Some Serious Recreation

Lacan’s introduction to the seminar on the Purloined Letter is couched in a mathematical language which can be a little intimidating. This paper attempts to sift through some of the outer layers of his ‘matheme’ so that the treasure of its kernel is not ignored. In 1966, when Lacan had been persuaded, rather reluctantly, to publish some of his writings, he presented the works in chronological order, spanning over thirty years from a comment on his thesis of 1932 to an extract from Seminar XIII, dated December 1st 1965.…