Jacques Lacan(1901 — 1981)
Jacques Lacan
France
6 min read
French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, a major figure of 20th-century psychoanalysis. He calls for a “return to Freud” and rereads psychoanalysis through the lens of structuralism and linguistics, asserting that “the unconscious is structured like a language.”
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« The unconscious is structured like a language. »
« Man's desire is the desire of the Other. »
Key Facts
- Born in Paris in 1901, died in 1981.
- Defended his psychiatry thesis on paranoid psychosis in 1932.
- Presented the concept of the “mirror stage” at the Marienbad congress in 1936.
- Led an influential seminar from 1953 onward and championed the “return to Freud.”
- Founded the Freudian School of Paris in 1964, which he dissolved in 1980.
Works & Achievements
His medical thesis, a study of the “Aimée case,” which brought him to notice in psychiatric and Surrealist circles.
A foundational text in which he explains how the child builds the image of its self by recognizing itself in a mirror.
The manifesto of his “return to Freud,” which places speech and language at the heart of psychoanalysis.
Oral teaching given over nearly thirty years, later transcribed into numerous volumes; the core of his transmission.
The major collection of his texts, a bookshop success that spread his thought far beyond psychoanalysis.
The creation of his own institution to train analysts after his break with the international association.
The central conceptual framework of his thought, which he would eventually illustrate with the Borromean knot.
Anecdotes
In the 1950s, Lacan held a weekly “seminar” that became a genuine intellectual event in Paris. Philosophers, writers, and students flocked to hear him speak for hours, often in a deliberately bewildering manner. This seminar would run for nearly thirty years and turned him into a star of ideas.
Lacan was famous for his psychoanalysis sessions of variable length: instead of the usual 45 or 50 minutes, he might cut a patient off after just a few minutes. This practice of “short sessions” sparked fierce criticism and was one of the reasons for his expulsion from the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1963.
A passionate art lover, Lacan secretly bought Gustave Courbet's last scandalous painting, *The Origin of the World*. To keep it hidden from view, he commissioned his brother-in-law, the painter André Masson, to make a painted sliding panel that concealed the work in his country house.
As a young man, Lacan moved in Surrealist circles and conversed with artists such as Salvador Dalí and the writer André Breton. His 1932 medical thesis, devoted to a paranoid patient, was admired by the Surrealists, who saw in it an echo of their own explorations of the unconscious and dreams.
Lacan loved to play with words and was forever inventing new terms and language games. He coined, for instance, the word *lalangue* and spoke of *mathèmes*, little formulas borrowed from mathematics in an attempt to write psychoanalysis as a science.
Primary Sources
We need only understand the mirror stage as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image.
The unconscious is structured like a language.
That psychoanalysis has but one medium: the patient's speech. The obviousness of this fact is no excuse for neglecting it.
The unconscious is that which closes up again as soon as it has opened, in accordance with a temporal pulsation.
Key Places
Lacan's birthplace, where he practiced as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and held his seminars. The center of 20th-century French intellectual life.
A major Parisian psychiatric hospital where Lacan trained in psychiatry and held his seminar during the 1950s.
A prestigious school where Lacan moved his seminar starting in 1964, drawing an audience of students and intellectuals.
A village in the Yvelines where Lacan owned his country house, “La Prévôté,” in which he hid Courbet's painting “The Origin of the World.”
The city where, in 1953, Lacan delivered his famous “Rome Report” on the function of speech and language in psychoanalysis.