Is this quote apocryphal?If not, where specifically is it from? (Lacan)

May 21, 2022 11:30 PM

I was listening to an audiobook of Stephen Mitchell's Can Love Last (sounds like a silly self help book, is a well regarded book by a psychoanalyst) and he quoted Jacques Lacan as saying (I thought) "Love is giving something you don't have to someone you don't know."

I googled some. It seems either I misheard or he misquoted. The version that is coming up is "Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it." I think "Aimer--c'est donner ce q'uon na pas a quelqu'un qui n'en veut pas."

But I just keep seeing people say he said it and don't know the source. I'm slightly afraid it could be the internet doing a slightly hoitier and toitier version of its usual routine of "Life is a sport--drink it up!" --The Buddha.

The line does intrigue me in a perverse way so I'm curious about it and its context, even though what little I have read of Lacan otherwise I find bewildering.

Anyone know?

posted by less-of-course to Religion & Philosophy (1 answer total)

Best answer: Cormac Gallagher's translations of Lacan include this in Book XII (PDF; 17.3.1965, p. 165): "love is to give what one does not have to someone who does not want it." This source says other, unnamed sources link it to an earlier seminar, and that's still plausible even if one source is confirmed--the quote sounds like something he could have said in different ways at different times.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:52 PM on May 21, 2022 [4 favorites]