In order to avoid possible confusion, the French terms used by Lacan are also given along with the English translations. The one issue on which I differ from Sheridan is my decision to leave his algebraic symbols in their original form. For exampie I have left the symbols A and a as they are, rather than translating them as 0 and o as Sheridan does. Furthermore, as has become clear at the various international conferences of Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is very useful for analysts with different mother-tongues to have some basic symbols i common which can facilitate their discussions of Lacan. Another, more fundamental problem is the paradox involved in the very act of writing a dictionary of Lacanian terms.
Dictionaries usually attempt to pin down the meanings of each term and eradicate ambiguity.
The whole thrust of Lacan's discourse, however, subverts any such attempt to halt the continual slippage of the signified bed under the signifier. To attempt to provide 'adequate definitions' for Lacan's terms would therefore bre completely at odds with Lacan's work. On the basis of these comments it would seem that, contrary to my initial statements about a dictionary being an ideal way to explore Lacan's work nothing could be further from the spirit of that work than to enclose it in a dictionary. Perhaps this is true. It is certainly true that no one ever learned language by reading a dictionary.