The Freudian Thing is one of Lacan’s most important texts, wherein he explains the significance and stakes of his “return to Freud” as a passionate defence of Freud’s disturbing, epoch-making discovery of the unconscious, against misrepresentations and criticisms of it.

Introduction: Returning to the Vienna of Freud.- 1. Situation in Time and Place of this Exercise.- 2. The Adversary.- 3. The Thing Speaks Itself.- 4. Parade.- 5. The Thing’s Order.- 6. Resistance to the Resisters.- 7. Interlude.- 8. The other’s Discourse.- 9. Imaginary Passion.- 10. Analytic Action.- 11. The Locus of Speech.- 12. Symbolic Debt.- 13. The Training of Analysts to Come.- Conclusion: Taking it to the Dogs.

This book offers readers a uniquely detailed engagement with the ideas of legendary French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The Freudian Thing is one of Lacan’s most important texts, wherein he explains the significance and stakes of his “return to Freud” as a passionate defence of Freud’s disturbing, epoch-making discovery of the unconscious, against misrepresentations and criticisms of it. However, Lacan is characteristically cryptic in The Freudian Thing. The combination of his writing style and vast range of references renders much of his thinking inaccessible to all but a narrow circle of scholarly specialists. Johnston’s Irrepressible Truth opens up the universe of Lacanian psychoanalysis to much wider audiences by furnishing a sentence-by-sentence interpretive unpacking of this pivotal 1955 essay. In so doing, Johnston reveals the precision, rigor, and soundness of Lacan’s teachings.

“This book is a textually faithful, painstaking exposition of Lacan’s seminal écrits ‘The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis’ … . The book is stimulating and enlightening (and, importantly, clear) reading for both the uninitiated and initiated alike.” (Gregory Trotter, Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 51, 2018)

“The elegant and often witty rigor of Irrepressible Truth will appeal to a wide and variegated “hounded mafia of honesty” discontent with pseudo-academic platitudes as much as with Thermidorian sectarianism that still wholeheartedly believes in the potentials of the revolution initiated by the Freudian talking cure.” (Lorenzo Chiesa, Director of the Genoa School of Humanities and Visiting Professor at the European University of Saint Petersburg, Russia)    “Adrian Johnston’s Irrepressible Truth is far and away the best and most detailed commentary on one of Lacan’s crucial texts, “The Freudian Thing.” Never before has anyone unpacked this Lacanian position paper with such insight and finesse, relating it to Lacan's other works both prior and subsequent, and rarely has anyone written about his texts with such clarity. A fine example to us all!” (Bruce Fink, Lacanian analyst, translator of Ecrits and of Seminars VIII and XX)

Analyses Lacan’s article ‘The Freudian Thing’ which only appeared in the full English translation in 2006 Offers insight into Lacan’s notoriously dense and intimating work ‘Ecrits’ Situates “The Freudian Thing” within the broader sweep of Lacan’s intellectual project Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras