Summaries
We begin our latest issue with the exciting announcement that starting in early 2026 the EJP will be formally joining the Open Library of the Humanities! Some background: Faced with an increasingly difficult publishing landscape, we looked around to see what partnerships and arrangements we might enter into that would allow us to move forward as a journal. Thanks to the diligent efforts…
Summary: This article explores the enduring relevance of Freud’s Oedipus complex in contemporary psychoanalysis and critiques the notion that we have overcome the Oedipus complex as a critical-clinical tool. The essay argues that this illusory claim only deepens the Oedipal problem. It also examines the implications of the diminishing role of paternal authority, as discussed by Fr…
Summary: This article asks whether discursive relations with large language models (LLMs) might be able to generate new nonhuman forms of thought or subjectivity. It bridges the existing Lacanian analyses of AI which either discuss a hypothetical conscious form of nonhuman subjectivity, or address our contemporary interactions with LLMs, by considering how these existing interactions bo…
FC: It’s clear from reading your book, Is it Ever Just Sex?, that you’ve attempted among many other things to rewrite long held psychoanalytic ideas regarding sex, sexuality, and fantasy. Could you detail the difference between how you understand all of these, and how Freud and the first generations of analysts understood them? DL: That’s a complex question because obv…
Summary: This text departs from the psychoanalytic framework traditionally applied to the autistic spectrum (ASD)—a framework that too often focuses on the genesis of autism without examining its structure—to address the question of what autism essentially is. Specifically, the author investigates what distinguishes an autistic subject from one who is not, or is autistic to a lesser deg…
Summary: Does autism represent the ultimate withdrawal into a singular existence—autonomous, self-ruled, in-divisible—or the resorption of every uniqueness into interlocking sets, aggregates, collectives, categories and taxonomies? Psychiatry’s relentlessly assimilative patterning—its reduction to a set of symptoms or given criteria, its refashioning of clinical-temporal specificities a…
Summary: In The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore, Lacan (1975/1998b) continues to develop his theory of sexuation and expands the concept of jouissance by introducing a jouissance which exceeds the symbolic, a form of enjoyment accessible from the feminine position, and one that he described as ineffable, bordering on the mystical, and impossible. He calls this Other jouissance…
Summary: The article explores the theoretical systems of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan through the concept of a “reticular system.” This model, although not explicitly named by Freud, is evident in his descriptions of psychic processes as networks of interconnected representations. Freud structures psychoanalysis around a network (psychic representations), a fluid (libido …
Summary: Based on the metapsychological notion of psychic diversity, this article explores the application of the sinthome mechanism beyond psychotic and borderline structures, extending it to other psychic configurations. Drawing on Mead’s concept of the “self,” Bastide’s insights into social and cultural influences, and Lacan’s theory of subjectivation, the article examines how Lacan’…
Summary: Starting from the premise that translation is an integral part of psychoanalytic work, we propose a journey that leads first to examine how the question of translation is approached by both Freud and Lacan, moving on in a second moment to confront certain points addressed by theorists of literary translation (Berman, Meschonnic, etc.). The famous clinical example of Serge Lecl…
Summary: This essay offers a selective engagement with Domenico Cosenza’s A Lacanian Reading of Anorexia, newly translated into English by Jonathan West and revised by Fernando Castrillón. Rather than providing a comprehensive overview, this text reflects on a few key threads that highlight the richness of Cosenza’s contribution to contemporary psychoanalytic thought. Cosenza’s work is …
Summary: This article reviews two recent books on psychoanalysis and (bi)sexuality—one a novel, and the other a work of psychoanalytic theory—and suggests that sexuality, epistemology, and forms of writing are all inter-implicated.
Summary: This review analyses the book of David Pavón-Cuéllar, titled Psicoanálisis y Colonialidad: Hacia una Inflexión Anticolonial de la Herencia Freudiana (Psychoanalysis and Coloniality: Towards an Anti-Colonial Inflection of the Freudian Legacy). Drawing upon the historical markers of his country of origin, Mexico, the author densely constructs an original articulation between colo…
Todd McGowan’s Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan offers a systematic treatment of Jacques Lacan’s thought, salvaging it from its self-inflicted obscurantism. McGowan traces the development and regression of Lacan’s thought, unashamedly privileging the “middle Lacan” as the most philosophical and politically fecund for Lacanian theory by situating Lacan in both his intellectual and…
