The difficulty of Jacques Lacan's thought is notorious. The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan cuts through this difficulty to provide a clear, jargon-free approach to understanding it. The book describes Lacan's life, the context from which he emerged, and the reception of his theory. Readers will come away with an understanding of concepts such as jouissance, the objet a, and the big Other. The book frames Lacan's thought in the history of philosophy and explains it through jokes, films, and popular culture. In this light, Lacan becomes a thinker of philosophical importance in his own right, on a par with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Lacan's great contribution is the introduction of the unconscious into subjectivity, which results in a challenge to both the psychoanalytic establishment and to philosophers. The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan provides readers with a way of understanding the nature of Lacan's contribution.

‘Presenting a notoriously obscure thinker with astonishing clarity, McGowan also brilliantly illuminates Lacan in dialogue with philosophical giants like Kant and Hegel. Nothing short of stunning.'

Rick Boothby - Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University Maryland

‘McGowan's book on Lacan demonstrates yet again how right Lacan was when he insisted that people who are not clinical analysts can also be full members of his school. It's not that we philosophers should learn from clinicians - clinicians can learn from us what they are doing. Finally, someone dared to state openly the obvious truth: like all anti-philosophers from Kant onwards, Lacan is also and foremost a philosopher!’

Slavoj Žižek - Professor of philosophy, Birkbeck University, author of Less Than Nothing