Abstract
This chapter explores Jacques Lacan’s equivocal relationships to Catholicism and Judaism and to Freud and his followers. Lacan claimed that his approach represented a “return to Freud,” but it was nothing of the kind. Instead, Lacan frequently distorted or ignored the plain meaning of Freud’s texts, superimposing his own ideas on them, and then attributing his ideas retroactively to Freud. He shared this rhetorical strategy with Alexandre Kojeve, and with other second- and third-generation analysts I term crypto-revisionists, who insist loudly on their fidelity to Freud while deviating dramatically from his theories of human development. Furthermore, Lacan’s polemics with the Freudian faithful in the International Psychoanalytic Association are riddled with traces of theological anti-Semitism and Catholic triumphalism. Louis Althusser read Freud through a Lacanian prism, contending that psychoanalysis could only be a “science” if it was detached from clinical practice.
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