El Seminario de Jacques Lacan: La Relacion de Objeto / The Seminary of Jacques Lacan

The publication of Jacques Lacan's seminars was a monumental undertaking initiated after his death to document the influential oral teachings he delivered at the Sainte-Anne Hospital and the École Normale Supérieure between 1953 and 1980. This specific volume, which covers the fourth year of the seminars held in 1956 and 1957, represents a foundational period where Lacan began his rigorous re-evaluation of Freudian theory through the lens of structuralism and linguistics. Editions du Seuil undertook the massive project of transcribing and editing these lectures to preserve the intricate, often challenging development of Lacan's psychoanalytic thought for future generations of clinicians and philosophers.

The editorial process was overseen by Jacques-Alain Miller, Lacan’s son-in-law and literary executor, who aimed to provide a definitive version of the seminars that balanced oral immediacy with the intellectual precision required for academic study. The design of these volumes follows a clean, academic standard typical of mid-1990s French scholarly publishing, emphasizing legibility and accessibility for a readership that spans psychiatry, literary theory, and cultural studies. Upon their release, these books were received as essential texts for understanding the evolution of the subject, the role of the object, and the symbolic order in modern psychoanalysis, cementing Lacan's legacy in the international canon of critical theory.