Lacan edit

Jacques Lacan
Born(1901-04-13)13 April 1901
Paris, France
Died9 September 1981(1981-09-09) (aged 80)
Paris, France
EducationCollège Stanislas
(1907–1918)
University of Paris
(certificate of specialist in legal medicine, 1931; M.D., 1932)
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolPsychoanalysis
Structuralism
Post-structuralism
InstitutionsUniversity of Paris VIII
Main interests
Psychoanalysis
Notable ideas
Mirror phase
The Real
The Symbolic
The Imaginary
Graph of desire
Split subject
Objet petit a

ER EJ interruption p. 25 Encyc entry reproduces the content of the Marienbad paper p. 26 election amid some controversy to SPP [2]

1940s edit

The Société Psychanalytique de Paris (SPP) was disbanded due to Nazi Germany's occupation of France in 1940. Lacan was called up for military service which he undertook in periods of duty at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris, whilst at the same time continuing his private psychoanalytic practice. In 1942 he moved into apartments at 5 rue de Lille, which he would occupy until his death. During the war he did not publish any work, turning instead to a study of Chinese for which he obtained a degree from the École spéciale des langues orientales.

In a relationship they formed before the war, Sylvia Bataille (née Maklès), the estranged wife of his friend Georges Bataille, became Lacan’s mistress and, in 1953, his second wife. During the war their relationship was complicated by the threat of deportation for Sylvia, who was Jewish, since this required her to live in the unoccupied territories. Lacan intervened personally with the authorities to obtain papers detailing her family origins, which he destroyed. In 1941 they had a child, Judith. She kept the name Bataille because Lacan wished to delay the announcement of his planned separation and divorce until after the war.[3]

After the war, the SPP recommenced their meetings. In 1945 Lacan visited England for a five-week study trip, where he met the British analysts Ernest Jones, Wilfred Bion and John Rickman. Bion's analytic work with groups influenced Lacan, contributing to his own subsequent emphasis on study groups as a structure within which to advance theoretical work in psychoanalysis. He published a report of his visit as 'La Psychiatrique anglaise et la guerre' (Evolution psychiatrique 1, 1947, pp. 293-318).

In 1949, Lacan presented a new paper on the mirror stage, 'The Mirror-Stage, as Formative of the I, as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience', to the sixteenth IPA congress in Zurich.[4]

1933 edit

Lacan actively engaged with the Parisian surrealist movement of the 1930s associating with André Breton, Georges Bataille, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso.[5] For a time, he served as Picasso's personal therapist. He attended the mouvement Psyché that Maryse Choisy founded and published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure. "[Lacan's] interest in surrealism predated his interest in psychoanalysis," Dylan Evans explains, speculating that "perhaps Lacan never really abandoned his early surrealist sympathies, its neo-Romantic view of madness as 'convulsive beauty', its celebration of irrationality."[6] David Macey writes that "the importance of surrealism can hardly be over-stated... to the young Lacan... [who] also shared the surrealists' taste for scandal and provocation, and viewed provocation as an important element in psycho-analysis itself".[7]

In 1931, after a second year at the Saint Anne Hospital, Lacan was awarded his Diplôme de médecin légiste (specialist in legal medicine) and became a licensed forensic psychiatrist. The following year he was awarded his Diplôme d'État de docteur en médecine [fr] (roughly equivalent to an M.D. degree) for his thesis On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personality (De la Psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité suivi de Premiers écrits sur la paranoïa; published : Paris, Le Francois, 1932, reprinted by Éditions du Seuil, 1975). .[8] Its publication had little immediate impact in French psychoanalytic circles but it did meet with acclaim amongst Lacan’s circle of surrealist writers and artists. In their only recorded instance of direct communication, Lacan sent Freud a copy of his thesis which Freud acknowledged with a postcard .[9]

Lacan’s thesis demonstrated his dissatisfaction with traditional psychiatry and the growing influence of Freud on his ideas. ‘Paranoid Psychosis and its Relation to the Personality’ was based on observations of several patients with a primary focus on one female patient whom Lacan called Aimée.[10] Also in 1932, Lacan published a translation of Freud's 1922 text, "Über einige neurotische Mechanismen bei Eifersucht, Paranoia und Homosexualität" ("Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality") as "De quelques mécanismes névrotiques dans la jalousie, la paranoïa et l'homosexualité" in the Revue française de psychanalyse. In Autumn 1932, Lacan began his training analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein, which was to last until 1938.[11]

In 1934 Lacan became a candidate member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris (SPP). He began his private psychoanalytic practice in 1936 whilst still seeing patients at the Sainte-Anne Hospital,[12] and the same year presented his first analytic report at the Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in Marienbad on the "Mirror Phase". The congress chairman, Ernest Jones, terminated the lecture before its conclusion, since he was unwilling to extend Lacan's stated presentation time. Insulted, Lacan left the congress to witness the Berlin Olympic Games. No copy of the original lecture remains, Lacan having omitted to hand in his text to the appropriate authorities.[13]

Lacan's attendance at Kojève's lectures on Hegel given between 1933 and 1939, and which focussed on the Phenomenology and the master-slave dialectic in particular, was formative for his subsequent work,[14] intitially in his formulation of his theory of the mirror stage for which he was also indebted to the experimental work on child development of Henri Wallon.[15]

It was Wallon who commissioned from Lacan the last major text of his pre-war period, a contribution to the 1938 Encyclopedie française entitled “La Famille” (reprinted in 1984 as “Family complexes in the formation of the individual” Paris: Navarin). 1938 was also the year of Lacan’s accession to full membership (Membre titulaire) of the SPP notwithstanding considerable opposition from many of its senior members who were unimpressed by his recasting of Freudian theory in philosophical terms.[16]

Lacan married Marie-Louise Blondin in January 1934 and in January 1937 they had the first of their three children, a daughter named Caroline. A son, Thibaut, was born in August 1939 and a daughter, Sybille, in November 1940.

Citations edit

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Clark was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Macey 1988, p. 21. sfn error: multiple targets (3×): CITEREFMacey1988 (help)
  3. ^ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & Co.: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985, 1990, Chicago University Press, p. 147
  4. ^ Macey, David (1988). Lacan in Contexts. London: Verso. pp. 220–221. ISBN 0860919420.
  5. ^ {{cite book|last1=Desmond|first1=John|title=Psychoanalytic Accounts of Consuming Desire: Hearts of Darkness|date=2012|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=NY|isbn=978
  6. ^ Evans, Dylan, ""From Lacan to Darwin" Archived 2006-02-10 at the Wayback Machine", in The Literary Animal; Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, eds. Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005
  7. ^ David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (London 1994) p. xv-xvi
  8. ^ Macey, David (1988). Lacan in Contexts. London: Verso. p. 21. ISBN 0860919420.
  9. ^ Macey, David (1988). Lacan in Contexts. London: Verso. p. 212. ISBN 0860919420.
  10. ^ Evans, Julia. "Lacanian Works". Retrieved September 28, 2014.
  11. ^ Laurent, É., "Lacan, Analysand" in Hurly-Burly, Issue 3.
  12. ^ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & Co.: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985, 1990, Chicago University Press, p. 129
  13. ^ Roudinesco, Elisabeth. "The mirror stage: an obliterated archive" The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Ed. Jean-Michel Rabaté. Cambridge: CUP, 2003
  14. ^ David Macey, Lacan in Contexts, London: Verso 1988, pp. 96-98
  15. ^ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & Co.: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985, 1990, Chicago University Press, p. 143
  16. ^ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan & Co.: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985, 1990, Chicago University Press, p. 122

Further reading edit

Biographical works edit

Introductory texts edit

  • Benvenuto, B.; Kennedy, R. (1986). The Works of Jacques Lacan: An Introduction. London: Free Association Books.
  • Bowie, Malcolm, (1991) Lacan, London: Fontana.
  • Dor, Joel, (2001) Introduction to the Reading of Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a Language, New York, Other Press,
  • Evans, Dylan (1997). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.
  • Grosz, Elizabeth. (1991) Jacques Lacan: a Feminist Introduction. London: Routledge.
  • Homer, S. (2005) Jacques Lacan. London. Routledge.
  • Leader, D. & Groves, J. (1995) Lacan for Beginners. London. Icon Books.
  • Lee, Jonathan Scott. (2002) Jacques Lacan. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
  • Neill, Calum (2023). Jacques Lacan: the Basics. Abington, Oxon: Routledge.

Textual commentaries edit

Écrits edit

  • Benvenuto, Sergio, Lacan to the Letter: Reading Ecrits Closely. University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
  • Hook, D., Vanheule, S. & Neill, C. (eds.) (2019) Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From ‘The Freudian Thing’ to ‘Remarks on Daniel Lagache’. London: Routledge.
  • Hook, D., Vanheule, S. & Neill, C. (eds.) (2022) Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From ‘Logical Time’ to ‘Response to Jean Hyppolite’. London: Routledge.
  • Vanheule, S., Hook, D. & Neill, C. (eds.) (2018) Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From ‘Signification of the Phallus’ to ‘‘Metaphor of the Subject’. London: Routledge
  • Neill, C., Hook, D. & Vanheule, S. (eds.) (2023) Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From ‘Overture to This Collection’ to ‘Presentation on Psychical Causality’. London: Routledge.
  • Johnston, Adrian (2017). Irrepressible Truth: On Lacan's "The Freudian Thing". Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Muller, John P.; Richardson, William J. (1982). Lacan and Language: A Reader's Guide to Écrits. New York: International University Press.
  • Nobus, Dany (2022) The Law of Desire: On Lacan's 'Kant with Sade'. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan.

The Seminars edit

  • Cox Cameron, O. with Owens, C. (2021) Studying Lacan’s Seminar VI: Dream, Symptom, and the Collapse of Subjectivity. London. Routledge.
  • Owens, C. and Almqvist, N. (2019) Studying Lacan’s Seminars IV and V: From Lack to Desire. London. Routledge.
  • Feldstein, Richard; Jaanus, Maire; Fink, Bruce, eds. (1996). Reading seminars I and II: Lacan's return to Freud: seminar I, Freud's papers on technique, seminar II, the ego in Freud's theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-2780-3. OCLC 42854739.
  • Feldstein, Richard; Jaanus, Maire; Fink, Bruce, eds. (1995). Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis: the Paris seminars in English. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-2148-1. OCLC 42854927.
  • Feldstein, Richard; Jaanus, Maire; Fink, Bruce, eds. (2002). Reading Seminar XX: Lacan's major work on love, knowledge, and feminine sexuality. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-5432-0. OCLC 53275064.
  • Harari, Roberto, Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: An Introduction, New York: Other Press, 2004.
  • Harari, Roberto, Lacan's Seminar on "Anxiety": An Introduction, New York: Other Press, 2005.
  • Miller, Jacques-Alain, "Introduction to Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety I", New York: Lacanian Ink 26, Fall 2005.
  • Miller, Jacques-Alain, "Introduction to Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety II", New York: Lacanian Ink 27, Spring 2006.

General commentaries edit

  • Badiou, Alain, "The Formulas of l'Étourdit", New York: Lacanian Ink 27, Spring 2006.
  • Badiou, A. (2006). "Lacan and the Pre-Socratics". Lacan Dot Com.
  • Badiou, A.; Roudinesco, E.; Smith, J.E. (2014). Jacques Lacan, Past and Present: A Dialogue. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-16511-2.
  • Benvenuto, Sergio (2020). Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-367-14879-9. OCLC 1134622118.
  • Bracher, Mark; Massardier-Kenney, Françoise; Alcorn, Marshall W.; Corthell, Ronald J. (1994). Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, and Society. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-1299-1.
  • Brennan, Teresa (1993). History after Lacan. London: Routledge
  • Dor, Joel (1999) The Clinical Lacan, New York: Other Press.
  • Felman, Shoshana (1987). Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of insight: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
  • Fink, Bruce (1996) The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance Princeton University Press, 1996.
  • Fink, Bruce (1997) A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Fink, Bruce (2014). Against Understanding, vol. 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 978-0-415-63543-1.
  • Forrester, John (1985) Language and the Origins of Psychoanalysis, Basingstoke and London, Macmillan.
  • Glynos, Jason and Stavrakakis, Yannis (eds) (2002). Lacan and Science. London: Karnac Books.
  • Hendrix, John Shannon (2006). Architecture and Psychoanalysis: Peter Eisenman and Jacques Lacan. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-820481-71-5.
  • Johnston, Adrian (2005) Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  • Kovacevic, Filip (2007) "Liberating Oedipus? Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory" Landham, MD: Lexington Books.
  • Macey, David (1988). Lacan in Contexts. London: Verso.
  • Mandal, Mahitosh (2018) Jacques Lacan: From Clinic to Culture. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan
  • McGowan, Todd and Sheila Kunkle Eds.(2004) Lacan and Contemporary Film, New York: Other Press.
  • Miller, Jacques-Alain, "Jacques Lacan's Later Teachings", New York: Spring Lacanian Ink 21, 2003.
  • Miller, Jacques-Alain, "The Paradigms of Jouissance" New York, Lacanian Ink 17, Fall 2000.
  • Miller, Jacques-Alain, "Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier", Lacan Dot Com, The Symptom 2006.
  • Miller, Jacques-Alain, "Religion, Psychoanalysis", Lacanian Ink 23, Spring 2004.
  • Miller, Jacques-Alain, "Pure Psychoanalysis, Applied Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy", Lacanian Ink 20, Spring 2002.
  • Miller, Jacques-Alain (2013). Applied Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-8319-2. OCLC 842322946.
  • Nasio, Juan-David, Book of Love and Pain: The Thinking at the Limit with Freud and Lacan, transl. by David Pettigrew and Francois Raffoul, Albany: SUNY Press, 2003.
  • Nasio, Juan-David (1998) Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan, Albany, SUNY Press.
  • Nasio, Juan-David (1999) Hysteria: The Splendid Child of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Susan Fairfield. New York: Other Press.
  • Neill, Calum (2014). Without Ground: Lacanian Ethics and the Assumptions of Subjectivity. London: Palgrave.
  • Nobus, Dany (ed.) (1999) Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. New York: Other Press.
  • Nobus, Dany (2022). Critique of Psychoanalytic Reason: Studies in Lacanian Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.
  • Parker, Ian (2011) Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Revolutions in Subjectivity. London: Routledge.
  • Pettigrew, David and François Raffoul (eds.), (1996) Disseminating Lacan, Albany: SUNY Press.
  • Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.), (2003) The Cambridge Companion to Lacan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Rose, Jacqueline (1986) Sexuality in the Field of Vision. London: Verso.
  • Roudinesco, Élisabeth, 'Lucien Febvre à la rencontre de Jacques Lacan, Paris 1937'. with Peter Schöttler, Genèses, Année 1993, Vol.13, n°1.
  • Roudinesco, Elisabeth (1990) Jacques Lacan & Co.: a History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
  • Roudinesco, Élisabeth, "Lacan, The Plague", Psychoanalysis and History, ed. John Forrester, Teddington, Artesian Books, 2008.
  • Safouan, Moustafa, Four Lessons of Psychoanalysis, New York, Other Press, 2004.
  • Schneiderman, Stuart (1983) Jacques Lacan: the Death of an Intellectual Hero, Harvard University Press.
  • Soler, Colette (2006). What Lacan said about women: a psychoanalytic study. Translated by Holland, John. New York: Other Press. ISBN 978-1-59051-170-1. OCLC 58546399.
  • Stavrakakis, Yannis (2007) The Lacanian Left, Albany: State University of New York Press.
  • Turkle, Sherry and Wandollheim, Richard, 'Lacan: an exchange', New York Review of Books, 26 (9), 1979.
  • Žižek, Slavoj, "Jacques Lacan's Four Discourses", Lacan Dot Com, 2008.
  • "Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father, or how Not to misread Lacan´s formulas of sexuation", Lacan Dot Com, 2005.
  • Žižek, Slavoj, 'The object as a limit of discourse: approaches to the Lacanian real', Prose Studies, 11 (3), 1988, pp.  94–120.
  • Žižek, Slavoj, "Jacques Lacan as Reader of Hegel", New York, Lacanian Ink 27, Fall 2006.
  • Žižek, Slavoj, (2006) "How to Read Lacan London: Granta Books.