Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought provides a close reading of how Lacan mobilizes concepts from Chan Buddhist philosophy, culture, and practice in his later teachings.
The book emerged from the three co-authors' engagement with Lacan's 1962-1963 Seminar on Anxiety, and the significance of Lacan's original interpretation of the Buddhist principle that desire is the cause of suffering. The book reads key Lacanian concepts - such as the objet a, jouissance, the real, Nirvana, and the mirror - through ancient Buddhist teachings and koans. With this focused exploration of psychoanalysis and Chan Buddhism, the authors offer a philosophically grounded cross-cultural approach to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in Asian countries.
Lacan and Chan Buddhist Thought will be a rich resource for psychoanalysts, academics, and students interested in Lacan and religion, the intellectual and cultural relationship between Asian and Western thought, and Mahayana Buddhism more generally.
About the Author: Raul Moncayo, PhD, is a supervising analyst and past founding member and former president of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis, USA. He is the author of seven books on Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Together with Yang Yu and Hong Zhou, he founded the Beijing Center for Freudian and Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Research to transmit a Lacanian psychoanalysis with an ongoing, active engagement with Chinese culture. In 2019, he founded the Blue Mountain Zen Center of El Cerrito, California.
Yang Yu is Associate Professor of English Literature at Beijing Normal University, candidate analyst of the Bay Area Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis, and founding member of the Beijing Center for Freudian and Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Research. She has published several journal papers on Lacan and English literature.
