Catherine Clément's Lives and Legends of Jacques Lacan was first published in French in 1981, appearing just after the death of Lacan and the controversial dissolution of the École freudienne. As such, Clément weaves together a theoretical meditation on the merits of Lacan's work with an account of her own personal interactions and observations, such as the reactions of her fifteen-year-old daughter to psychoanalysis. The result is a measured, beautifully lyrical account of both this period of time and the ideas that sprang from it.

Clément divides the book into four chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of Lacan's thought. The first chapter recounts how she fell in love with Lacan, as well as the centrality of love to his ideas, while also showing how Clément eventually fell out of love with Lacan.

Most insightful for me was the second chapter, in which Clément, who regards herself a feminist, emphasizes the importance of women for Lacan. His interest in key cases dealing with women, from Aimee to the Papin sisters, culminates in his theory of the not-All. Clément provides an interesting commentary on how this idea has been misunderstood, arguing that Lacan should be seen as in agreement with the feminists: there is no Woman, no eternal feminine, only women.

The third chapter deals with the evolution from plain, everyday Jacques-Marie Lacan to the superstar theorist Lacan. Clément traces the various controversies and theoretical breaks that marked Lacan's career, crucial moments that would elevate him in the French imagination.

The final full chapter looks at the development of Lacan's thought, first in relation to politics, then in its borrowings from science and mathematics. Like many other readers of Lacan, I am skeptical about the value of this part of his work, but Clément is generous in how she presents it and attempts to salvage what she can from its contradictions.

The book closes with a short epilogue titled "The Firebird," in which Clément imagines Lacan as a phoenix. Clearly the dissolution of the École freudienne was a major trauma for her, as it forms the nucleus of this beautifully-written and emotionally touching book. Clément's Lives and Legends of Jacques Lacan deserves its place as a classic in the field, combining theory and memoir, experience and thought, into a single moving volume. ( )