This is an extraordinary collection that goes to the heart of Lacan's theory and the controversy that has surrounded it. The main text is a transcript of a provocative filmed interview with Lacan that was aired on French television in 1973. The interviewer, Jacques-Alain Miller, poses questions most often asked by those outside Lacanian circles about the nature and value of Lacan's theory and practice.
The second half of this illuminating volume, A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, includes the "dossier on the institutional debate." The papers it comprises—such as the July 1953 report from the president of the International Psychanalytic Association, Heinz Hartmann—document some of the controversy that swirled around Lacan for the last thirty years of his teaching, including his expulsion from the IPA in 1953, his "excommunication" in 1963, and his key responses in the form of letters and talk.
For anyone hoping to understand the institutionalization of Freudian thought and the challenge Lacan represents, this is an essential work.