Lacan and Klein, Creation and Discovery : An Essay of Reintroduction

This book reconstructs the metapsychological and clinical theories of Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan in a manner designed to redress prevalent mischaracterizations of their works that are largely responsible for the deadlocked polemics between partisans of Kleinian and Lacanian camps.

On the one hand, Creation and Discovery, Lacan and Klein: An Essay of Reintroduction seeks to disclose the often suppressed or unacknowledged proximity, even intimacy, between Lacan and Klein, and thereby to facilitate a re-introduction between Lacan and Klein such that their works can read anew, both independently and together. On the other hand, by reconstructing the highly divergent metapsychological theories and clinical orientations of Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein from their discussions of the same case material, the text seeks to demonstrate the irreducible plurality of psychoanalysis and the ethico-political significance of this plurality. Siding with neither Lacan nor Klein''s perspective, Adam Rosen-Carole argues that within and between these exaggerated positions, a dialectic of creation and discovery emerges that affords the reader unique insights into the nature and status of psychoanalytic knowing and its particular objects. Special attention is paid to the indelible exaggerations and distortions, the guiding sensitivities and urgencies, and the concomitant structures of blindness and insight organizing various psychoanalytic perspectives. Written for clinicians as well as for students and scholars interested in psychoanalysis and philosophy, this book serves not only as a comprehensive introduction to Lacan, but also a reassessment of psychoanalytic method.