This book was very useful in its time but is now quite out of date. The translation included in it is that of "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," which is now more profitably read in the new translation of Ecrits: A Selection (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2002).

'All speech is demand, the demand for love.'

Jacques Lacan was much more than a psychoanalyst. In his investigations of language and his twenty year long seminar in France, he explored a realm of topics interesting to scholars in a variety of fields: sexuality, language, the self, the unconscious. Probably his most groundbreaking work - partially contained in this volume - concerns the importance of language as expressing our desire, our need for love - a desire, by the way, that can never be fulfilled and results in pain and frustration.

Anthony Wilden provides a decent translation, but all translations of Lacan's work - like the writings of Derrida - face a very difficult task. Highly recommended...