Issue 51: Editorial

This 51st issue of the The Letter was put together by editor Tony Hughes who is currently ill and continues the project begun in issue 41 of introducing English-speaking students of Jacques Lacan to a reading of L’étourdit. It also presents the work of three authors – Monica Errity, Mary O’Connor and Brian Robertson – on earlier, more approachable aspects of his work. Even today, more than 40 years after its completion on July 14th 1972, L’étourdit is regarded by many French psychoanalysts as incomprehensible and even, as one of his most able commentators put it to me recently, as an ‘unworthy showpiece’ at the end of a brilliant career.…