Writing the Structures of the Subject

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

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2. Dissolution and Déblayage

   • Will Greenshields

   Pages 1-36

3. The Topology of the Psychoanalytic Subject

   • Will Greenshields

   Pages 37-102

4. Topology and the Re-turn to Freud

   • Will Greenshields

   Pages 103-202

5. The Borromean Knot

   • Will Greenshields

   Pages 203-263

6. Conclusion: A New Imaginary

   • Will Greenshields

   Pages 265-271

7. Back Matter

   Pages 273-290

   PDF

This book examines and explores Jacques Lacan’s controversial topologisation of psychoanalysis, and seeks to persuade the reader that this enterprise was necessary and important. In providing both an introduction to a fundamental component of Lacan’s theories, as well as readings of texts that have been largely ignored, it provides a thorough critical interpretation of his work. Will Greenshields argues that Lacan achieved his most pedagogically clear and successful presentations of his most essential and notoriously complex concepts – such as structure, the subject and the real – through the deployment of topology. The book will help readers to better understand Lacan, and also those concepts that have become prevalent in various intellectual discourses such as contemporary continental philosophy, politics and the study of ideology, and literary or cultural criticism.

• Topography
• Topology
• Freud
• Psychiatry
• Psychoanalysis
• Philosophy
• Critical Theory

• University of Sussex, Bridgnorth, United Kingdom

  Will Greenshields

Will Greenshields is a contributor to the Reframing Psychoanalysis website which is a focus for research in psychoanalysis across the Consortium for Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE). He completed his PhD thesis on Lacan and topology at the University of Sussex, where he also taught in the area of Critical Theory. 

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