ABSTRACT
Jonathan Lear, philosopher and psychoanalyst, is one of the most gifted contemporary interpreters of Freud, as well as someone who dares to use him in a comparative context: he applies him, that is, to classical Greek texts. As befits a person who, only slightly tongue in cheek, identifies a new complex, the Cordelia complex, his use of Freud is imaginative and challenging. (The Cordelia complex, named after the character Cordelia in another Lear—that of Shakespeare— describes people who think they can tell other people the truth and be loved for it.) His analysis is full of ideas that might apply especially well to China: for instance, the idea that Freud’s conception of “love” has both natural and human manifestations, and therefore is a conception that challenges a distinction fundamental to most modern Western approaches.
