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Although Lacan spent only a year at the special Infirmary, it would appear that he fell completely under Clérambault’s spell and adopted his ideas. Eventually Lacan would acknowledge Clérambault in his Ecrits as his ‘sole master in psychiatry’, but the influence first became visible in a 1931 article entitled ‘Structures des psychoses paranoïaques’. In this article Lacan put forward his own modified version of Clérambault’s theory of paranoia and supported the systematic internment of those deemed to be insane. He also appended to it a footnote indicating an almost slavish devotion to Clérambault. ‘This image,’ wrote Lacan, referring to a particular expression in his article, ‘is borrowed from the oral teaching of our master M.G. de Clérambault to who we are indebted for the entirety of our method and material, and to whom, to avoid plagiarism, we would be obliged to pay homage for every one of our terms.’ Clérambault, who regularly expressed the fear that his ideas were being stolen, was not appeased even by such extravagant terms. Not long after Lacan’s article was published, he broke into a meeting of the Medico-Psychological Society in a fury, threw copies of the article in Lacan’s face and publicly charged him with plagiarism.[4]

[[Category:Biography of Jacques Lacan]]

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