Freud discovered, namely, that it is not to be thought of as analogous to a physical system of hydraulic forces but rather to a process that is structured like a language. The question raised in the paper is whether or not Heidegger would have been equally hostile to Freud's hypothesis, if it had been presented to him in Lacanian fashion as something "structured like a language". The paper suggests that the answer could be "probably not". On the basis of a highly simplified clinical example, it endeavors to show the compatibility between certain basic Heideggerean concepts and several of those essential to Lacan, especially the notions of truth and freedom. (shrink)

In spite of wars, the armament race, pollution, poverty, and other evils, a Christian view of progress is one of optimism, but qualified and realistic.

Martin Heidegger wrote one and only one preface for a scholarly work on his thinking, and it was for William J. Richardson’s study Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, first published in 1963. Ever since, both Heidegger’s Preface and Richardson’s groundbreaking book have played an important role in Heidegger scholarship. Much has been discussed about these texts over the decades, but what has not been available to students and scholars up to this point is Richardson’s original comments and questions to Heidegger (...) that led to the famous Preface. These are published here for the first time both in the German original and in our English translation. In our commentary we 1) discuss how Heidegger’s Preface came about, 2) explain the source and status of the materials published here, and 3) pair selected passages from Richardson’s text with Heidegger’s reply in his Preface to highlight the consonance of their thinking. (shrink)

The oft‐proclaimed “return to Freud” of Jacques Lacan (1901–81) was a return to what he took to be the great creative insight of Freud, insight into the way that language works in the vagaries of unconscious human experience. In Lacan's own formula, “the unconscious is structured like a language” (1977, p. 234). One way to grasp this may be by reflecting on the familiar anecdote recounted by Freud, himself, in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1960 [1901], pp. 8–11). Freud recounts (...) how he had met on a train a well‐educated young man of Jewish descent who, while decrying the anti‐Semitism by which he had been victimized, tries to cite the line from Virgil's Aeneid in which Dido calls for vengeance upon Aeneas, “Exoriare …” – tries, indeed, but fails. Asked for help, Freud quotes the line exactly: “Exoriar[e] ALIQUIS nostris ex ossibus ultor” (Aeneid 4:625, literally: “Let someone (aliquis) arise from my bones as an avenger!”). Recalling Freud's claim that such words are never forgotten without a reason, the young man asks Freud to help him understand the reason for drawing a blank. Freud agrees, insisting on the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis: to say “candidly and uncritically” whatever comes to mind as he concentrates on the forgotten word. (shrink)

This lecture was first delivered at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1966. What relevance it may have to the Dylan of 2010 only the reader can say.