Jacques Lacan continues to be subject to the most extravagant interpretations. Angelic to some, he is demonic to others. To recall Lacan's career, now that the heroic age of psychoanalysis is over, is to remember an intellectual and literary adventure that occupies a founding place in our modernity. Lacan went against the current of many of the hopes aroused by 1968, but embraced their paradoxes, and his language games and wordplay resonate today as so many injunctions to replace rampant individualism with a heightened social consciousness.

Widely recognized as the leading authority on Lacan, lisabeth Roudinesco revisits his life and work: what it was-and what it remains.

lisabeth Roudinesco is Head of Research in History at Universit Paris Diderot-Paris 7, and teaches at the Ecole Normale Sup rieure. She is the author of many books, including Jacques Lacan & Co.: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985 and Madness and Revolution: The Lives and Legends of Th roigne de Mericourt.