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[[Surrealism]], however, offered the young Lacan an alternative route to psychoanalysis and the crucial link to his clinical practice in psychiatry.  The Surrealists fully embraced [[psychoanalysis ]] and during his medical studies Lacan developed strong links with the movement.   [[Surrealism ]] was a literary and artistic movement that emerged after the First World War in Paris, its founding figure the writer and poet [[André Breton ]] (1896-1966). [[Breton ]] was familiar with Freud's work on dreams and developed a technique of 'spontaneous' writing to give free expression to unconscious thoughts and wishes.  Similarly, Surrealist painters such as Dali attempted to paint the 'reality' of their dreams, which they saw as more 'real' than the prosaic reality of our everyday world.   In 1932, and within this context, [[Lacan ]] completed his doctoral thesis on [[Paranoid Psychosis and Its Relations to the Personality]].  Around the same time he entered analysis with [[Rudolph Loewenstein]], the SPP's most famous training analyst (a recognized psychoanalyst who is qualified to train other analysts within the Society). There has always been something of a controversy around Lacan's analysis, with critics questioning how successful it was and whether or not he completed it. It is known to have been a very 'stormy' relationship and ended rancorously in 1938. What is clear is that Lacan spent six years in analysis - longer than was usual at this time - and that he remained in analysis until he was accepted as a training analyst.   During this time, Lacan's links with the Surrealists developed further.  He was a friend of [[André Breton ]] and [[Salvador Dali]], and was later to become the painter [[Pablo Picasso]]'s (1881-1973) personal physician.  He attended the first public readings of [[James Joyce]]'s (1882-1941) [[Ulysses ]] in 1921 and was a well-known figure in the cafés and bookshops of Paris's Left Bank.  In 1933 Dali was to refer to Lacan's doctoral thesis in the first issue of the Surrealist review [[Minotaure ]] and Lacan himself was to make many contributions to this and other Surrealist publications.