Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment

The second half of this illuminating volume, A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, includes the "dossier on the institutional debate." The papers it comprises--such as the July 1953 report from the president of the International Psychanalytic Association, Heinz Hartmann--document some of the controversy that swirled around Lacan for the last thirty years of his teaching, including his expulsion from the IPA in 1953, his "excommunication" in 1963, and his key responses in the form of letters and talk. For anyone hoping to understand the institutionalization of Freudian thought and the challenge Lacan represents, this is an essential work.