Although the term 'jouissance' is common currency in psychoanalysis today, how much does it really tell us? While often taken to designate a fusion of sexuality, suffering and satisfaction, the term has fallen into a purely descriptive use that closes down more questions than it opens up. Although assumed to explain the coalescence of pleasure and pain, it tends to cover a range of quite different issues that should be distinguished rather than conflated.

By returning to some of the sources of the concept in Freud, and their elaborations in Lacan, this book hopes to stimulate a debate around the relations of pleasure to pain, autoerotism, the links of satisfaction to arousal, the effects of repression, and the place of the body in psychoanalytic theory. Leader aims to provide context for Lacan's work and encourage dialogue with other analytic traditions.

About the Author
Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst working in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. His books include What is Madness?, Hands and Why Can't We Sleep?

Reviews

"In the last decades, 'jouissance' has emerged as the new master-signifier of those who refer to Lacan, turning it into a vague designation with no precise content. Here enters Leader, who proves that there is a strict conceptual network to jouissance with its own often different logics. To use Freud's and Lacan's notion of retroactivity, it is only with Leader's booklet that we clearly see who Lacan was."
Slavoj i ek, philosopher and professor at the Institute of Sociology, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

"Impeccably researched and beautifully written, this nimble volume brims with sparkling new insights about the endlessly fascinating and deeply problematic relation between pleasure, sex and satisfaction. This book is a precious little gem, which will appeal to a very wide readership."
Dany Nobus, Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Brunel University London

Book Information
ISBN 9781509548842
Author Darian Leader
Format Paperback
Page Count 138
Imprint Polity Press
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 181g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 137mm * 13mm