Jacques Lacan

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Jacques Lacan gives the opening lecture at the International James Joyce Symposiumin in Paris, 1975.

Jacques-Marie Émile Lacan (13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Lacan is one of the most important – and controversial – figures in the history of psychoanalysis whose influence had spread across a broad range of academic disciplines.

Biography

Click here for a more complete chronology of Jacques Lacan's life.

1901 - 1938

Lacan studies medicine and psychiatry and completes his doctoral thesis on paranoid psychosis. He presents a paper on the mirror stage - his first theoretical contribution to psychoanalysis - at a conference of the International Psycho-Analytical Association in Marienbad.

1938 - 1953

Lacan is a member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris until he resigns to join the Société Française de Psychanalyse.

1953 - 1963

Lacan begins his first public seminar (which he will continue to give annually until his death). Thereafter, he rises to become a renowned and controversial figure in the international psychoanalytic community.

1963 - 1980

Lacan leaves the SFP and founds his own school, the École Freudienne de Paris . Following the publication of the Écrits, there is an explosion of interest in his work in France and abroad.

Bibliography

Click here for a more complete bibliography of Jacques Lacan's work.

Lacan's most important theoretical contributions to psychoanalysis were presented in his seminars.

In 1966, a selection of Lacan's most important papers are published under the title Écrits; fewer than one-third of them are included in the English Écrits: A Selection (1977).