Difference between revisions of "Jacques Lacan:Chronology"

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Below is a brief chronology which lists some of the major events in Lacan's
 
life. This chronology has been compiled          on the basis of the information
 
provided by Bowie (1991: 204-13), Macey (1988: ch. 7) and, above all,
 
Roudinesco (1986, 1993). Those who are interested in more detailed information
 
are advised to consult these three sources, as well as Forrester (1990: ch. 6),
 
Miller (1981), and Turkle (1978). For more anecdotal accounts see Clément
 
(1981) and Schneiderman (1983).
 
  
== Timeline ==
+
:12
 
+
;I farted
;1901
 
*Jacques Lacan born in Paris, the eldest son of prosperous, bourgeois parents.  After attending a well-known Jesuit school - he was raised a Catholic but did not practise Catholicism - he studies medicine and then psychiatry.
 
* Jacques-Marie Émile Lacan born on 13 April in Paris, the first child of Alfred Lacan and Émilie Baudry.
 
 
 
;1903
 
* Birth of Madeleine, Lacan's sister (25 December).
 
;1908
 
* Birth of Marc-François, Lacan's brother (25 December).
 
;1910
 
* Freud founds the International Psycho-Analytical Association (IPA).
 
;1919
 
* Lacan finishes his secondary education at the Collège Stanislas.
 
;1921
 
* Lacan is discharged from military service because of thinness. In the following years he studies medicine in Paris.
 
;1926   
 
* Lacan's first collaborative publication appears in the Revue Neurologique. The Société Psychanalytique de Paris (SPP) is founded.
 
;1927
 
* Lacan begins his clinical training in psychiatry.
 
* Lacan begins his clinical training and then works in several psychiatric hospitals in Paris.
 
;1928
 
* Lacan studies under Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault at the special infirmary for the insane attached to the Police Préfecture.
 
;1929 
 
* Lacan's brother, Marc-François, joins the Benedictines.
 
 
 
;1930
 
* Lacan publishes his first non-collaborative article in Annales Médico-Psychologiques.
 
;1931
 
* Lacan becomes increasingly interested in surrealism and meets Salvador Dalí.
 
;1932
 
* Lacan receives his doctorate in psychiatry with a thesis on the relationship of paranoia to personality structure.  This attracts considerable interest in surrealist circles.  His interests in paranoia, language, phantasy and symptoms, the main concerns of the surrealists, bring him close to them.  The main idea in the first period of Lacan's work, 1932-48, is the domination of the human being by the image.
 
* Lacan publishes his doctoral dissertation (On paranoiac psychosis in its relations to the personality) and sends a copy to Freud. Freud acknowledges receipt by postcard.
 
;1933
 
* Lacan publishes articles in ''Minotaure''.  He starts attending KojEve's lectures on Hegel.
 
* Two articles by Lacan are published in the surrealist journal Minotaure. Alexandre Kojève begins lecturing on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit at the Ecole des Hautes Études.
 
Lacan attends these lectures regularly over the following years.
 
;1934 
 
* Lacan, who is already in analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein, joins the SPP as a candidate member. He marries Marie-Louise Blondin in January, who gives birth to their first child, Caroline, the same month.
 
* Lacan enters analysis with Rudolph Lowewnstein and becomes an active member of the SeociEtE Psychanlytique de Paris (SPP).
 
;1935
 
* Marc-François Lacan is ordained priest.
 
;1936
 
* Reads a major papers to the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) on the mirror-stage theory which remains unpublished (the version included in ''Escits'' dates from 1949).
 
* Lacan presents his paper on the mirror stage to the fourteenth congress of the IPA at Marienbad on 3 August. He sets up private practice as a psychoanalyst.
 
;1938
 
*Accepted as training analyst by the International Psychoanalytic Assoication.
 
* Lacan becomes a full member of the SPP, and his article on the family is published in the Encyclopédie Française.  After Hitler's annexation of Austria, Freud leaves Vienna to settle in London; on his way to London he passes through Paris, but Lacan
 
decides not to attend the small gathering organised in Freud's honour.
 
;1939 
 
* Thibaut, the second child of Lacan and Marie-Louise, is born in August. On 23 September Freud dies in London at the age of eighty-three. After Hitler's invasion of France the SPP ceases to function. During the war Lacan works at a military
 
hospital in Paris.
 
;1939-45
 
*Second World War.  THe SPP is decimated and the society effectively ceases to exist.  Lacan works in a military hospital.
 
;1940
 
* Sibylle, third child of Lacan and Marie-Louise, is born in August.
 
;1941   
 
* Sylvia Bataille, estranged wife of Georges Bataille, gives birth to Judith. Though Judith is Lacan's daughter, she receives the surname Bataille because Lacan is still married to Marie-Louise. Marie-Louise now requests a divorce.
 
;1945   
 
* After the liberation of France, the SPP recommences meetings. Lacan travels to England where he spends five weeks studying the situation of psychiatry during the war years. His
 
separation from Marie-Louise is formally announced.
 
;1947   
 
* Lacan publishes a report of his visit to England.
 
;1948
 
*In the seocnd period of Lacan's work the function of the image is subordinated and the dominant field of knledge in his thinking is linguistics.
 
;1949   
 
* Lacan presents another paper on the mirror stage to the sixteenth IPA congress in Zurich.
 
;1951
 
* Lacan begins giving weekly seminars in Sylvia Bataille's apartment at 3 rue de Lille. At this time, Lacan is vice-president of the SPP. In response to Lacan's practice of using sessions of variable duration, the SPP's commission on instruction demands that he regularise his practice. Lacan promises to do so, but continues to vary the time of the sessions.
 
*The SPP's Training COmmission begins to raise the issue of Lacan's use of 'short sessions' in his analyses.  By 1951 Lacan is writing about the Imaginary, SYmbolic and the Real.
 
;1952
 
* The SPP, the Paris society, moves ahead on its plan to start a separate training instiute.  Lacan takes a strong exception to Nacht's concept of psychoanalysis as a discipline within neurobiology.
 
;1953 
 
*There is a split in the SPP over the question of lay analysis.  Lacan resigns his membership of the SPP and joins the SociEtE FranCaise de Psychanalyse (SFP).
 
*Holds his first public seminar (on Freud's papers on technique).  These seminars continue for twenty-six years.
 
*Delivers the important paper "the function of language in psychoanalyse."  Often called the "Rome report," this is the founding statement of the view that psychoanalysis is a theory of the speaking subject.  Psychoanalysis is now increasingly seen as a linguistic science in close touch with structural anthropology and mathematics.
 
* Lacan marries Sylvia Bataille and becomes president of the SPP. In June Daniel Lagache, Juliette Favez-Boutonier and Françoise Dolto resign from the SPP to found the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP). Soon after, Lacan resigns from the SPP and joins the SFP.
 
* Lacan opens the inaugural meeting of the SFP on the 8 July, where he delivers a lecture on 'the symbolic, the imaginary and the real'.
 
* He is informed by letter that his membership of the IPA
 
has lapsed as a result of his resignation from the SPP. In September
 
Lacan attends the sixteenth Conference of Psychoanalysts of the Romance Languages in Rome; the paper he writes for the occasion ('The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis') is too long to be read aloud and is distributed to participants instead.
 
* In November Lacan begins his first public seminar in the Hôpital Sainte-Anne.  These seminars, which will continue for twenty-seven years, soon become the principal platform for Lacan's teaching.
 
;1954
 
* The IPA refuses the SFP's request for affiliation. Heinz Hartmann intimates in a letter to Daniel Lagache that Lacan's presence in the SFP is the main reason for this refusal.
 
;1955
 
* Attacks the work of eog-psychologists (Hartman, Kris, Loewenstein and others)
 
;1956 
 
* The SFP renews its request for IPA affiliation, which is again refused. Lacan again appears to be the main sticking-point.
 
;1959 
 
* The SFP again renews its request for IPA affiliation. This time the IPA sets up a committee to evaluate the SFP's application.
 
;1960-80
 
* In the third period of Lacan's work the key idea is that of the three 'orders', the Imagianry, Symbolic and the Real.
 
;1961 
 
* The IPA committee arrives in Paris to interview members of the SFP and produces a report. On consideration of this report, the IPA rejects the SFP's application for affiliation as a member society and grants it instead 'study-group' status pending further investigation.
 
;1963 
 
*Expelled, finally, from the International Psychoanalytic Association Lacan foudns his own school, L'Ecole Freudienne de Paris (EFP).  His audience begins to change; there are fewer psychiatrists and more philosophers, anthropologists, linguistics, mathematicians and literary critics.  Gives Seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
 
* The IPA committee conducts more interviews with SFP members and produces another report in which it recommends that the SFP be granted affiliation as a member society on condition
 
that Lacan and two other analysts be removed from the list of training
 
analysts. The report also stipulates that Lacan's training activity
 
should be banned for ever, and that trainee analysts should be prevented
 
from attending his seminar. Lacan will later refer to this as his
 
'excommunication'.  Lacan then resigns from the SFP.
 
;1964 
 
* In January Lacan moves his public seminar to the École Normale Supérieure, and in June he founds his own organisation, the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP).
 
;1966
 
* Publishes first book: ''Escrits''.  The project of publishing Lacan's twenty-five annual semianrs is undertaken by his son-in-law and director of his school, Jacques-Alain Miller.  There is increasing interest in his work in France and abroad.
 
;1967
 
* Introduction of the highly controversial ''la passe'' which marks the transition from analysand to analyst.  Lacan sees the decision to become na analyst as analogous to the act of becoming a poet.
 
;1968
 
* Student uprising in Paris, the 'May events'.  The publication of the first issue of the official journal of the Freudian School, ''Scilicet''.
 
;1974
 
* The Department of Psychoanalysis at Vincennes, which opened after the 'May events' of 1968, is reorganized and renamed Le Champ Freudien with Lacan as scientific director and Miller, his son-in-law, as president.  There is a stress on the mathematical formalization of psychoanalytic theory.
 
;1977
 
* Publication in English of ''Ecrits - A Selection''.
 
;1988
 
* Lacan unilaterally announces the dissolution of the Ecole Freudienne de Paris.  The foundation of La Cause freduienne.
 
;1981
 
* Lacan dies in Paris at the age of eighty.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHRONOLOGY OF LACAN'S LIFE
 
 
 
1901 13 April Birth of Jacques-Marie Emile Lacan, the first child of Alfred Lacan (1873–1960) and Emilie Baudry (1876–1948). The middle-class Roman Catholic family has settled at 95 boulevard Beaumarchais in Paris. The father is overseeing a prosperous food business that his family started a century earlier with a reputed vinegar company, expanding later into the commerce of pickled goods, mustard, brandy, rum, and coffee.
 
 
 
1902 Birth of Raymond, Lacan's brother, who dies two years later.
 
 
 
1903 25 December Birth of Madeleine, Lacan's sister.
 
 
 
1907 Lacan enters the very select Collège Stanislas, a Marist college catering to the Parisian bourgeoisie, a year earlier than Charles de Gaulle, who is a student there in 1908–9. At Collège Stanislas, Lacan receives a solid primary and secondary education with a strong religious and traditionalist emphasis. He completes his studies in 1919. 25 December Birth of Marc-Marie, Lacan's second brother.
 
 
 
1915 During the war, Alfred Lacan is drafted as a sergeant, and parts of the Collège Stanislas are converted into a hospital for wounded soldiers. Lacan starts reading Spinoza.
 
 
 
1917–8 Lacan is taught philosophy by Jean Baruzi, a remarkable Catholic thinker who wrote a dissertation on Saint John of the Cross.
 
 
 
1918 Lacan loses his virginity and starts frequenting intellectual bookshops like Adrienne Monnier's Maison des amis des livres and Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company at rue de l'Odéon. New interests in Dadaism and the avant-garde.
 
 
 
1919 Autumn Lacan enters the Paris medical faculty and studies medicine.
 
 
 
1920 Lacan meets André Breton and acquaints himself with the Surrealist movement.
 
1921 Lacan is discharged from military service because of excessive thinness. 7 December Lacan hears the lecture on Joyce's Ulysses by Valéry Larbaud with readings from the text, an event organized by La maison des amis des livres, and at which James Joyce is present.
 
 
 
1925 January 20 Madeleine, Lacan's sister, marries Jacques Houlon. Soon after, they move to Indochina.
 
 
 
1926 4 November The first French Freudian society, the Société psychanalytique de Paris, is created. By a curious coincidence, it is the day of Lacan's first clinical presentation in front of Théophile Alajouanine and other doctors. Lacan co-authors his first paper with Alajouanine and Delafontaine on the Parinaud syndrome, published in the Revue neurologique.
 
 
 
1927–8 Clinical training in psychiatry at the Clinique des maladies mentales et de l'encéphale, a service linked with the Sainte-Anne hospital in Paris and directed by Henri Claude.
 
 
 
1928 Lacan co-authors with M. Trénel an article on “Abasia in a case of war trauma” in the Revue neurologique. He publishes with J. Lévy-Valensi and M. Meignant a paper on “hallucinatory delirium.” Altogether, between 1928 and 1930, he co-authors five more neurological studies based on psychiatric cases. Engagement to Marie-Thérèse Bergerot, to whom he will dedicate his 1932 doctoral thesis with a line of thanks in Greek, the other dedicatee being his brother. Clinical training at the Paris Police Special Infirmary for the Insane under the supervision of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, whose unconventional style of teaching will exert a lasting influence on Lacan.
 
 
 
1929 In spite of Lacan's disapproval, his brother enters the Benedictine order at the abbey of Hautecombe on the Lake Bourget. He takes his vows on 8 September 1931, and changes his first name to Marc-François.
 
 
 
1929–31 Clinical training at the Hospital Henri Rousselle.
 
 
 
1930 July Arranges to meet Salvador Dalí who has published “The rotten donkey” in July 1930. His poetic praise of paranoia has attracted Lacan's attention. Lacan and Salvador Dalí remain friends all their lives. Friendship with the novelist Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. From 1929 to 1933 Lacan is the lover of Olesia Sienkiewicz, Drieu's estranged second wife. August–September Lacan takes a two-month training course at the Burgh ölzli clinic in Z ürich.
 
 
 
1931 18 June Lacan examines Marguerite Pantaine-Anzieu, who has been admitted to Sainte-Anne hospital after stabbing the actress Huguette Duflos. Lacan calls her Aimée and makes her case the cornerstone of his doctoral dissertation.
 
 
 
1932 Publication of Lacan's translation of Freud's “Some neurotic mechanisms in jealousy, paranoia and homosexuality” for the Revue française de psychanalyse. June Lacan begins his analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein. November Lacan defends his thesis on paranoia, published as De la psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité (Paris: Le François, 1932).
 
 
 
1933 Lacan publishes a sonnet, “Hiatus Irrationalis, ” in Le Phare de Neuilly 3/4. He meets Marie-Louise Blondin, the sister of his friend Sylvain Blondin. October Lacan attends Alexander Kojève's seminar on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit at the Ecole pratique des hautes études. There he meets Georges Bataille and Raymond Queneau, both of whom will remain friends. He publishes “The problem of style and the psychiatric conception of paranoiac forms of experience” and “Motivations of paranoid crime: the crime of the Papin sisters” in the Surrealist journal Le Minotaure 1 and 3/4.
 
 
 
1934 Lacan sees his first patient. 29 January Marriage with Marie-Louise Blondin. November Lacan becomes a candidate member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris.
 
 
 
1936 3 August Lacan attends the 14th congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association at Marienbad, where he presents his paper on the mirror stage. After ten minutes, he is brutally interrupted by Ernest Jones. Quite upset, Lacan leaves the conference. He will never submit his text for publication.
 
 
 
1937 8 January Birth of Caroline, first child of Lacan and Marie-Louise Blondin.
 
 
 
1938 Lacan writes a long article on the family for the Encyclopédie française. The essay, commissioned by Henri Wallon and Lucien Febvre, is found too dense and has to be rewritten several times. Its final title is “Family complexes in the formation of the individual. An attempt at analysis of a function in psychology” (“Les Complexes familiaux dans la formation de l'individu. Essai d'analyse d'une function en psychologie”, AE, pp. 23–84).
 
 
 
Lacan starts a relationship with Sylvia Maklès-Bataille, who has separated from Georges Bataille in 1934. December Lacan finishes his analysis with Loewenstein and is made a full member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris.
 
 
 
1939 27 August Birth of Thibaud, second child of Lacan and Marie-Louise Blondin.
 
 
 
1940 June When the Vichy regime is put in place, the Société psychanalytique de Paris (despite some efforts at imitating the German Psychoanalytic Society) suspends all its activities. 26 November Birth of Sybille Lacan, third child of Lacan and Marie-Louise Blondin.
 
 
 
1941 Spring Lacan moves to 5 rue de Lille, where his office will be located until his death. After his death, a commemorating plaque was put on the façade. 3 July Birth of Judith Bataille, daughter of Lacan and Sylvia Maklès-Bataille. 15 December Lacan and Marie-Louise Blondin are officially divorced.
 
 
 
1944 Lacan meets Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pablo Picasso. He will remain very close to Merleau-Ponty.
 
 
 
1945 September Lacan travels to England, where he stays five weeks to study the practice of British psychiatry during the war. He meets W. R. Bion and is very impressed by him. Two years later, writing about this meeting, Lacan will praise the heroism of the British people during the war.
 
 
 
1946 The Société psychanalytique de Paris resumes its activities. 9 August Sylvia Maklès-Bataille and Georges Bataille are officially divorced.
 
 
 
1948 Lacan becomes a member of the teaching committee of the Société psychanalytique de Paris. 21 November Death of Lacan's mother.
 
 
 
1949 Lacan meets Claude Lévi-Strauss. Beginning of a long friendship. 17 July Lacan attends the 16th congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association in Z ürich. He presents the second version of his paper on the mirror stage (E/S, pp. 1–7). In a climate of ideological war between the British Kleinians and the American “Anna-Freudians” (a clear majority), the French second generation, following the philosophy of Marie Bonaparte, tries to occupy a different space. Dissident  luminaries include Daniel Lagache, Sacha Nacht, and Lacan, often assisted by his friend Françoise Dolto. Lacan dominates the French group and gathers around him brilliant theoreticians such as Wladimir Granoff, Serge Leclaire, and François Perrier. He gives a seminar on Freud's Dora case.
 
 
 
1951 Lacan introduces psychoanalytical sessions of variable length in his practice, a technical innovation which is condemned as soon as it becomes known to the other members of the Société psychanalytique de Paris. He begins to give weekly seminars at 3 rue de Lille. 2 May Lacan reads “Some reflections on the ego” to the members of the British Psycho-Analytical Society. This will be his first publication in English in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1953).
 
 
 
1951–2 Lacan gives a seminar on Freud's Wolf-Man case.
 
 
 
1952 Sacha Nacht, then president of the Société psychanalytique de Paris, proposes that a new training institute be established. He resigns as director of the institute in December and Lacan is elected interim director.
 
 
 
1952–3 Lacan gives a seminar on Freud's Rat-Man case.
 
 
 
1953 20 January Lacan is elected president of the Société psychanalytique de Paris. 16 June Lacan resigns as president of the Société psychanalytique de Paris. Creation of the Société française de psychanalyse (SFP) by Daniel Lagache, Françoise Dolto, and Juliette Boutonnier. Soon after, Lacan joins the SFP. July The members of the SFP learn that they have been excluded from the International Psycho-Analytical Association. Introduced by Lagache, Lacan gives the opening lecture at the SFP on the three registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. 17 July Lacan and Sylvia Maklès are married. 26 September In his “Rome discourse, ” Lacan presents “Function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis” (E/S, pp. 30–113, original talk in AE, pp. 133–64), a veritable manifesto. In this pyrotechnical display showing all the facets of his culture, Lacan introduces the doctrine of the signifier. Among many crucial theoretical pronouncements, the “Rome discourse” justifies the practice of the variable-length session. Françoise Dolto speaks after Lacan and Lagache and expresses her support for the new movement.
 
 
 
18 November Lacan starts his public seminar at Sainte-Anne hospital with a close reading of Freud's papers on technique (later S I). He also conducts weekly clinical presentations of patients.
 
 
 
1954 Lacan visits Carl Gustav Jung in K üssnacht near Z ürich. Jung tells Lacan how Freud had declared that he and Jung were “bringing the plague” to America when they reached New York in 1909, an anecdote subsequently often repeated by Lacan.
 
 
 
1955 Easter Accompanied by his analysand Jean Beaufret, a disciple and translator of Heidegger, Lacan pays a visit to Martin Heidegger in Freiburg and Beaufret acts as an interpreter between the two thinkers. July The International Psycho-Analytical Association rejects the SFP's petition for affiliation. September At the occasion of the Cerisy conference devoted to the work of Heidegger, Lacan invites the German philosopher and his wife to spend a few days in his country house at Guitrancourt. 7 November Lacan reads “The Freudian Thing, or the meaning of the return to Freud in psychoanalysis” at the Neuro-psychiatric clinic of Vienna (E, pp. 401–36).
 
 
 
1956 Winter Publication of the first issue of La Psychanalyse with Lacan's “Rome discourse” and his translation of the first part of Heidegger's essay “Logos, ” a commentary on Heraclitus' fragment 50.
 
 
 
1957 9 May Lacan presents “The agency of the letter in the unconscious; or, Reason since Freud” (E/S, pp. 146–78) to a group of philosophy students at the Sorbonne, later published in La Psychanalyse (1958). Less Heideggerian and more linguistic, the paper sketches a rhetoric of the unconscious based on the relationship between signifier and signified and generates the algorithms of metaphor and metonymy corresponding to Freud's condensation and displacement.
 
 
 
1958 Lacan presents in German “Die Bedeutung des Phallus” (“The signification of the phallus” in E/S, pp. 281–91) at the Max-Planck-Institut in Munich.
 
 
 
1959 July The SFP renews its request for affiliation to the International Psycho-Analytical Association, which nominates a committee to investigate the issue.
 
 
 
1960 15 October Death of Lacan's father.
 
 
 
1961 August A progressive reintegration of the SFP within the International Psycho-Analytical Association is accepted on the condition that Françoise Dolto and Lacan be demoted from their positions as training analysts.
 
 
 
1963 April Lacan publishes “Kant with Sade” in Critique, one of his most important theoretical essays devoted to desire, the law, and perversion (E, pp. 765–90). August 2 The International Psycho-Analytical Association reaffirms that the SFP will lose its affiliated status if Lacan remains as a training analyst. 19 November The majority of the SFP analysts accept the International Psycho-Analytical Association's ultimatum. After ten years of teaching his seminar at Sainte-Anne, Lacan is obliged to stop. He holds a final session on “The names of the father” (T, pp. 80–95)
 
 
 
1964 January Lacan starts his seminar at the Ecole normale supérieure, rue d'Ulm, under the administrative control of the Ecole pratique des hautesétudes. Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser have intervened on his behalf to secure the room. This seminar, devoted to the Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, finds a broader and more philosophical audience. June Lacan founds the Ecole française de psychanalyse. His “Act of foundation” dramatizes his sense of heroic solitude (“I hereby found – as alone as I have always been in my relation to the psychoanalytic cause – the Ecole française de psychanalyse, whose direction, concerning which nothing at present prevents me from answering for, I shall undertake during the next four years to assure”). Three months later it changes its name to the Ecole freudienne de Paris. Lacan launches a new associative model for his school; study groups called “cartels, ” made up of four or five people, are constituted, including one person who reports on the progress of the group.
 
 
 
1965 19 January Dissolution of the SFP. June Lacan arranges a meeting with Marguerite Duras after the publication of The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein, a novel that describes psychosis in terms similar to his. When they meet up late one night in a bar, he says to her enthusiastically, so as to congratulate her: “You don't know what you are saying!”
 
 
 
1966 January First issue of the Cahiers pour l'analyse, a review produced by younger epistemologists of the Ecole normale supérieure who publish serious articles on Lacan's concepts. February–March Lacan gives a series of lectures at six North American universities, including Columbia, Harvard, and MIT. 18–21 October Lacan attends an international symposium entitled “The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” at Johns Hopkins University. He participates actively in the debate on Structuralism and presents his paper “Of structure as an inmixing of an Otherness prerequisite to any subject whatever.” In a text as dense as its title, Lacan quotes Frege and Russell, explaining that his motto that the unconscious is “structured as a language” is in fact a tautology, since “structured” and “as a language” are synonymous. He states memorably: “The best image to sum up the unconscious is Baltimore in the early morning.” November Publication of Ecrits. Surprisingly, the thick (924 pages) book sells very well. December Marriage of Judith Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller.
 
 
 
1967 9 October Lacan launches the new procedure of the “pass” (la passe) as a final examination allowing one to become a training analyst in his school.
 
 
 
1968 Autumn Publication of the first issue of Scilicet, a journal whose motto is “You can know what the Ecole freudienne de Paris thinks” and in which all articles are unsigned except Lacan's. December The department of psychoanalysis is created at the University of Vincennes (later Paris VIII) with Serge Leclaire as its director.
 
 
 
1969 March The introduction of the practice of the “pass” as a sort of final examination provokes a rebellion at the Ecole freudienne de Paris and a splinter group is created by Lacanian “barons” such as François Périer and Piera Aulagnier. November Having been forced to leave the Ecole normale supérieure, Lacan now holds his weekly seminar at the law faculty on the place du Panthéon. It draws even bigger crowds.
 
 
 
1970 September Leclaire resigns as head of the department of psychoanalysis of Paris VIII and Jean Clavreul replaces him.
 
 
 
1972 9 February Lacan introduces the Borromean knot during his seminar, and starts pondering ways in which three interlocking circles can be tied together.
 
 
 
1973 Publication of Seminar XI, the first of a series edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, at Editions du Seuil. March Prodded by a growing number of feminists among his students, Lacan introduces in his seminar the “formulas of sexuation, ” which demonstrate that sexuality is not determined by biology, since another, so-called “feminine” position (i.e. not determined by the phallus) is also available to all speaking subjects next to the phallic law giving access to universality. 30 May Death of Caroline Lacan-Roger in a road accident.
 
 
 
1974 The department of psychoanalysis is reorganized with Jacques-Alain Miller as its director.
 
 
 
1975 First issue of the journal Ornicar? It publishes Lacanian articles and the texts of some seminars. 16 June Invited by Jacques Aubert, Lacan gives the opening lecture at the Paris International James Joyce Symposium. He proposes the idea of “Joyce le sinthome.” November–December Second lecture tour in the United States. Lacan goes to Yale, Columbia, and MIT, where he has discussions with Quine and Chomsky.
 
 
 
1978 Autumn After a minor car accident, Lacan appears tired and is often silent for long periods of time even in his seminars, in which his discourse tends to be replaced by mute demonstrations of new twists on Borromean knots.
 
 
 
1979 Creation of the Fondation du champ freudien, directed by Judith Miller.
 
 
 
1980 January Lacan dissolves the Ecole freudienne de Paris by a “Letter of Dissolution” mailed to all members and dated 5 January 1980. It presents Lacan as a “père sévère” (strict father) who can “persévérer” (persevere) alone. All the members of the school are invited to write a letter directly to him if they want to follow him in the creation of a new institution. He mentions the price Freud has “had to pay for having permitted the psychoanalytic group to win over discourse, becoming a church” (T, p. 130). The Cause freudienne is created. 12–15 July Lacan presides at the first International Conference of the Fondation du champ freudien in Caracas. October Creation of the Ecole de la cause freudienne.
 
 
 
1981 9 September Death of Lacan in Paris at the age of eighty, from complications of cancer of the colon.
 
 
 
1985 Jacques-Alain Miller wins a legal battle confirming his rights as editor of Lacan's Seminars and sole literary executor. Twenty years after Lacan's death, France has the highest ratio of psychoanalysts per capita in the world, with some five thousand analysts. There are more than twenty psychoanalytic associations in France, at least fifteen of which are Lacanian in their inspiration.
 
 
 
1901
 
 
 
 
13 April birth of Jacques-Marie Emile Lacan in Paris, the first child of Alfred Lacan (1873-1960) and Emilie Baudry (1876-1948), a middle-class Roman-Catholic family.
 
 
 
1902
 
 
 
 
Birth of Raymond, Lacan’s brother.
 
 
 
1903
 
 
 
 
25 December birth of Magdeleine-Marie, Lacan’s sister.
 
 
 
1904
 
 
 
 
Death of Raymond Lacan.
 
 
 
1906
 
 
 
 
16 November birth of Marie-Louise Blondin, Lacan’s first wife.
 
 
 
1907
 
 
 
 
Lacan enters the Collège Stanislas, where he completes both his primary and his secondary education (1907-1919).
 
 
 
1908
 
 
 
 
1 November birth of Sylvia Maklès, Lacan’s second wife.
 
 
 
25 December birth of Marc-Marie, Lacan’s brother.
 
 
 
1919
 
 
 
 
Autumn Lacan decides to embark on a medical career and enters the Paris Medical Faculty.
 
 
 
1920
 
 
 
 
Lacan meets André Breton (1896-1966) and becomes interested in the surrealist movement.
 
 
 
1921
 
 
 
 
Lacan discharged from military service due to thinness.
 
 
 
December Lacan attends the first public reading of Ulysses by James Joyce (1882-1941) at Shakespeare and Co in Paris.
 
 
 
1926
 
 
 
 
4 November creation of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris (SPP), the first association of French psychoanalysts.
 
 
 
Lacan conducts his first case-presentation, at the Société Neurologique in Paris. He publishes his first paper, co-authored with Th. Alajouanine and P. Delafontaine, in the Revue neurologique, based on the case presentation of 4 November.
 
 
 
1927-28
 
 
 
 
Clinical training at the Clinique des Maladies Mentales et de 1’Encéphale, directed by Henri Claude (1869-1945), which is connected to L’Hôpital Sainte-Anne in Paris. Lacan meets Henri Ey (1900-1977).
 
 
 
 
 
1928
 
 
 
 
Engagement with Marie-Thérèse Bergerot, to whom Lacan will dedicate his doctoral thesis. Marriage of Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and Sylvia Maklès.
 
 
 
1928-29
 
 
 
 
Clinical training at L’Infirmerie Spéciale de la Préfecture de Police, under the supervision of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872-1934).
 
 
 
1929
 
 
 
 
Lacan’s brother enters the Benedictine Order and moves to the abbey of Hautecombe in the French Alps, adopting the new name of Marc-François on 8 September 1931, when he takes his monastic vows.
 
 
 
1929-31
 
 
 
 
Clinical training at L’Hôpital Henri Rousselle, also connected to Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris.
 
 
 
1930
 
 
 
 
Meets Salvador Dalí (1904-1989).
 
 
 
First non-collaborative paper in Annales médico-psychologiques.
 
 
 
10 June birth of Laurence Bataille, daughter of Georges Bataille and Sylvia Maklès.
 
 
 
August-September work placement at the Burghölzli clinic in Zürich.
 
 
 
1931
 
 
 
 
18 June Lacan examines Marguerite Pantaine-Anzieu (1892-1981), who is admitted to Sainte-Anne hospital after an attempt to assassinate the actress Huguette Duflos. Lacan’s investigation of the case constitutes the central part of his doctoral thesis (‘Le Cas Aimée’).
 
 
 
1932
 
 
 
 
Lacan translates Freud’s paper ‘Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality’ (1922b[1921]).
 
 
 
June Lacan starts his analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein (1898-1976).
 
 
 
November Lacan obtains his doctor’s title with a thesis on paranoia. His dissertation is published by Le François and Lacan sends a copy to Freud, who acknowledges receipt by postcard.
 
 
 
1933
 
 
 
 
Lacan falls in love with Marie-Louise Blondin, the sister of his friend Sylvain Blondin (1901-1975).
 
 
 
October Lacan starts attending the seminar on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit by Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968) at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, where he meets Georges Bataille and Raymond Queneau (1903-1976).
 
 
 
1934
 
 
 
 
Lacan sees his first private patient.
 
 
 
Georges Bataille and Sylvia Maklès separate.
 
 
 
29 January Lacan marries Marie-Louise Blondin.
 
 
 
November Lacan becomes a candidate member (membre adhérent) of the SPP.
 
 
 
1936
 
 
 
 
3 August Lacan attends the 14th Congress of the IPA at Marienbad (Máriánské Lézně, Czech Republic), where he presents ‘Le stade du miroir’.
 
 
 
1937
 
 
 
 
8 January birth of Caroline Marie Image Lacan, first child of Lacan and Marie-Louise Blondin.
 
 
 
1938
 
 
 
 
Writes a long text on the family for the Encyclopédie française commissioned by Henri Wallon (1879-1962) and Lucien Febvre (1878-1956).
 
 
 
Lacan starts a relationship with Sylvia Maklès-Bataille.
 
 
 
5 June on his way to London, Sigmund Freud stops in Paris, where Marie Bonaparte organizes a party in his honour. Lacan does not attend.
 
 
 
December Lacan finishes his analysis with Loewenstein and becomes a full member (membre titulaire) of the SPP.
 
 
 
1939
 
 
 
 
27 August birth of Thibaut Lacan, second child of Lacan and Marie-Louise Blondin.
 
 
 
23 September death of Sigmund Freud in London.
 
 
 
1940
 
 
 
 
June installation of the Vichy regime. The SPP suspends all its activities.
 
 
 
26 November birth of Sibylle Lacan, third child of Lacan and Marie-Louise Blondin.
 
 
 
1941
 
 
 
 
Spring Lacan moves to 5, rue de Lille in Paris, where he will continue to see patients until his death.
 
 
 
3 July birth of Judith Bataille, daughter of Lacan and Sylvia Maklès-Bataille.
 
 
 
15 December Lacan and Marie-Louise Blondin are officially divorced.
 
 
 
1944
 
 
 
 
Spring Lacan meets Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). He becomes Picasso’s personal physician.
 
 
 
14 February birth of Jacques-Alain Miller, Lacan’s future son-in-law.
 
 
 
1945
 
 
 
 
September Lacan travels to England, where he studies the practice of British psychiatry during the war.
 
 
 
1946
 
 
 
 
The SPP resumes its activities.
 
 
 
9 August divorce of Sylvia Maklès and Georges Bataille.
 
 
 
1948
 
 
 
 
Lacan becomes a member of the Teaching Committee (Commission de l’Enseignement) of the SPP.
 
 
 
21 November Death of Lacan’s mother.
 
 
 
1949
 
 
 
 
Lacan meets Claude Lévi-Strauss.
 
 
 
17 July Lacan attends the 16th Congress of the IPA in Zürich, where he presents another paper on the mirror-stage.
 
 
 
1951
 
 
 
 
Lacan introduces sessions of variable length in his practice; this worries the other members of the SPP. During the following years he regularly explains his position without managing to convince his colleagues. Meanwhile, he gives a seminar on Freud’s Dora-case at his house, and acquires a splendid summer-house at Guitrancourt, some 50 miles to the west of Paris.
 
 
 
2 May ‘Some Reflections on the Ego’, lecture at the British Psychoanalytic Society.
 
 
 
1951-52
 
 
 
 
Seminar on Freud’s case of the Wolf Man.
 
 
 
1952
 
 
 
 
Summer Sacha Nacht (1901-1977), president of the SPP, presents his views on the organization of a new training institute (Institut de Psychanalyse).
 
 
 
December Nacht resigns as director of the Institute, and Lacan is elected new director ad interim.
 
 
 
1952-53
 
 
 
 
Seminar on Freud’s case of the Rat Man.
 
 
 
1953
 
 
 
 
20January Lacan is elected president of the SPP, and Nacht regains control of the Institute.
 
 
 
16 June Lacan resigns as president of the SPP. Creation of the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP) by Daniel Lagache (1903-1972), Françoise Dolto (1908-1988) and Juliette Favez-Boutonnier (1903-1994); Lacan joins soon after.
 
 
 
July the members of the SFP are informed that they do not belong to the IPA anymore.
 
 
 
8 July Lacan gives the opening lecture at the SFP on the symbolic, the imaginary and the real.
 
 
 
17 July marriage of Lacan and Sylvia Maklès.
 
 
 
26 September Lacan delivers his ‘Rome Discourse’, ‘The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis’.
 
 
 
18 November Lacan starts his first public seminar at Sainte-Anne Hospital with a series of lectures on Freud’s papers on technique. The public seminars will be held until June 1980. Simultaneously, Lacan conducts weekly clinical presentations at Sainte-Anne Hospital.
 
 
 
1954
 
 
 
 
Lacan visits Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) at his home in Küssnacht (Switzerland).
 
 
 
1955
 
 
 
 
Easter Lacan visits Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) in Freiburg (Germany).
 
 
 
July the IPA rejects the SFP’s request for affiliation.
 
 
 
August-September Lacan entertains Heidegger and his wife at his summer-house.
 
 
 
1956
 
 
 
 
Winter first issue of the journal La Psychanalyse, containing Lacan’s ‘Rome Discourse’ and his translation of Heidegger’s ‘Logos’ (1951).
 
 
 
1959
 
 
 
 
July the SFP renews its request for affiliation to the IPA.
 
 
 
Nomination of a committee of enquiry.
 
 
 
1960
 
 
 
 
15 October Death of Lacan’s father.
 
 
 
1961
 
 
 
 
August the SFP is accepted as an IPA Study Group on the condition that Lacan and Dolto are progressively removed from their training positions.
 
 
 
1963
 
 
 
 
August the IPA stipulates that the SFP will lose its status if Lacan continues to be involved in training matters.
 
 
 
19 November a majority of SFP members decides to accept the IPA recommendation.
 
 
 
20 November first and final session of Lacan’s seminar on ‘The Names-of-the-Father’.
 
 
 
1964
 
 
 
 
After extensive legal proceedings, Judith adopts the name of her father.
 
 
 
January Lacan starts a seminar on the foundations of psychoanalysis at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Rue d’Ulm, Paris), where he lectures under the auspices of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, a post for which Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser have intervened on his behalf.
 
 
 
21 June Lacan founds the Ecole Freudienne de Paris (EFP).
 
 
 
October final issue (8) of La Psychanalyse.
 
 
 
1965
 
 
 
 
19 January dissolution of the SFP.
 
 
 
1966
 
 
 
 
January first issue of the journal Cahiers pour I ‘analyse.
 
 
 
February-March Lacan presents six lectures in the US on the topic of ‘desire and demand’, organized by Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) (Columbia University, MIT, Harvard University, The University of Detroit, The University of Michigan, The University of Chicago).
 
 
 
18-21 October Lacan attends an international symposium at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD on ‘The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man’, where he presents ‘Of Structure as an Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever’.
 
 
 
November publication of Ecrits. Lacan sends a copy to Heidegger.
 
December marriage of Judith Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller.
 
 
 
1967
 
 
 
 
9 October Lacan proposes the procedure of the pass as a means to verify the end of analysis and to recruit new ‘analysts of the school’.
 
 
 
1968
 
 
 
 
Autumn publication of the first issue of the journal Scilicet.
 
 
 
December opening of the Department of Psychoanalysis at the Centre Experimental Universitaire de Vincennes. Serge Leclaire is appointed director of the department.
 
 
 
1969
 
 
 
 
January lectures in the Department of Psychoanalysis commence.
 
 
 
March the introduction of the pass provokes a schism within the EFP, leading to the creation of the Organisation Psychanalytique de Langue Française (OPLF).
 
 
 
November Lacan moves his seminar to the Faculté de Droit (Place du Panthéon) in Paris.
 
 
 
1970
 
 
 
 
September Leclaire resigns as director of the Department of Psychoanalysis, and is succeeded by Jean Clavreul.
 
 
 
1973
 
 
 
 
Publication of Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis in French, transcribed and edited by Jacques-Alain Miller.
 
 
 
30 May death of Caroline Lacan-Roger.
 
 
 
1974
 
 
 
 
The Department of Psychoanalysis at Vincennes is reorganized and Jacques-Alain Miller becomes its new director.
 
 
 
1975
 
 
 
 
First issue of the journal Ornicar?.
 
 
 
16 June Lacan opens the 5th International James Joyce Symposium in Paris.
 
 
 
November-December lecture tour in the US (Yale University 24-25 November; Columbia University 1 December; MIT 2 December 1975).
 
 
 
1977
 
 
 
 
Publication of Ecrits: A Selection and Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis both translated by Alan Sheridan. Lacan writes a new preface for the English translation of Seminar XI.
 
 
 
1979
 
 
 
 
Creation of Fondation du Champ Freudien, directed by Judith Miller.
 
 
 
1980
 
 
 
 
5 January Lacan dissolves the EFP.
 
 
 
12-15 July Lacan presides the first international conference of the Fondation du Champ Freudien in Caracas.
 
 
 
October creation of the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne (ECF).
 
 
 
10 October Lacan conducts his final case-presentation.
 
 
 
1981
 
 
 
 
9 September death of Lacan in Paris. Buried at Guitrancourt.
 
 
 
1983
 
 
 
 
Death of Marie-Louise Blondin.
 
 
 
1985
 
 
 
 
Twenty psychoanalytic organizations exist in France, nineteen of which have their roots in Lacan’s teachings.
 
 
 
Jacques-Alain Miller wins a legal battle over the rights to edit and publish Lacan’s seminars.
 
 
 
1986
 
 
 
 
Death of Laurence Bataille.
 
 
 
1993
 
 
 
 
Death of Sylvia Maklès-Lacan.
 
 
 
1994
 
 
 
 
Death of Marc-François Lacan.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
 

Revision as of 17:49, 8 July 2006

12
I farted