William J. Richardson – The Third Generation of Desire
 
THE LETTER 01 (Summer 1994) pages 117-135
 
Excerpt:
 
Claudel! Why Paul Claudel? In a seminar entitled Transference, where Lacan introduces his long extrapolation on ClaudEl, the issue ought to be, after all, transference. I am referring, of course, to his Seminar VIII (1960-61) that goes by that single-word title. The long meditation on Plato’s Symposium with which the Seminar begins already seems far-fetched enough until one realizes that Lacan is using Plato’s famous dialogue on love as a means of discussing love in psychoanalysis, i.e., transference love. In these terms, the analysis of Alcibiade’s relationship to Socrates as a transferential one that Socrates handles in model fashion is both pertinent and illuminating. But Claudel? What can he tell us about psychoanalytic...