Editors’ introduction

It is rare to be presented with a paper of such ambition and scope and even rarer to find that it succeeds in more than its aim. Burgoyne takes us through Lacan’s entire programme of work, presenting the deceptively simple thesis that it was ultimately a search to define psychic space, and incidentally revealing not only its intellectual riches but also the clinical applicability of ideas that may occasionally appear to be intellectual whimsy.