The Topological Transformation of Freud's Theory

In this book the author presents his reading of psychoanalysis in the spirit of its founder Sigmund Freud, and explores the transformations of Freud's work by his followers. The author notes that some of these followers trimmed it down even to exclude the death drive, which was one of Freud's fundamental principles. Freud's theory has also been transformed by Lacan, who, in the mid-1950s embarked on a lifelong enterprise to recast it in a fruitful debate with the sciences and the humanities. Such a transformation brought by Lacan was (somewhat paradoxically) necessary to show the importance of Freud's findings for the understanding of subjectivity.

Preface , Foreword to the English Edition , Foreword , Introduction , Unconscious incestuous passion and fundamental phantasy , The continual partitioning of the subjective structure over two places—conscious and unconscious , Taking up the Freudian theory of the Ego and the Id in the hypothesis of the structure , Psychoanalyst’s knowledge and psychoanalytic clinic , The Symptom’s link to the structure of the unconscious , Conversion of death drive theory into jouissance theory , Reformulation of the concept of masochism: the concept of jouissance of the Other , The shifting of the Symptom (σ) in the structure , Anxiety, anguish, and depression , Narcissism , Transference , Transformation process of the subject in treatment , Psychoanalytic science , Appendix *

Professional Practice & Development

Jean-Gerard Bursztein