[masswerk]

Lacan is actually surprisingly rigorous or, at least, methodical. It's just, if you attempt to talk about what preconditions language and language like structures using language, you necessarily enter a metadiscourse. (Having read Lacan in philosophy was actually of help to me to come up with some algorithms as a programmer.)

[bananamerica]

If Lacan could be methodical (and I don't think he did), it would be much in the same way psychotics can be methodical.

> you necessarily enter a metadiscourse

It's quite possible for metadiscourse to be also intelligible. No reason to write like a lunatic.

[masswerk]

I think, much of the reception of Lacan is specific to the language, language as in translation. E.g., mind that the early US reception is somewhat unfortunate due to the translation. On the other hand, the German edition tends to be a bit pompous, probably in order to establish the text in the context of the German academic discourse of the time. (Especially the Ecrits are about unreadable at times.) The Seminars, however, are, at least in the original, colloquial, slowly spoken, trying to find appropriate words for where there are none. And he's developing a methodology of his own, for sure. He even tried to express them conclusively in mathematical formulars and diagrams ("mathemes" – yes, we may have to put an emphasis on "tried"). If you have a look at Seminar II (Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychoanalyse, 1954-1955), you even may observe that he entertained relationship with the cybernetic community, there are also traits of Rosenblut, contemporary mathematics… And, not to the least, some of Lacan's concepts seem to have shown up in FMRI findings of the last years.

Edit: If we entertain for a moment Marx's thought of history being the natural history of mankind, we may assume that this natural history sediments into technological artifacts, for short, technology, machines. If we also assume some value for the concept of the moi, we may conclude that we put some of a resemblance to our own into these machines. There's a mutual inheritance in the description. And machines, which are are also kind of sediments of algorithms or symbolic forms in their own, adhere – at least to some degree – to the same preconditions. (This, BTW, is a great way of looking at 2001, A Space Odyssey.) There's something to be learned from exploring either of them. However, we may have to find appropriate methodology for each of them, according to the specific scope. Since the venture of describing the preconditions of the human psyche equals the endeavor of describing a scope from within this very scope, we also encounter Boges' paradox of the map at 1:1 scale, which doesn't do for a description. What to do about it? Necessarily, we'd have to resort to some analogies, but, at the same time, we'd have to invalidate them, in order to not fall prey to ontology. What's left? Probably a system which is built more on resonance than on conclusive description, entertained by the mutual relations and suspense of the various concepts, which, at the same time, provides proper meaning to these concepts. Some sort of a bootstrapping process. We try to talk about meaning and its constraints by the very process of making meaning. Which, BTW, is totally conclusive with post-structuralist epistemology, as long it is internally conclusive. (Mind that this is for the most in the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the linguistic turn. – And it's a generation of French academics who were, at least to some extent, formed by the confrontation with Hegel and Heidegger, and by the example of Lévi-Strauss.)

[bananamerica]

I've read different translations, I've have been part of a prestigious Lacanian psychoanalytic society that's a direct descendant of his original - physical - school in France. At its best Lacan's works is an interesting form of literature, at it's worse it's indistinguishable from pseudo-science and charlatanism. His followers are basically mystics and cultists.

If you read Aleister Crowley you will get to the same point: "this is so incomprehensible that it must have meaning. And after years of decyphering, there it is, actual meaning!".

Human beings are genetically formed to see patterns. If I generated a list of grammatically correct phrases combining random words, people would find meaning there too.

[masswerk]

I'd say, if it makes sense as a system and you can make sense by it and in it, it must be a system, at least. If we may further make predictions, which prove to hold (compare the FMRI findings mentioned above), and/or add explanation to what was previously unexplained, there may be even some value to it. :-)

[bananamerica]

Supposing that a random word generator is a worthwhile source of valuable knowledge, and if you're willing to concede that Lacan is/was just as good as a random word generator, then YES, Lacanian psychoanalysis is a valuable epistemological framework.

But

> a random word generator is a worthwhile source of valuable knowledge

Is obviously valse!

[masswerk]

I guess, we won't come to terms on this subject.

(I, on the other hand, do not understand, why certain economists are supposed to make any sense, just because their words are easily intelligible.)

P.S.: I should specify (previously supposing this was obvious from context), I'm distinctively talking about Lacan in terms of metapsychology and not as a psychoanalytical framework in the strict, therapeutical sense. Yes, here we may have to make a distinction. I'm not too sure, if I would prefer a Lacanian therapy. (Probably not.)