In this book, Malcolm Bowie provides yet another "Lacan for beginners" text that was obviously popular at the time. Bowie is well-equipped to undertake such a task, with a vast knowledge of the material and a writing style that is generally easy enough to follow (although I suspect readers who are entirely new to Lacan will still find it a challenge).

Bowie's book has a bit more of a historical sense than some other books of this kind. As such, he opens with a chapter on the complex relationship between Freud and Lacan, observing cannily that "Lacan's argument is conducted on Freud's behalf and, at the same time, against him" (p.7).

The rest of the book is organized into a kind of "greatest hits" of Lacanian concepts, starting with an explanation of Lacan's notion of the divided subject (Ch.2). Bowie moves from there to the relationship between language and the unconscious (Ch.3), the development of Lacan's three registers of the real, symbolic, and imaginary (Ch.4), an explanation of the symbolic phallus (Ch.5), and an overview of how Lacan's final years were spent exploring mathemes, knots and other more obscure theoretical concepts (Ch.5).

Bowie's book is a solid but unremarkable introduction to Lacan. It is readable and goes over the basic concepts, although in terms of theoretical scope I would probably recommend Joël Dor's [b:Introduction to the Reading of Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a Language|262773|Introduction to the Reading of Lacan The Unconscious Structured Like a Language|Joël Dor|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320450096s/262773.jpg|254712] ahead of this one. ( )