Jacques Lacan
Jacques-Marie Émile Lacan (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
He is one of the most important -- and most controversial -- figures in the history of psychoanalysis, but is also acknowledged for his far-reaching influence across a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.
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Biography
Click here for a more complete chronology of Jacques Lacan's life.
- Born in Paris, 1901
- Medical training in the Paris Medical Faculty. Became Chef de Clinique in 1932.
- Doctoral thesis for psychiatric degree - "Paranoid psychosis and its relation to the personality" (1932).
- Association with the French surrealist movement, from early 1930s.
- 1934 - Joined the Societe Psychanalytique de Paris.
- 1936 - Presented paper on the 'mirror stage' to the International Psychoanalytic Congress in Marienbad.
- Until 1952 - Distinguished member of the French psychoanalytic establishment. Intellectual contacts with Merleau-Ponty and Levi-Strauss, through the College Philosophique, Paris.
- 1953 - Presentation of the Rome Discourse. Controversy within the Paris psychoanalytic society. Daniel Lagache. followed by Lacan, formed a new Societe Fran~aise de Psychanalyse. Formation of Lacan's Seminar.
- 1953 to early 1960s - continuous development of ideas, particularly those put forward as programme in the Rome Discourse, involving psychoanalysis and linguistics.
- 1963 - Expelled, finally, from International Psychoanalytic Association, because of unorthodox practice and teaching methods.
- 1964 - Reformed his analytic society, calling it L'Ecole Freudienne de Paris.
- 1966 - Publication of his Ecrits, following by explosion of his inflience in French society. He soon became a cultural phenomenon.
- 1966 to 1980 - Increasing interest in his work in France and abroad.
- 1968 - May revolution. Lacan supported the students' revolt. President of the psychoanalytic department of University of Vincennes.
- 1980 - Dissolved the Ecole Freduienne, and formed La Cause Freudienne.
- 1981 - Death
Lacan was born in Paris to a bourgeois Catholic family, and was educated at a Jesuit school. He studied medicine and later psychiatry. In 1932, Lacan finishes his doctoral thesis on paranoid psychosis.[1]
In 1936, Lacan presents his piece on the mirror stage -- his first major theoretical contribution to psychoanalysis -- at an IPA conference in Marienbad. In 1938, Lacan becomes a member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris (SPP), affiliated with the International Psycho-Analytical Association (IPA). In 1953, 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.
In 1953, Lacan also resigned from the SPP to join the newly established Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP). In 1963, after ten years of continued effort, the SFP is finally offered IPA affiliation as a member society -- on the condition that Lacan be removed from its list of training analysts. In 1963, Lacan chooses to leave the SFP and found his own school, the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP). In 1980, Lacan single-handedly dissolves the EFP and creates in its stead the Cause freudienne.[2] In 1981, the Cause freudienne is dissolved and the École de la Cause freudienne is created to replace it.
Theory
Lacan's work has transformed psychoanalysis, both as a theory and as a practice.
In the 1950s, Lacan emphasized the role of language (and the symbolic order) in psychoanalysis and formulated his most important thesis: that the unconscious is structured like a language.
(This was an extraordinarily innovative period for Lacan and he introduced many of the concepts that would preoccupy him for the rest of his career.)
Lacan drew on a field of study known as Structuralism and on linguistic theory.
Claude Lévi-Strauss's elementary structure of kinship provided the basis for Lacan's conception of the symbolic order and the formation of the unconscious.
Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology was facilitated by the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and it was through Lévi-Strauss that Lacan began to read linguistics.
In the process he made radical and far-reaching changes to Saussure's concept of the linguistic sign, completely reversing any conventional understanding of the relationship between the speaking subject and language.
Finally, we will look at the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson's (1896-1982) work on metaphor and metonymy, as this was crucially important for Lacan's conceptualization of desire.
Lacan's conception of the subject as constituted in and through language.
Bibliography
Click here for a more complete bibliography of Jacques Lacan's work.
Lacan's most important theoretical contributions to psychoanalysis were presented in his seminars.
In 1966, a selection of Lacan's most important papers are published under the title Écrits; fewer than one-third of them are included in the English Écrits: A Selection (1977).
References
- ↑ De la psychose paranoiaque dans ses rapports avec la personalité ("On Paranoid Psychosis and Its Relations to the Personality").
- ↑ Lacan states: "It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish; I am Freudian."
Further information about Jacques Lacan can be found below:
- Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. pp. 5–6, 21, 28–29, 33–39, 65, 75, 88, 90–91, 95–96, 98, 103, 108–110, 118–119, 125–126, 128–132, 135–139, 151–153, 158, 161–169
