What's so different about Lacan's approach to psychoanalysis?

Clinical work based on Lacanian principles is rarely compared in the psychoanalytic literature with that based on other principles. The author attempts to highlight a few important theoretical differences regarding language, desire, affect, and time between a Lacanian approach and certain others that lead to differences in focus and technique, related, for example, to interpretation, scansion, and countertransference. Lacanian techniques are illustrated with brief clinical vignettes. In the interest of confidentiality, identifying information and certain circumstances have been changed or omitted in the material presented.