Critique of Psychoanalytic Reason

Dany Nobus assembles nine studies that hold Lacan's concepts and clinical methods to account, testing their consistency rather than either defending or discarding them. Drawing on unpublished archival material, he examines subjects Lacan's readers often pass over: the place of money and fees in the psychoanalytic economy, the dissolution of analytic organisations, the status of feminine jouissance, and the worth of playful, non-serious thinking. Across the chapters Nobus argues that Lacan's most difficult formulations reward scrutiny when read against their own claims rather than recited as doctrine.

For the practitioner, the book treats the clinic as a form of artistry and reads analytic work as close to poetry, giving fresh attention to the conduct of the session, the setting of fees, and the analyst's own position. It offers a critical, questioning relationship to ideas that training often presents as settled, and stays legible to those meeting this material for the first time.