Charismatic Speech, Love, Knowledge

From Bruce Fink's Lacan to the Letter (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), p. 68:

"Lacan sees his own oral teaching as an important part of training. To his mind, his seminars contribute to the training of analysts far more than his writings ever could (even though they too strive to achieve certain training effects). Since Plato's time, it has been clear that oral transmission engenders love and that love and knowledge are not unrelated. Lacan's seminars provide a transferential context, engendering love in the students, love that puts them to work. The student at Lacan's seminar is inspired to work, much as the analysand is in analysis. There is more to it than that, of course: Lacan was, from many accounts, a fine and charismatic speaker who made a great impression on his audience. He also seemed to crave and genuinely thrive on the transference love he inspired in his students. He worked for that love, just as they worked for him."