Lacan's seminar on "The Purloined Letter' - Introductory remarks: Derek Hook

For readers coming to Lacan's seminar on "The Purloined Letter" for the first time, it helps to highlight the clinical implications of Lacan's discussion of Edgar Allen Poe's famous story, and to highlight a series of basic themes including: the role of the 'pure' signifier, the automatism of repetition and the primacy of the signifier over the subject. Likewise fascinating are the three triangular scenes which Lacan highlights in the story, and the three subjective positions which reoccur in those scenes. These positions include: the subject who is blind to the situation in which they find themselves; a second subject who "sees" that the first subject sees nothing but deludes themselves as to the secrecy of what they attempt to hide; and a third subject who sees that the first two subjects leave what should be hidden exposed, and who subsequently seeks to capitalize on this fact. Further insights include the idea that even a minimal symbolic system of inscription - such as one tracking the results of a sequence of coin tosses - gives rise to laws and to a type of remembering, facts which have clear relevance to Lacan's understanding of the unconscious.

[@mariaesterreismartins422]

Thank you so much for this lecture! I had to read Lacan's seminar for my research, and your explanation helped me a lot!

[@KrishangkuKashyap]

I understood nothing😢 can u give me some notes

[@chetanscore]

Thank you so much for this Video. We are just starting a reading group on Ecrits and this really helps.

[@arjunkumar2971]

Thank you very much Derek for your lacture, with the help of your lectures and a reading group on Lacan's Ecrits, we are trying make sense of Lacanian writing. Thank you

[@nickcollard2609]

So good Derek, thank you.

[@mitchie2267]

Thanks a lot

[@at-last]

34:00 38:54 42:47