ABSTRACT
The great merit of Adam’s study is that it does not fall into the trap of situating Kierkegaard within a clinical study, but rather constantly seeks to demonstrate how Lacan himself read Kierkegaard. And as Adam points out, Kierkegaard was one of the few philosophers for whom Lacan did not offer a clinical diagnosis.6 Though the Freudian reworking of the notion of subject calls into question the epistemological value of philosophical discourse in its claims to universal validity, Kierkegaard figures as a privileged interlocutor with psychoanalysis,7 insofar as he offers a means of repositioning the status of philosophical discourse itself by placing the focus upon singularity. We can thus see an evolution in Lacan’s interest in Kierkegaard, which initially stems from a biographical and clinical reading of “Kierkegaard’s life experiences as he reflects them in his philosophy [and which] will be set forth as demonstrative of certain clinical realities,”8 but which later become essentially a reference against which, or alongside which, Lacan is able to build his own conceptual framework and rethink some of the original Freudian concepts.9
