A Lacanian Approach to Autism
Dilemmas of Giving and Receiving
$33.53
- Paperback
232 pages
- Release Date
10 March 2027
Summary
Psychoanalytic treatment of autism has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent decades. It now focuses on difficulties in interaction between parents and children, leading to what is termed here a “failure to dance,” a failure to pick up on each other’s cues, to respond to each other’s needs and wants. The children end up feeling uninvited into their parents’ world, and the parents end up feeling rebuffed and despondent.
Jacques Lacan’s work can shed light on what goes wrong between pa…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781509575091 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 150957509X |
| Author: | Bruce Fink |
| Publisher: | Polity Press |
| Imprint: | Polity Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 232 |
| Release Date: | 10 March 2027 |
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Critics Review
“Fink’s highly readable and meticulously researched book reframes autism as a fourth clinical structure alongside neurosis, psychosis, and perversion, providing clinicians with ways of understanding how autistic individuals relate to language, jouissance, and the social world. In addition to illuminating a clear path to treatment, this work will challenge readers across disciplines to reconsider what we think we know about autism and to recognize the profound implications of how we theorize difference itself. A true gift!”
Stephanie Swales, Dublin City University, author of Perversion: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Subject
“A clear, precise, and original introduction to the four different subjective structures isolated by Lacanian psychoanalysis: neurotic, psychotic, perverse, and autistic. They are situated by investigating the type of invitation into the world that is experienced by babies. The causes and mechanisms of autism are explored in depth here. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the autistic child does not feel invited to enter into exchanges with the people around him or her. In the attempt to overcome this withdrawal, the author shows how Lacanian psychoanalysis can avert the crystallization of an autistic position and potentially allow for the invention of an effective defense through the construction of a barrier, rim, or prosthesis [bord]. The book provides a remarkable synthesis of many works regarding the differences between the four subjective structures.”
Jean-Claude Maleval, University of Rennes 2, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology
Bruce Fink
Bruce Fink is a foremost commentator on Lacan, and a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and analytic supervisor. He is a member of the psychoanalytic institute created by Jaques Lacan, the École de la Cause freudienne in Paris, and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Center in Pennsylvania.
He served as a Professor of Psychology from 1993 to 2013 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and obtained his PhD from the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII (Saint-Denis).
He is the author of numerous books on Lacan, including:
- The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (1995)
- A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (1997)
- Lacan on Love: An Exploration of Lacan’ Seminar VIII, Transference (2015)
- A Lacanian Approach to Autism: Dilemmas of Giving and Receiving (2027)
He has translated several of Lacan’s works into English, including Écrits and Transference.
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