# Where to Start 1: The Psychoanalytic Theorists | Why Theory
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: [Where to Start 1: The Psychoanalytic Theorists by Why Theory](https://soundcloud.com/whytheory/where-to-start-where-not-to-start)
## Notes
The episode claims that [[Sigmund Freud]]’s most important work is _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_, but that you shouldn’t start reading Freud with that.
Jacqueline Rose has important commentary on Freud’s later works.
[[Sigmund Freud]] essentially believed that [[one is not born a woman]].
[[Jacques Lacan]] didn’t “become Lacan” until Seminar XI.
> Hegel’s idea of the subject is only free when it recognizes itself in absolute otherness.
Lacan’s idea of anxiety is a bit like Hegel’s idea of freedom.
The hosts do not like Lacan’s _Ecrits_ much.
[[Zizek]] believes that [[Christianity]] has an atheistic core to it.
[[Sigmund Freud]]’s point regarding the phallus is that it’s false from the start, it’s not “phallo-centric”. [[Psychoanalysis]] is an analysis of a phallo-centric society.
## Recommended readings
### [[Freud]]
- A Note Upon the Mystic Writing Pad
- Negation
- Fetishism
- The Interpretation of Dreams
### [[Lacan]]
- The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
- Anxiety
### [[Zizek]]
- Looking Awry
- The Plague of Fantasies
- The Fright of Real Tears
- The Parallax View
- Less Than Nothing
### [[Copjec]]
The episode recommends all of Copjec’s works, but in particular:
- “The Orthopsychic Subject”
- “Sex and the Euthanasia of Reason”
- Response to [[Judith Butler]]
### Zupancic
- The Odd One In
- Ethics of the Real
### Ruti
- The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living
- Between Levinas and Lacan: Self, Other, Ethics
- The Ethics of Opting Out