Difference between revisions of "Jacques Lacan"

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| name                    = Jacques Lacan
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| birth_date              = [[13 April]] [[1901]]
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[[Jacques Lacan|Jacques-Marie Émile Lacan]] ([[Jacques Lacan:Chronology#1901|13 April 1901]] – [[Jacques Lacan:Chronology#1981|9 September 1981]]) was a [[French]] [[psychoanalyst]] and [[psychiatrist]] who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis, [[philosophy]], and [[literary]] [[theory]]. Giving yearly [[seminars]] in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-[[structuralist]] [[philosophers]]. His interdisciplinary [[work]] is [[Freudian]], featuring the [[unconscious]], the [[castration]] [[complex]], the ego, [[identification]], and [[language]] as [[subjective]] [[perception]]. His [[ideas]] have had a significant impact on [[critical theory]], [[literary theory]], twentieth-century French philosophy, [[sociology]], [[feminist]] theory and [[clinical]] psychoanalysis.
  
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It would be fair to say that there are few twentieth century thinkers who have had such a far-reaching influence on subsequent intellectual life in the humanities as Jacques Lacan. Lacan’s ‘return to the meaning of Freud’ not only profoundly changed the institutional face of the psychoanalytic movement internationally. His seminars in the 1950’s were one of the formative environments of the currency of philosophical ideas that dominated French letters in the 1960’s and 70’s, and which has come to be known in the Anglophone world as ‘post-structuralism’. Both inside and outside of France, Lacan’s work has also been profoundly important in the fields of aesthetics, literary criticism and film theory. Through the work of Althusser (and more lately Ernesto Laclau, Jannis Stavrokakis and Slavoj Zizek), Lacanian theory has also left its mark on political theory, and particularly the analysis of ideology and institutional reproduction. This article, which seeks to outline something of the philosophical heritage and importance of Lacan’s theoretical work, is divided into four parts, each of which has subsections.
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{{See}}
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:1. [[Jacques Lacan#Biography|Biography]]
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:2. [[Jacques Lacan#Theory|Theory]]
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:3. [[Jacques Lacan#Practice|Practice]]
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:4. [[Jacques Lacan#Bibliography|Bibliography]]
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:5. [[Jacques Lacan#See Also|See Also]]
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:6. [[Jacques Lacan#References|References]]
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{{Also}}
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==Biography==
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== def ==
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<blockquote>''[[Chronology|Click here for a more complete chronology of '''Jacques Lacan''''s life]].''</blockquote>
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;1901
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'''Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan''' (April 13, 1901 &ndash; September 9, 1981) was a French [[psychoanalyst]] and [[psychiatrist]].
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:13 April, Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan is [[born]] in Paris, to a [[family]] of solid [[Catholic]] [[tradition]].  He is educated at the collège Stanislas, a Jesuit school.  After his ''baccalauréat'' he studies [[medicine]] and later [[psychiatry]].
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;1927
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His work, like most psychoanalytic work, owes a heavy, explicit debt to [[Sigmund Freud]], but also drew from a number of other fields, including [[linguistics]], [[philosophy]], and [[mathematics]].  
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: Starts clinical [[training]], works at [[Sainte-Anne's hospital]]. A year later he works in the Special Infirmary Service where [[Clérambault]] had a [[practice]].
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;1932
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This interdisciplinary focus in his work has led him to be an important figure in many fields beyond [[psychoanalysis]] - particularly within [[critical theory]].  
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:Awarded doctorate for his [[thesis]], ''[[De la psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité]]''.
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;1933
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His central idea was that the human subject is a creation of its use of language. From this understanding Lacan develops his study of psychoanalysis and his treatment strategies. His work, while controversial, continues to influence the development of psychoanalysis worldwide. In France and elsewhere various "schools" of Lacanian thought have emerged.  
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:The richness of his thesis, especially the [[analysis]] of the [[case]] of [[Aimée]], makes him famous with the [[Surrealist]]s.  BEtween this year and 1939 he takes [[Kojève]]'s course at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes [[Etudes]], an "Introduction to the [[reading]] of [[Hegel]]."
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;1934
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Although there exist various competing emphases on Lacan's work among these "schools", all agree in the fundamental importance of the unconscious. By structuring the options available to any speaking subject in the articulation of his or her desires, the unconscious determines the very fabric of human life as we may come to know it, according to Lacan.
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:He [[marries]] [[Marie-Louise]] Blondon, [[mother]] of [[Caroline]], [[Thibaut]] and [[Sibylle]]. While in analysis with Rudolph [[Loewenstein]], Lacan becomes a member of the ''[[[Société Psychanalytique de Paris|Société psychanalytique de Paris]]]]'' ([[Société psychanalytique de Paris|SPP]]).
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;1940
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==Career==
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:Works at Val-de-Grâce, the military hospital in Paris.  During the [[German]] Occupation, he does not take part in any [[official]] [[activity]].
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Lacan took up the study of medicine in 1920 and specialised in psychiatry from 1926. He undertook his own analysis around this time with [[Rudolph Loewenstein]] and this continued until 1938. Lacan was very active in the world of Parisian writers, artists and intellectuals of the time: he was a friend of [[André Breton]], [[Salvador Dalí]] and [[Picasso]]{{fact}}, and attended the ''mouvement Psyché'' founded by [[Maryse Choisy]]. He made contributions to several Surrealist publications and was present at the first public reading of [[James Joyce]]’s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''. In his studies he had a particular interest in the philosophic work of [[Karl Jaspers]] and [[Martin Heidegger]] and, alongside many other Parisian intellectuals of the time, he also attended the famous seminars on [[Hegel]] given by [[Alexandre Kojève]].  
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;1946
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:In 1946, the [[SPP]] resumes its activities and Lacan, with Nacht and Lagache, takes charge of training [[analyses]] and supervisory [[control]] and plays an important [[theoretical]] and institutional [[role]].
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Lacan presented his first analytic paper on ‘The Mirror Phase’ at the 1936 Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in Marienbad. He was called up to serve in the French army after the German occupation of France and was posted to the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. After the end of the war Lacan visited England for a five week study trip, meeting English analysts [[Wilfred Bion]] and John Rickman. He was much influenced by Bion’s analytic work with groups and this contributed to his own later emphasis on study groups (in France, cartels) as a structure with which to advance theoretical work in psychoanalysis.
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;1951
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:The [[SPP]] begins to raise the issue of Lacan's [[short sessions]], as opposed to the standard analytical hour.
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In 1951 Lacan started to hold a weekly seminar at the St-Anne Hospital Paris, urging what he described as ‘a return to Freud’ and, in particular, to Freud’s concentration upon the linguistic nature of psychological symptomatology. Very influential in Parisian cultural life as well as in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, the seminars drew large crowds and continued for nearly thirty years.
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;1953
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:In January Lacan is elected President of the [[SPP]].  Six months later he resigns to join the ''[[Société Française de Psychanalyse]]'' ([[SFP]]) with D. Lagache, F. Dolto, J. Favez-Boutonier among [[others]]. In Rome, Lacan delivers his report, "''[[Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage]]''". On 17 July he marries [[Sylvia]] Maklès, mother of [[Judith]]. That autumn Lacan starts his [[seminar]]s at the [[Hôspital Sainte-Anne]].
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Lacan was a member of the Société Parisienne de Psychanalyse (SPP), which was a member body of the [[International Psychoanalytical Association]] (IPA). In 1953, after a disagreement about analytic practice methods, Lacan and many of his colleagues left the SPP to form a new group the [[Société Française de Psychanalyse]] (SFP). One of the consequences of this move was to deprive the new group of membership within the IPA. In the following years a complex process of negotiation was to take place to determine the status of the SFP within the IPA. Lacan’s practice, with his controversial innovation of variable-length sessions, and the critical stance he took towards much of the accepted orthodoxy of psychoanalytic theory and practice led, in 1963, to a condition being set by the IPA that the registration of the SFP was dependent upon Lacan being removed from the list of training analysts with the organisation. Lacan refused such a condition and left the SFP to form his own school which became know as the [[École Freudienne de Paris]] (EFP). Leaving the St-Anne Hospital where he had delivered his seminar up to this point Lacan began to give it instead at the elite higher education establishment the [[École Normale Supérieure]]. Lacan began to set forth his own teaching on psychoanalysis to an audience of colleagues who had joined him from the SFP. His lectures also attracted many of the École Normale’s students.
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;1954
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:The first ten [[seminar]]s elaborate fundamental notions [[about]] [[psychoanalytic]] [[technique]], the essential [[concepts]] of [[psychoanalysis]], and its [[ethics]].  During this period Lacan writes, on the basis of his seminars, conferences and addresses in colloquia, the major [[texts]] that are found in ''[[Ecrits]]'' in 1966.
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Many students of Lacan became important psychoanalysts and/or wrote influential contributions to philosophy and other fields. [[Michel Foucault]], [[Jacques Derrida]], [[Louis Althusser]], [[Jacques-Alain Miller]], [[Luce Irigaray]], [[Jean Laplanche]], and even [[Claude Levi-Strauss]], for example, all attended Lacan's seminars at some point. Lacan's first seminar in 1964 was later published in English as ''[[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis]]''. Lacan continued to deliver his public exposition of analytic theory and practice for the next seventeen years.
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;1956
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:Celebrities are attracted to his seminars ([[Jean Hyppolite]]'s analysis of [[Freud]]'s article on ''Dé[[négation]]'', given during the first seminar, is a well-known example). [[Alexandre Koyré]], Claude Lévi-[[Strauss]], Maurice [[Merleau-Ponty]], and ethnologist Marcel Griaule, Emile Benveniste among others attend his courses.
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==The 'Return to Freud'==
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;1962
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Following Freud's death, psychoanalytic practice split into many differing schools of thought. Against the backdrop of these divergent currents of psychoanalytic theory, Lacan called for a 'return to Freud'. Lacan accused later psychoanalysts of a superficial understanding of Freud, claiming they had so cautiously adhered to his ideas that they had served to block rather than to induce scientific investigation of the mental process. Lacan wanted to return to Freud's thought, and expand it in light of its own tensions and currents. In fact, near the end of his life he remarked to a conference, "It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish; I am Freudian."
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:[[SFP]] members [[want]] to be recognized by the [[International Psycho-Analytical Association]] ([[IPA]]). The [[IPA]] issues an ultimatum: Lacan's [[name]] must be crossed off the [[list]] of didacticians.
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;1963
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It should also be emphasised that Lacan insisted that his work was not, in his eyes, an interpretation but a ''translation'' of Freud into structural-linguistic terms. Freud's ideas of 'slips of the tongue', jokes and suchlike – Lacan insisted – all emphasised the agency of language in subjective constitution, such that had Freud lived contemporaneously with [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss]], [[Roland Barthes|Barthes]] and, principally, had Freud been aware of the work of [[Ferdinand de Saussure|Saussure]], he would have done the same as him. In his famous essay, "Freud and Lacan", fellow structuralist [[Louis Althusser]] makes this point particularly well:
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:Two weeks before the expiry of the deadline set by the IPA (31 October), the committee of didacticians of the [[SFP]] gives up its courageous stand of 1962 and pronounces in favour of the ban: Lacan is no longer one of the didacticians.
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;1964
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<blockquote>"In his first great work ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' […], Freud studied the ‘mechanisms’ and ‘laws’ of dreams, reducing their variants to two: ''displacement'' and ''condensation''. Lacan recognized these as two essential figures of speech, called in linguistics [respectively] metonymy and metaphor. Hence slips, failures, jokes and symptoms, like the elements of dreams themselves, become ''signifiers'', inscribed in the chain of an unconscious discourse, doubling silently, i.e. deafeningly, in the misrecognition of ‘repression’, the chain of the human subject’s verbal discourse. […] Hence the most important acquisitions of de Saussure and of the linguistics that descends from him began to play a justified part in the understanding of the process of the unconscious as well as that of the verbal discourse of the subject and of their inter-relationship, i.e. of their identical relation and non-relation in other words, of their reduplication and dislocation (''décalage'')." (Althusser, ‘Freud and Lacan’ in ''Lenin and Philosophy and other essays'', trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971), pp. 191 – 192. </blockquote>
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:Lacanians [[form]] a Study Group on Psychoanalysis organized by Jean Clavreul, until Lacan official founds the ''[[Ecole Française de Psychanalyse]]'', which soon becomes the ''[[Ecole Freudienne de Paris]]'' ([[EFP]]).  With [[Lévi-Strauss]] and [[Althusser]]'s support, he is appointed lecturer at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.
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;1965
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The 'return to Freud', therefore, is primarily the realisation that the pervading agency of the unconscious is to be understood as intimately tied to the functions and dynamics of language, where, for example, the signifier is irremediably divorced from the signified, ultimately resulting in Lack. It is here that Lacan began his work on "correcting" Freud from within. As Malcolm Bowie puts it:
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:In January Lacan begins his new seminar on "[[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis]]" at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.  His audience is made up of [[analysts]] and young students in philosophy at the ENS, notably [[Jacques-Alain Miller]].
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;1966
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<blockquote>"For Lacan, Freud's central insight was not [...] that the unconscious exists, but that it has structure, that this structure affects in innumerable ways what we say and do, and that in thus betraying itself it becomes accessible to analysis". (Malcolm Bowie, 'Jacques Lacan' in John Sturrock (ed.), ''Structuralism and Since: From Lévi-Strauss to Derrida'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 118).</blockquote>
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:[[Ecrits]], Paris: Seuil 1966.  The book draws considerable attention to the [[EFP]], extending far beyond the intelligentsia.
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;1967
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(The 'return to Freud' in the full sense of the term, as briefly explained above, begins with his paper ‘The agency of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud’ (''Écrits'', pp. 161 - 197).) Lacan's principal challenge to Freudian theory is the privilege that it accords to the ego in self-determination. The central pillar of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory is that "[[the unconscious is structured like a language]]". The unconscious, he argued, was not a more primitive or archetypal part of the mind separate from the conscious, linguistic ego, but rather, a formation every bit as complex and linguistically sophisticated as consciousness itself. If the unconscious is structured like a language, Lacan argues, then the self is denied any point of reference to which to be 'restored' following trauma or 'identity crisis'. In this way, Lacan's thesis of the structurally dynamic unconscious is also a challenge to the ego psychology that Freud himself opposed.
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:Lacan presents the ''[[Acte]] de Fondation'' of the [[EFP]]; its novelty lies in the procedure of ''[[passe]]''.  The ''[[passe]]'' consists of testifying, in front of two ''passeurs'', to one's [[experience]] as an analysand and especially to the crucial [[moment]] of passage from the [[position]] of [[analysand]] to that of [[analyst]]. The ''passeurs'' are chosen by their [[analyst]]s (generally analysts of the EFP) and should be at the same [[stage]] in their [[analytic]] experience as the ''passant''. They listen to him and then, in turn, they testify to what they have heard in front of a committee for approval composed of the director, Lacan, and of some AE, ''[[analyste]] de l'école'' (analyst of the school).  This committee's function is to select the analysts of the School and to elaborate, after the selecting [[process]], a 'work of [[doctrine]]'.
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;1969
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==Major concepts==
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:The issue of the ''passe'' keeps invading the EFP's [[life]]. "''Le quatrième groupe''" is formed around those who resign from the EFP disputing over Lacan's methods for the analysts' training and accreditation. Lacan takes a stand in the crisis of the [[university]] that follows May [[1968]]: "If psychoanalysis cannot be articulated as a [[knowledge]] and taught as such, it has no [[place]] in the university, which deals only with knowledge."  The ENS director finds a pretext for telling Lacan that he is no longer welcome at the ENS at the beginning of the academic year. Moreover, the journal ''Cahiers pour l'[[Analyse]]'' has to cease publication, but [[Vincennes]] appears as an alternative. Michel [[Foucault]] asks Lacan to create and direct the Department of Psychoanlaysis at Vincennes.  Thanks to Lévi-Strauss, Lacan moves his seminars to the law school of the Panthéon.  
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=== The mirror stage (''le stade du miroir'') ===
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;1974
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:The Vincennes Department of Psychoanalysis is renamed "[[Le Champ freudien]]" with Lacan its director and [[Jacques-Alain Miller]] its president.
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The [[mirror stage]] is described in Lacan's essay, "The Mirror Stage as formative in the function of the ''I'' as revealed in psychoanalytic experience", the first of his ''Écrits'', which remains one of his seminal papers. Some have crudely put this as the point at which the child 'recognises' him- or herself in the mirror image, but this is unfaithful to what Lacan has in mind and also confuses his terminology. Lacan's emphasis here is on the process of ''identification'' with an outside image or entity induced through, as he puts it, "insufficiency to anticipation – and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic – and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject’s entire mental development" (Lacan, ''Écrits'' (rvd. edn., 2002), 'The mirror stage', p. 5).
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;1980
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:On 9 January, Lacan announces the [[dissolution]] of the EFP and asks those who [[wish]] to continue [[working]] with him to [[state]] their intentions in [[writing]].  He receives over one thousand letters within a week.  On 21 February, Lacan announces the founding of the school ''[[La Cause freudienne]]'', later renamed the ''[[Ecole de la Cause freudienne]]''.
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It is significant that this process of identification is the first step towards the manufacture of the subject because all that follows it - the transition into the Imaginary and the Symbolic order - is based on this misrecognition (''méconnaissance''): this is the process that Lacan detects as manifesting itself at every subsequent identification with another person, identity (''not'' to be confused with 'identification') or suchlike throughout the subject's life. This is the start of a lifelong process of identifying the self in terms of the Other. What is also occasionally overlooked is the experiential basis of Lacan's early paper. As one writer has observed: "To evidence concerning the role of the other in childhood – the situation known as "transitivism," for instance, where the child will impute his own actions to another – Lacan adds evidence from animal biology, where it has been experimentally shown that a perceptual relationship to another of the same species is necessary in the normal maturing process. Without the visual presence of others, the maturing process is delayed, although it can be restored to a more nearly normal tempo by placing a mirror in the animal’s cage." ([[Anthony Wilden]], "Lacan and the discourse of the Other" in Lacan, ''The Language of the Self: the Function of Language in Psychoanalysis'', trans. Anthony Wilden (London and Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 159 – 160.)
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;1981
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:9 September, Lacan dies in Paris.
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===The Other===
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<!--
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In contrast to the dominant Anglo-American [[ego-psychologist]]s of his time, Lacan considered the self as something constituted in the "Other", that is, the conception of the external. Lacan argues that the psychoanalytic movement towards understanding the ego as a coherent force with dominion over a person's psyche was rooted in a misunderstanding of Freud. In Lacan's view, the self remained in eternal internal conflict and that only extensive self-deceit made the situation bearable.
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;1901 - 1938
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:[[Lacan]] studies medicine and [[psychiatry]] and completes his [[De la psychose paranoiaque dans ses rapports avec la personalité|doctoral thesis]] on [[paranoia|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]].
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His developmental theory of the objectified self was inspired by [[Ferdinand de Saussure]]'s insights into the relationship of the signifier and the signified - the role of language and reference in thought were central to his formulations, particularly the Symbolic.
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;1938 - 1953
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:[[Lacan]] is a member of the ''[[Société psychanalytique de Paris]]'' until he resigns to join the ''[[Société Française de Psychanalyse]]''.
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===The Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic===
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;1953 - 1963
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Lacan also formulated the concepts of [[the Real]], [[the Imaginary]], and [[the Symbolic]], which he used to describe the elements of the [[psychic structure]]. Lacan's notion of the Real is a very difficult concept which he, in his later years, worked to present in a structured, set-theory fashion, as [[matheme]]s. The Imaginary, or non-linguistic aspect of the psyche, formulates human primitive [[self-knowledge]] while the Symbolic, his term for linguistic collaboration, generates a [[community]]-wide reflection of [[primitive]] self-knowledge and creates the very first set of rules that govern behavior. The Real is the unspeakable reality, always present but continually mediated through the imaginary and the symbolic.
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:[[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]].
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;1963 - 1980
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The Imaginary is the realm of spatial identification that begins with the mirror stage (see above), and is instrumental in the development of psychic agency. As discussed, it is here that the emerging subject is able to ''identify'' his or her mirror image as 'self', as distinguished from 'other'. However, this process entails a certain structural alienation in that what is designated as 'self' is ''formed through'' what is Other – namely, the mirror image. What becomes the Subject proper is made through inception into the Symbolic order, which is when the infant acquires the ability to use language – that is, to realise his or her desire through speech.
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:[[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.
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===Other important concepts===
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<!--
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* [[The Name of the Father]]
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*Oedipal drama and the Oedipal signification
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| width="50px" style="valign:top;" | [[{{Y}}|1901]]<BR>-<BR>[[{{Y}}|1938]]<BR>
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* [[Objet Petit a]]
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| align="[[left]]" style="padding: 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0 1em 0;" | [[Lacan]] studies medicine and [[psychiatry]] and completes his [[De la psychose paranoiaque dans ses rapports avec la personalité|doctoral thesis]] on [[paranoia|paranoid]] [[psychosis]].
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* [[Signifier]]/ [[Signified]]
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He presents a paper on the [[mirror stage]] -- his first theoretical contribution to [[psychoanalysis]] -- at a conference of the [[International Psycho-Analytical Association]] ([[IPA]]) in Marienbad.
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*Desire
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|-
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*The Drive
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| width="50px" | [[{{Y}}|1938]]<BR>-<BR>[[{{Y}}|1953]]<BR>
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*[[Jouissance]]
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| align="left" style="padding: 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0 1em 0;" | [[Lacan]] is a member of the ([[IPA]] affiliated) ''[[Société psychanalytique de Paris]]'' ([[SPP]]) until he resigns to join the ''[[Société Française de Psychanalyse]]'' ([[SFP]]).
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*The [[Phallus]]
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|-
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*Das Ding
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| width="50px" | [[{{Y}}|1953]]<BR>-<BR>[[{{Y}}|1963]]<BR>
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* the [[gaze]]
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| align="left" style="padding: 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0 1em 0;" | [[Lacan]] begins his first public [[seminar]] (which he will continue to give annually until his death).
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* the [[four discourses]]
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Thereafter, he rises to become a renowned and controversial figure in the international psychoanalytic community.
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* the [[graph of desire]]
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|-
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* the [[Borromean clinic]]
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| width="50px" | [[{{Y}}|1963]]<BR>-<BR>[[{{Y}}|1980]]<BR>
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* [[Anamorphism| Anamorphosis]]
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| align="left" style="padding: 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0 1em 0;" | [[Lacan]] leaves the [[SFP]] (after his "[[expulsion]]" from the [[IPA]]) and founds his own [[school]], the ''[[École Freudienne de Paris]]'' ([[EFP]]). 
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Following the publication of the [[Écrits]] (1966), there is an explosion of interest in his work in France and abroad.
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==Writings and seminars==
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|-
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Although Lacan is a major figure in the history of [[psychoanalysis]], he made his most significant contributions not in the traditional form of books and journal articles, but through [[seminar]] lectures - in fact, he explicitly disclaimed publication in his later life. ''The Seminar of Jacques Lacan'', conducted over a period of more than two decades, contains the majority of his life's work, though several of these remain unpublished. Furthermore, the accuracy of the transcriptions of the seminars is disputed, with [[Sherry Turkle]] claiming that [[Jacques-Alain Miller]], Lacan's son-in-law, made extensive changes to add clarity to the material (Turkle, ''Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution'', p. 254-255).  
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| width="50px" | [[{{Y}}|1980]]<BR>-<BR>[[{{Y}}|1981]]<BR>
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| align="left" style="padding: 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0.5em; margin: 0.5em 0 1em 0;" | [[Lacan]] single-handedly dissolves the [[EFP]] and creates in its stead the ''[[École de la Cause freudienne|Cause freudienne]]''.
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His only major body of writing, ''Écrits'', is notoriously difficult to read. ''Seminar XX'' remarks that his ''Écrits'' were not to be understood, but would produce a meaning effect in the reader similar to some mystical texts. Part of the reason for this, it should be emphasised, are the repeated [[Hegelian]] allusions (themselves derived from [[Alexandre Kojève|Kojève]]'s lectures on Hegel, which Lacan attended) and similar unheralded theoretical divergences and not, first and foremost, Lacan's obscure prose style, as some have alleged.
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However, [[Lacan]] soon dissolves the ''[[École de la Cause freudienne|Cause freudienne]]'' and replaces it with the ''[[École de la Cause freudienne]]''.
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|}
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== Lacan and his discontents ==
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Although Lacan is often associated with it, he was not without his critics from within the major figures of what is broadly termed [[postmodernism]]. (Several writers, such as [[Slavoj Žižek]], have argued specifically against considering Lacan a poststructuralist theorist.) Along these lines, [[Jacques Derrida]] (though Derrida did not endorse nor associate himself with postmodernism) made a considerable critique of Lacan's analytic writings, accusing him of taking a [[structuralism|structuralist]] approach to psychoanalysis, but this is hardly surprising. In particular, Derrida criticises Lacanian theory for an inherited Freudian ''phallocentrism'', exemplified primarily in his conception of the ''phallus'' as the 'primary signifier' that determines the social order of signifiers. It could be said that much of Derrida's critique of Lacan stems from his relationship with Freud: for example, Derrida deconstructs the Freudian conception of 'penis envy', upon which female subjectivity is determined, to show that the primacy of the male phallus entails a hierarchy between phallic presence and absence that ultimately implodes upon itself.
 
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Nonetheless, Lacan can be said to enjoy an awkward relationship with feminism and post-feminism in that, while he is much criticised for adopting (or inheriting from Freud) a phallocentric stance within his psychoanalytic theories, he is also taken by many to provide an accurate portrayal of the gender biases within society. Some critics accuse Lacan of maintaining the [[sexism|sexist]] tradition in psychoanalysis. Others, such as [[Judith Butler]] and [[Jane Gallop]] have offered readings of Lacan's work that opened up new possibilities for [[feminism|feminist]] theory, making it difficult to seriously reject Lacan wholesale due to sexism - although specific parts of his work may well subject to criticism on these grounds. In either case, traditional feminism has profited from Lacan's accounts to show that society has an inherent sexual bias that denigratingly reduces womanhood to a status of deficiency.
 
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Within the world outside the humanities and critical theory, criticism of Lacan tends to dismiss him/his work in a more or less wholesale fashion. [[François Roustang]], in ''The Lacanian Delusion'', called Lacan's output "extravagant" and an "incoherent system of pseudo-scientific gibberish". In ''[[Fashionable Nonsense]]'' (1997), [[Alan Sokal]] and [[Jean Bricmont]] accuse Lacan of abusing scientific concepts. Defenders of Lacanian theories dispute the validity of such criticism,  and point out that Sokal has explicitly stated that he does not understand Lacan's texts. According to Lacanians, the dismissal by Sokal and his allies precludes any valid criticism of his theories, and is instead motivated by a desire to "police the boundaries" of what constitutes an appropriate use of scientific terminology.
 
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==Sources==
 
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*[http://www.lacan.com/rolleyes.htm Chronology of Jacques Lacan]
 
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*[http://www.lacan.com/seminars1a.htm The Seminars of Jacques Lacan]
 
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* [http://www.lacan.com/bibliographyxx.htm Jacques Lacan's Complete French Bibliography]
 
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*[http://www.lacan.com/kantsade.htm Jacques Lacan; Kant with Sade]
 
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*[http://www.lacan.com/hotel.htm Of Structure as the Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever] Johns Hopkins University - 1966
 
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*[http://www.lacan.com/purloined.htm The Seminar on "The Purloined Letter"]
 
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* [http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html Chomsky's remarks]
 
  
 
==Bibliography==
 
==Bibliography==
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Selected works published in English listed below. More complete listings can be found at [http://www.lacan.com/bibliographies.htm Lacan Dot Com] or [http://www.hydra.umn.edu/lacan/gaze.html Peter Krapp's page]
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<blockquote>''[[Jacques Lacan:Bibliography|Click here]] for a more [[complete]] [[bibliography]] of [[Jacques Lacan]]'s [[Jacques Lacan:Bibliography|work]].''</blockquote>
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* ''[[The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis]]''*, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968
 
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* ''[[Écrits: A Selection]]''*, transl. by Alan Sheridan, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977, and revised version, 2002, transl. by Bruce Fink.
 
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* ''[[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis]]''
 
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* ''[[The Seminar, Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-1954]]'',, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by J. Forrester, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1988
 
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* ''[[The Seminar, Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955]]'', edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Sylvana Tomaselli, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1988.
 
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* ''[[The Seminar, Book III. The Psychoses]]'', edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Russell Grigg, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1993.
 
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* ''[[The Seminar, Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960]]'', edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Dennis Porter, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1992.
 
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*''[[The Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis]]'', edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Alan Sheridan, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1977.
 
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*''[[The Seminar XX, Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge]]'', edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Bruce Fink, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1998.
 
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*''[[Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment]]'', ed. Joan Copjec, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1990.
 
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<nowiki>*</nowiki>referenced above
 
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Works about Lacan's Work and Theory
 
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* Benvenuto, Bice; Kennedy, Roger, ''The Works of Jacques Lacan'' (London, 1986, Free Association Books.)
 
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* Malcolm Bowie, ''Lacan'' (London: Fontana, 1991). (An introduction.)
 
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* Dor, Joel, ''The Clinical Lacan''  (New York: Other Press, 1999)
 
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* Dor, Joel, ''Introduction to the Reading of Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a Language'' (New York: Other Press, 2001)
 
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* Elliott, Anthony and Frosh, Stephen (eds.), ''Psychoanalysis in Contexts: Paths between Theory and Modern Culture'' (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). (A recent overview.)
 
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* Dylan Evans, ''An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis'', Routledge, 1996.
 
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* Fink, Bruce, ''The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
 
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* Bruce Fink, ''Lacan to the Letter: Reading Ecrits Closely'', University of Minnesoty, 2004.
 
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* Forrester, John, ''Language and the Origins of Psychoanalysis'' (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1985).
 
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* Fryer, David Ross, ''The Intervention of the Other: Ethical Subjectivity in Levinas and Lacan'' (New York: Other Press, 2004)
 
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* [[Jane Gallop]], ''The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis''. London: Macmillan Press; and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
 
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* [[Jane Gallop]], ''Reading Lacan''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
 
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* Gherovici, Patricia, ''The Puerto Rican Syndrome'' (New York: Other Press, 2003)
 
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* Harari, Roberto, ''Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: An Introduction'' (New York: Other Press, 2004)
 
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* ------, ''Lacan's Seminar on "Anxiety": An Introduction'' (New York: Other Press, 2005)
 
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* Lander, Romulo, ''Subjective Experience and the Logic of the Other'' (New York: Other Press, 2006)
 
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* Leupin, Alexandre, ''Lacan Today'' (New York: Other Press, 2004)
 
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* Mathelin, Catherine, ''Lacanian Psychotherpay with Children: The Broken Piano'' (New York: Other Press, 1999)
 
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* McGowan, Todd and Kunkle, Sheila, Eds., ''Lacan and Contemporary Film'' (New York: Other Press, 2004)
 
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* Moustafa, Safouan, ''Four Lessons of Psychoanalysis'' (New York: Other Press, 2004)
 
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* Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Lacan'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
 
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* Sherry Turkle, ''Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution'', 2nd edition, Guildford Press, New York, 1992
 
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* ————— and Wollheim, Richard, ‘Lacan: an exchange’, ''New York Review of Books'', 26 (9), 1979, p. 44.
 
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* Soler, Colette, ''What Lacan Said About Women'' (New York: Other Press, 2006)
 
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* Van Haute, Philippe, ''Against Adaptation: Lacan's "Subversion" of the Subject'' (New York: Other Press, 2002)
 
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* ----- and Geyskens, Tomas, ''Confusion of Tongues: The Primacy of Sexuality in Freud, Ferenczi, and Laplanche'' (New York: Other Press, 2004)
 
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* [[Anthony Wilden|Wilden, Anthony]], ‘Jacques Lacan: A partial bibliography’, ''Yale French Studies'', 36/37, 1966, pp. 263 – 268.
 
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* [[Slavoj Žižek]], ‘The object as a limit of discourse: approaches to the Lacanian real’, ''Prose Studies'', 11 (3), 1988, pp. 94 – 120.
 
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* —————, ''Interrogating the Real'', ed. Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (London and New York: Continuum, 2005).
 
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==External links==
 
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===Introductions===
 
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*[http://www.lacan.com/bibliography.htm Jacques Lacan in English]
 
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*[http://www.lacan.com/perfume/frame.htm Links of Jacques Lacan]
 
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*[http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/lacweb.htm Jacques Lacan at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
 
  
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===Practice===
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[[Lacan]]'s most important theoretical contributions to [[psychoanalysis]] were presented in his [[seminar]]s. In 1966, a selection of [[Lacan]]'s most important papers are published under the title ''[[Écrits]]''; in 2006 a complete edition of these works was published in [[English]].
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*[http://www.cfar.org.uk/ The Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. London-based Lacanian psychoanalytic training agency.Site includes online library of clinical & theoretical texts]
 
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*[http://www.lacan.org/ Homepage of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis and the San Francisco Society for Lacanian Studies]
 
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*[http://www.londonsociety-nls.org.uk/ The London Society of the New Lacanian School. Site includes online library of clinical & theoretical texts]
 
  
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===Theory===
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==References==
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*[http://www.lacan.com/lacan1.htm Lacan Dot Com]
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<references/>
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*[http://www.hydra.umn.edu/lacan/index.html Lacan Online]
 
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*[http://www.ubu.com/sound/lacan.html UBUweb] - radio features and interviews w/ Lacan on ubu.com
 
  
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===Criticism===
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*[http://www.dylan.org.uk/lacan.pdf From Lacan to Darwin (PDF)]
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==See Also==
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{{See}}
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* [[Psychoanalysis]]
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* [[Psychology]]
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* [[Return to Freud]]
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* [[International Psycho-Analytical Association]]
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* [[Ego-psychology]]
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* [[Kleinian psychoanalysis]]
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* [[Object-relations theory]]
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{{Also}}
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==External Links==
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[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan Wikipedia Entry]
  
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Latest revision as of 17:56, 3 June 2019

Jacques Lacan · Biography · Bibliography · Seminars · Downloads · Dictionary · Images · Audio · Video - Links - More
Jacques-lacan-4.jpg

Jacques-Marie Émile Lacan (13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary theory. Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers. His interdisciplinary work is Freudian, featuring the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, identification, and language as subjective perception. His ideas have had a significant impact on critical theory, literary theory, twentieth-century French philosophy, sociology, feminist theory and clinical psychoanalysis.


Biography

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

1901
13 April, Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan is born in Paris, to a family of solid Catholic tradition. He is educated at the collège Stanislas, a Jesuit school. After his baccalauréat he studies medicine and later psychiatry.
1927
Starts clinical training, works at Sainte-Anne's hospital. A year later he works in the Special Infirmary Service where Clérambault had a practice.
1932
Awarded doctorate for his thesis, De la psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité.
1933
The richness of his thesis, especially the analysis of the case of Aimée, makes him famous with the Surrealists. BEtween this year and 1939 he takes Kojève's course at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, an "Introduction to the reading of Hegel."
1934
He marries Marie-Louise Blondon, mother of Caroline, Thibaut and Sibylle. While in analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein, Lacan becomes a member of the [[[Société Psychanalytique de Paris|Société psychanalytique de Paris]]]] (SPP).
1940
Works at Val-de-Grâce, the military hospital in Paris. During the German Occupation, he does not take part in any official activity.
1946
In 1946, the SPP resumes its activities and Lacan, with Nacht and Lagache, takes charge of training analyses and supervisory control and plays an important theoretical and institutional role.
1951
The SPP begins to raise the issue of Lacan's short sessions, as opposed to the standard analytical hour.
1953
In January Lacan is elected President of the SPP. Six months later he resigns to join the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP) with D. Lagache, F. Dolto, J. Favez-Boutonier among others. In Rome, Lacan delivers his report, "Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage". On 17 July he marries Sylvia Maklès, mother of Judith. That autumn Lacan starts his seminars at the Hôspital Sainte-Anne.
1954
The first ten seminars elaborate fundamental notions about psychoanalytic technique, the essential concepts of psychoanalysis, and its ethics. During this period Lacan writes, on the basis of his seminars, conferences and addresses in colloquia, the major texts that are found in Ecrits in 1966.
1956
Celebrities are attracted to his seminars (Jean Hyppolite's analysis of Freud's article on Dénégation, given during the first seminar, is a well-known example). Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and ethnologist Marcel Griaule, Emile Benveniste among others attend his courses.
1962
SFP members want to be recognized by the International Psycho-Analytical Association (IPA). The IPA issues an ultimatum: Lacan's name must be crossed off the list of didacticians.
1963
Two weeks before the expiry of the deadline set by the IPA (31 October), the committee of didacticians of the SFP gives up its courageous stand of 1962 and pronounces in favour of the ban: Lacan is no longer one of the didacticians.
1964
Lacanians form a Study Group on Psychoanalysis organized by Jean Clavreul, until Lacan official founds the Ecole Française de Psychanalyse, which soon becomes the Ecole Freudienne de Paris (EFP). With Lévi-Strauss and Althusser's support, he is appointed lecturer at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.
1965
In January Lacan begins his new seminar on "The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis" at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. His audience is made up of analysts and young students in philosophy at the ENS, notably Jacques-Alain Miller.
1966
Ecrits, Paris: Seuil 1966. The book draws considerable attention to the EFP, extending far beyond the intelligentsia.
1967
Lacan presents the Acte de Fondation of the EFP; its novelty lies in the procedure of passe. The passe consists of testifying, in front of two passeurs, to one's experience as an analysand and especially to the crucial moment of passage from the position of analysand to that of analyst. The passeurs are chosen by their analysts (generally analysts of the EFP) and should be at the same stage in their analytic experience as the passant. They listen to him and then, in turn, they testify to what they have heard in front of a committee for approval composed of the director, Lacan, and of some AE, analyste de l'école (analyst of the school). This committee's function is to select the analysts of the School and to elaborate, after the selecting process, a 'work of doctrine'.
1969
The issue of the passe keeps invading the EFP's life. "Le quatrième groupe" is formed around those who resign from the EFP disputing over Lacan's methods for the analysts' training and accreditation. Lacan takes a stand in the crisis of the university that follows May 1968: "If psychoanalysis cannot be articulated as a knowledge and taught as such, it has no place in the university, which deals only with knowledge." The ENS director finds a pretext for telling Lacan that he is no longer welcome at the ENS at the beginning of the academic year. Moreover, the journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse has to cease publication, but Vincennes appears as an alternative. Michel Foucault asks Lacan to create and direct the Department of Psychoanlaysis at Vincennes. Thanks to Lévi-Strauss, Lacan moves his seminars to the law school of the Panthéon.
1974
The Vincennes Department of Psychoanalysis is renamed "Le Champ freudien" with Lacan its director and Jacques-Alain Miller its president.
1980
On 9 January, Lacan announces the dissolution of the EFP and asks those who wish to continue working with him to state their intentions in writing. He receives over one thousand letters within a week. On 21 February, Lacan announces the founding of the school La Cause freudienne, later renamed the Ecole de la Cause freudienne.
1981
9 September, Lacan dies in Paris.

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; in 2006 a complete edition of these works was published in English.

References


External Links

Wikipedia Entry


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