Each of the three lectures in this volume is a commando operation. Lacan lands in front of random audiences. He has one hour to tell them who he is and what he does. He sensitizes his audience to the following contrast: a) The unconscious is accepted, no one is impressed anymore, but this is a result of propaganda. We have gotten used to psychoanalysis, but we have gotten used to it like a trendy therapy that is served by "advertisements" that reduce it to something already known.

b) However, psychoanalysis introduces an incomparable experience. The Freudian unconscious is an unprecedented innovation. The facts revealed in this way are not reducible to the obvious perceptions of common sense nor to the premises of philosophy. If these facts are taken seriously, they require us to rethink everything from the beginning.

Lacan took it upon himself to address the issue because this is how things turned out (anecdotal stories). His method consists of starting from what everyone knows. Subsequently, subtly, cleverly, as if teasing, he makes astonishing concepts emerge forcefully. A thought that does not think of itself - a language that is "on the brain like a spider"; a sexuality that "creates a hole in the truth"; an Other where this truth is inaugurated; a desire that comes from the Other and is extracted from it at the cost of a loss, always a loss; and the idea that all these paradoxes respond to a logic, distinct from what we call "psychism."

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]