View source for Jacques Lacan

{{short description|French psychoanalyst and writer (1901–1981)}}
{{Redirect|Lacan}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2021}}
{{Infobox philosopher
|region = [[Western philosophy]]
|era = [[20th-century philosophy]]
|image = Jacques Lacan portrait.jpg
|caption = 
|name = Jacques Lacan
|birth_name = Jacques Marie Émile Lacan
|birth_date = {{birth date|1901|04|13|df=y}}
|birth_place = Paris, France
|death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1981|09|09|1901|04|13}}
|death_place = Paris, France
|education = [[Collège Stanislas de Paris]]<br>(1907–1918)<br>[[University of Paris]]<br>([[Certificate of Completion of Training|SpDip]], 1931;<ref name="Clark">Michael P. Clark, ''Jacques Lacan (Volume I): An Annotated Bibliography'', Routledge, 2014, p. xviii: "After completing his studies at the Faculté de médecine de Paris, Lacan began his residence at the [[Hôpital Saint-Anne]] in Paris. There he specialized in psychiatry under the direction of Gaétan<!--[sic]--> Gatian de Clérambault... From 1928–1929, Lacan studied at the {{Interlanguage link|Infirmerie psychiatrique de la préfecture de police|fr|3=Infirmerie psychiatrique de la préfecture de police|lt=Infirmerie Spéciale pres de la Préfecture de Police}} and received a ''Diplôme de médecin légiste'' (specialist in [[legal medicine]]) after working at the Hôpital Henri Rousselle from 1929 to 1931. In 1932, after a second year at Saint Anne's Clinique de Maladies Mentales et de l'Encéphale, Lacan received the ''Doctorat d'état'' in psychiatry and published his thesis, ''De la Psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité''..."</ref> [[M.D.|MD]], 1932)
|institutions = [[University of Paris VIII]]
|school_tradition = [[Psychoanalysis]]<br>[[Structuralism]]<br>[[Post-structuralism]]<ref>[[Yannis Stavrakakis]], ''Lacan and the Political'', Routledge, 2002, p. 13: "Lacan has been hailed as one of the cornerstones of this movement [poststructuralism]..."</ref>
|main_interests = [[Psychoanalysis]]
|notable_ideas = [[Mirror stage|Mirror phase]]<br>[[The Real]]<br>[[The Symbolic]]<br>[[The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)|The Imaginary]]<br>[[Graph of desire]]<br>[[Splitting (psychology)|Split subject]]<br>[[Objet petit a]]
}}
{{Psychoanalysis|Schools}}

'''Jacques Marie Émile Lacan''' ({{IPAc-en|UK|l|æ|ˈ|k|ɒ̃}},<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.lexico.com/definition/Lacan,_Jacques |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211027020456/https://www.lexico.com/definition/lacan,_jacques |url-status=dead |archive-date=27 October 2021 |title=Lacan, Jacques |dictionary=[[Lexico]] UK English Dictionary |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]}}</ref> {{IPAc-en|US|l|ə|ˈ|k|ɑː|n}} {{respell|lə|KAHN}};<ref>[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lacan "Lacan"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141103055025/http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lacan |date=3 November 2014 }}. ''[[Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary]]''.</ref> {{IPA|fr|ʒak maʁi emil lakɑ̃|lang}}; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French [[psychoanalyst]] and [[psychiatrist]]. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]]",<ref name=controversial_quote/> Lacan gave [[The Seminars of Jacques Lacan|yearly seminars]] in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book ''Écrits''. Transcriptions of his seminars, given between 1954 and 1976, were also published.<ref>{{Cite web |title=SEMINARS OF JACQUES LACAN - CONTENTS |url=https://www.lacan.com/seminars1a.htm |access-date=2023-11-02 |website=www.lacan.com |archive-date=4 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240204040347/https://www.lacan.com/seminars1a.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> His work made a significant impact on [[continental philosophy]] and [[cultural theory]] in areas such as [[post-structuralism]], [[critical theory]], [[feminist theory]] and [[film theory]], as well as on the practice of [[psychoanalysis]] itself.

Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing the philosophical dimension of Freud's thought and applying concepts derived from [[structuralism]] in [[linguistics]] and [[anthropology]] to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from [[predicate logic]] and [[Topological space|topology]]. Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his followers from the [[International Psychoanalytic Association]].<ref>[[Malcolm Bowie|Bowie, Malcolm]], ''Lacan'', London: Fontana, 1991. p. 45</ref> In consequence, Lacan went on to establish new psychoanalytic institutions to promote and develop his work, which he declared to be a "return to Freud", in opposition to prevalent trends in psychology and institutional psychoanalysis collusive of adaptation to social norms.

==Biography==

===Early life===
Lacan was born in [[Paris]], the eldest of Émilie and Alfred Lacan's three children. His father was a successful soap and oils salesman. His mother was ardently [[Catholic]] – his younger brother entered a monastery in 1929. Lacan attended the Catholic [[Collège Stanislas de Paris]] between 1907 and 1918. An interest in philosophy led him to a preoccupation with the work of [[Spinoza]], one outcome of which was his abandonment of religious faith for [[atheism]]. There were tensions in the family around this issue, and he regretted not persuading his brother to take a different path, but by 1924 his parents had moved to [[Boulogne]] and he was living in rooms in [[Montmartre]].<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co">{{cite book | last1=Roudinesco | first1=E. | last2=Mehlman | first2=J. | last3=Lacan | first3=J. | title=Jacques Lacan & Co: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985 | publisher=University of Chicago Press | year=1990 | isbn=978-0-226-72997-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mmBIght4dVgC | access-date=28 November 2021}}</ref>{{rp|104}}

During the early 1920s, Lacan actively engaged with the Parisian literary and artistic [[avant-garde]]. Having met [[James Joyce]], he was present at the Parisian bookshop where the first readings of passages from ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' in French and English took place, shortly before it was published in 1922.<ref>Catherine Millot ''Life with Lacan'', Cambridge: Polity Press 2018, p. 104.</ref> He also had meetings with [[Charles Maurras]], whom he admired as a literary stylist, and he occasionally attended meetings of [[Action Française]] (of which Maurras was a leading ideologue),<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|104}} of which he would later be highly critical.

In 1920, after being rejected for military service on the grounds that he was too thin, Lacan entered medical school. Between 1927 and 1931, after completing his studies at the faculty of medicine of the [[University of Paris]], he specialised in psychiatry under the direction of [[Henri Claude]] at the [[Sainte-Anne Hospital Center|Sainte-Anne Hospital]], the major psychiatric hospital serving central Paris, at the Infirmary for the Insane of the Police Prefecture under [[Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault]] and also at the Hospital Henri-Rousselle.<ref name=Macey1988>{{cite book |last =Macey| first =David| title =Lacan in Contexts| publisher =Verso | date =1988 | location = London| isbn =978-0860919421 }}</ref>{{rp|211}}

===1930s===
Lacan was involved with the Parisian [[Surrealism|surrealist]] movement of the 1930s, associating with [[André Breton]], [[Georges Bataille]], [[Salvador Dalí]], and [[Pablo Picasso]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Desmond|first1=John|title=Psychoanalytic Accounts of Consuming Desire: Hearts of Darkness|date=2012|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=NY}}</ref> 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," former Lacanian analyst and biographer [[Dylan Evans]] explains, speculating that "perhaps Lacan never really abandoned his early surrealist sympathies, its [[Neo-romanticism|neo-Romantic]] view of madness as 'convulsive beauty', its celebration of irrationality."<ref name="dylan_evans 2005">Evans, Dylan, "[http://www.dylan.org.uk/lacan.pdf "From Lacan to Darwin"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060210151234/http://www.dylan.org.uk/lacan.pdf |date=2006-02-10 }}", in ''The Literary Animal; Evolution and the Nature of Narrative'', eds. Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005</ref> Translator and historian [[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".<ref>[[David Macey]], "Introduction" in Jacques Lacan (1994) ''[[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis]]'', London:Penuin Books, pp. xv–xvi</ref>

In 1931, after a second year at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, Lacan was awarded his ''Diplôme de médecin légiste'' (a [[medical examiner]]'s qualification) and became a licensed [[Forensic psychiatry|forensic psychiatrist]]. The following year he was awarded his {{Interlanguage link|Diplôme d'État de docteur en médecine|fr}} (roughly equivalent to an [[M.D.|MD]] degree) for his thesis "On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personality" ("De la Psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité").<ref>{{cite web |url=https://psychaanalyse.com/pdf/lacan_THESE_de_medecine.pdf |title=De la psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité |first=Jaques |last=Lacan |year=1975 |publisher=Éditions du Seuil |access-date=18 May 2019 |archive-date=3 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220103110041/https://psychaanalyse.com/pdf/lacan_THESE_de_medecine.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=Macey1988 />{{rp|21}}{{efn|The thesis was published in Paris by Librairie E. Francois (1932); reprinted in Paris by [[Éditions du Seuil]] (1975)}} Its publication had little immediate impact on French psychoanalysis 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 a copy of his thesis to [[Sigmund Freud]] who acknowledged its receipt with a postcard.<ref name=Macey1988 />{{rp|212}}

Lacan's thesis was based on observations of several patients with a primary focus on one female patient whom he called [[Case of Aimée|Aimée]]. Its exhaustive reconstruction of her family history and social relations, on which he based his analysis of her [[Paranoia|paranoid]] state of mind, demonstrated his dissatisfaction with traditional psychiatry and the growing influence of Freud on his ideas.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Evans|first1=Julia|title=Lacanian Works|url=http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=113.|access-date=28 September 2014|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304002419/http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=113.|url-status=live}}</ref> 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 ''{{ill|Revue française de psychanalyse|fr}}''. In Autumn 1932, Lacan began his training analysis with [[Rudolph Loewenstein (psychoanalyst)|Rudolph Loewenstein]], which was to last until 1938.<ref>Laurent, É., "Lacan, Analysand" in ''Hurly-Burly'', Issue 3.</ref>

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,<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|129}} and the same year presented his first analytic report at the Congress of the [[International Psychoanalytical Association]] (IPA) in [[Marienbad]] on the "[[Mirror stage|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 [[1936 Summer Olympics|Berlin Olympic Games]]. No copy of the original lecture remains, Lacan having decided not to hand in his text for publication in the conference proceedings.<ref>Roudinesco, Elisabeth. "The mirror stage: an obliterated archive" ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=o2YKaZls_-kC The Cambridge Companion to Lacan] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230405211310/https://books.google.com/books?id=o2YKaZls_-kC |date=5 April 2023 }}.'' Ed. Jean-Michel Rabaté. Cambridge: CUP, 2003</ref>

Lacan's attendance at [[Alexandre Kojève|Kojève]]'s lectures on [[Hegel]], given between 1933 and 1939, and which focused on the [[The Phenomenology of Spirit|''Phenomenology'']] and the [[Master–slave dialectic|master-slave dialectic]] in particular, was formative for his subsequent work,<ref name=Macey1988 />{{rp|96–98}} initially in his formulation of his theory of the mirror phase, for which he was also indebted to the experimental work on child development of [[Henri Wallon (psychologist)|Henri Wallon]].<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|143}}

It was Wallon who commissioned from Lacan the last major text of his pre-war period, a contribution to the 1938 ''[[Encyclopédie française]]'' entitled "La Famille" (reprinted in 1984 as "Les Complexes familiaux dans la formation de l'individu", 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.<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|122}}

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, Sibylle, in November 1940.<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|129}}

===1940s===
The SPP was disbanded due to [[German occupation of France during World War II|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|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 language|Chinese]] for which he obtained a degree from the [[Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales|École spéciale des langues orientales]].<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|147}}<ref>{{cite journal|title=Lacan's Oriental Language of the Unconscious|first=Richard|last=Serrano|date=22 May 1997|journal=SubStance|volume=26|issue=3|pages=90–106|doi=10.2307/3685596|jstor=3685596}}</ref>

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 Miller (philosopher)|Judith]]. She kept the name Bataille because Lacan wished to delay the announcement of his divorce until after the war.<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|147}}

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. &nbsp;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 [[International Psychoanalytical Association|IPA]] congress in Zurich. The same year he set out in the ''Doctrine de la Commission de l'Enseignement,'' produced for the Training Commission of the SPP, the protocols for the training of candidates.<ref name=Macey1988 />{{rp|220–221}}

===1950s===
With the purchase in 1951 of a country mansion at [[Guitrancourt]], Lacan established a base for weekend retreats for work, leisure—including extravagant social occasions—and for the accommodation of his vast library. His art collection included [[Courbet]]'s [[L'Origine du monde]], which he had concealed in his study by a removable wooden screen on which an abstract representation of the Courbet by the artist [[André Masson]] was portrayed.<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|294}}

In 1951, Lacan started to hold a private weekly seminar in Paris in which he inaugurated what he described as "a return to Freud," whose doctrines were to be re-articulated through a reading of [[Ferdinand de Saussure|Saussure]]'s linguistics and [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Levi-Strauss]]'s structuralist anthropology. Becoming public in 1953, Lacan's 27-year-long seminar was highly influential in Parisian cultural life, as well as in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice.<ref name="Jacques Lacan & Co" />{{rp|299}}

In January 1953 Lacan was elected president of the SPP. When, at a meeting the following June, a formal motion was passed against him criticising his abandonment of the standard analytic training session for the [[#Variable-length session|variable-length session]], he immediately resigned his presidency. He and a number of colleagues then resigned from the SPP to form the [[Société Française de Psychanalyse]] (SFP).<ref name=Macey1988 />{{rp|227}} One consequence of this was to eventually deprive the new group of membership of the [[International Psychoanalytical Association]].

Encouraged by the reception of "the return to Freud" and of his report "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis," Lacan began to re-read Freud's works in relation to [[contemporary philosophy]], linguistics, [[ethnology]], [[biology]], and [[topology]]. From 1953 to 1964 at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, he held his Seminars and presented case histories of patients. During this period he wrote the texts that are found in the collection ''Écrits'', which was first published in 1966. In his seventh seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" (1959–60), which according to Lewis A. Kirshner "arguably represents the most far-reaching attempt to derive a comprehensive ethical position from psychoanalysis,"<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kirshner|first=Lewis A.|date=1 December 2012|title=Toward an Ethics of Psychoanalysis: A Critical Reading of Lacan's Ethics|journal=Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association|language=en|volume=60|issue=6|pages=1223–1242|doi=10.1177/0003065112457876|pmid=23118239|issn=0003-0651|doi-access=free}}</ref> Lacan defined the ethical foundations of psychoanalysis and presented his "ethics for our time"—one that would, in the words of Freud, prove to be equal to the tragedy of modern man and to the "discontent of civilization." At the roots of the ethics is desire: the only promise of analysis is austere, it is the entrance-into-the-I (in French a play on words between ''l'entrée en je'' and ''l'entrée en jeu''). "I must come to the place where the id was," where the analysand discovers, in its absolute nakedness, the truth of his desire. The end of psychoanalysis entails "the purification of desire." He defended three assertions: that psychoanalysis must have a scientific status; that Freudian ideas have radically changed the concepts of subject, of knowledge, and of desire; and that the analytic field is the only place from which it is possible to question the insufficiencies of science and philosophy.<ref>Le séminaire, Livre VIII: Le transfert, Paris: Seuil, 1991.</ref>

===1960s===
Starting in 1962, a complex negotiation took place to determine the status of the SFP within the IPA. Lacan's practice (with its controversial indeterminate-length sessions) and his critical stance towards psychoanalytic orthodoxy led, in August 1963, to the IPA setting the condition that registration of the SFP was dependent upon the removal of Lacan from the list of SFP analysts.<ref>"Minutes of the IPA: The SFP Study Group" in ''Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment'', pp. 79–80.</ref> With the SFP's decision to honour this request in November 1963, Lacan had effectively been stripped of the right to conduct training analyses and thus was constrained to form his own institution in order to accommodate the many candidates who desired to continue their analyses with him. This he did, on 21 June 1964, in the "Founding Act"<ref>Lacan, J., "Founding Act" in ''Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment'', pp. 97–106.</ref> of what became known as the [[École Freudienne de Paris]] (EFP), taking "many representatives of the third generation with him: among them were Maud and Octave [[Maud Mannoni|Mannoni]], [[Serge Leclaire]] ... and Jean Clavreul".{{r|n=Roudinesco 1997|r={{cite book | last=Roudinesco | first=Elisabeth | title=Jacques Lacan | publisher=Polity Press | publication-place=Cambridge | year=1997 | isbn=978-0-7456-1523-3 | oclc=37852095}}|p=293}}

With the support of [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] and [[Louis Althusser]], Lacan was appointed lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He started with a seminar on ''[[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis]]'' in January 1964 in the Dussane room at the [[École Normale Supérieure]]. Lacan began to set forth his own approach to psychoanalysis to an audience of colleagues that had joined him from the SFP. His lectures also attracted many of the École Normale's students. He divided the École Freudienne de Paris into three sections: the section of pure psychoanalysis (training and elaboration of the theory, where members who have been analyzed but have not become analysts can participate); the section for applied psychoanalysis (therapeutic and clinical, physicians who either have not started or have not yet completed analysis are welcome); and the section for taking inventory of the Freudian field (concerning the critique of psychoanalytic literature and the analysis of the theoretical relations with related or affiliated sciences).<ref>Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le psychanalyste à l'École.</ref> In 1967 he invented the procedure of [[The Pass (psychoanalysis)|the Pass]], which was added to the statutes after being voted in by the members of the EFP the following year.

1966 saw the publication of Lacan's collected writings, the ''Écrits'', compiled with an index of concepts by Jacques-Alain Miller. Printed by the prestigious publishing house [[Éditions du Seuil]], the ''Écrits'' did much to establish Lacan's reputation to a wider public. The success of the publication led to a subsequent two-volume edition in 1969.

By the 1960s, Lacan was associated, at least in the public mind, with the far left in France.<ref>[[French Communist Party]] "official philosopher" [[Louis Althusser]] did much to advance this association in the 1960s. Zoltán Tar and Judith Marcus in ''Frankfurt school of sociology'' {{ISBN|0-87855-963-9}} (p. 276) wrote that "Althusser's call to Marxists that the Lacanian enterprise might ... help further revolutionary ends, endorsed Lacan's work even further." Elizabeth A. Grosz writes in her ''Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction'' that "Shortly after the tumultuous [[May 1968 in France|events of May 1968]], Lacan was accused by the authorities of being a subversive, and directly influencing the events that transpired."</ref> In May 1968, Lacan voiced his sympathy for the student protests and as a corollary his followers set up a Department of Psychology at the [[Paris 8 University|University of Vincennes (Paris VIII)]]. However, Lacan's unequivocal comments in 1971 on revolutionary ideals in politics draw a sharp line between the actions of some of his followers and his own style of "revolt".<ref>Regnault, F., "I Was Struck by What You Said..." ''[[Hurly-Burly (journal)|Hurly-Burly]]'', 6, 23–28.</ref>

In 1969, Lacan moved his public seminars to the [[Paris Law Faculty|Faculté de Droit (Panthéon)]], where he continued to deliver his expositions of analytic theory and practice until the dissolution of his school in 1980.

===1970s===
Throughout the final decade of his life, Lacan continued his widely followed seminars. During this period, he developed his concepts of masculine and feminine [[jouissance]] and placed an increased emphasis on the concept of "[[the Real]]" as a point of impossible [[contradiction]] in the "[[The Symbolic|symbolic order]]". Lacan continued to draw widely on various disciplines, working closely on classical Chinese literature with [[François Cheng]]<ref>Price, A., "Lacan's Remarks on Chinese Poetry". ''Hurly-Burly'' '''2''' (2009)</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://lacanianworks.net/2009/11/on-lacans-remarks-on-chinese-poetry-in-seminar-xxiv-november-2009-adrian-price/ |title="On Lacan's remarks on Chinese Poetry in Seminar XXIV : November 2009 : Adrian Price « Lacanian Works »" |access-date=1 February 2022 |archive-date=1 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220201190856/https://lacanianworks.net/2009/11/on-lacans-remarks-on-chinese-poetry-in-seminar-xxiv-november-2009-adrian-price/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> and on the life and work of [[James Joyce]] with Jacques Aubert.<ref>Lacan, J., ''Le séminaire, livre XXIII, Le sinthome''</ref>
The growing success of the ''Écrits'', which was translated (in abridged form) into German and English, led to invitations to lecture in Italy, Japan and the United States. He gave lectures in 1975 at [[Yale]], [[Columbia University|Columbia]] and [[MIT]].<ref>Lacan, J., "Conférences et entretiens dans les universités nord-américans". ''Scilicet'', '''6/7''' (1976)</ref>

===Last years===
Lacan's failing health made it difficult for him to meet the demands of the year-long Seminars he had been delivering since the fifties, but his teaching continued into the first year of the eighties. After dissolving his School, the EFP, in January 1980,<ref>Lacan, J., "Letter of Dissolution". ''Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment'', 129–131.</ref> Lacan travelled to [[Caracas]] to found the Freudian Field Institute on 12 July.<ref>Lacan, J., "Overture to the 1st International Encounter of the Freudian Field" '', Hurly-Burly 6''.</ref>

The Overture to the Caracas Encounter was to be Lacan's final public address. His last texts from the spring of 1981 are brief institutional documents pertaining to the newly formed Freudian Field Institute.

Lacan died on 9 September 1981.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lacan/ |title=Jacques Lacan |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Stanford University |first=Adrian |last=Johnston |date=10 July 2018 |access-date=7 September 2021 |archive-date=9 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190509063051/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lacan/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Major concepts==

===Return to Freud===
Lacan's "return to [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]]" emphasizes a renewed attention to the original texts of Freud, and included a radical [[critique]] of [[ego psychology]], whereas "Lacan's quarrel with [[Object Relations]] [[psychoanalysis]]"{{r|n=Jacobus2005|r={{cite book | last=Jacobus | first=Mary | title=The poetics of psychoanalysis: in the wake of Klein | publisher=Oxford University Press | publication-place=Oxford New York | year=2005 | isbn=978-0-19-924636-6 | oclc=67231305}}|p=25}} was a more muted affair. Here he attempted "to restore to the notion of the Object Relation... the capital of experience that legitimately belongs to it",<ref>Jacques Lacan, ''Ecrits: A Selection'' (London 1997) p. 197</ref> building upon what he termed "the hesitant, but controlled work of [[Melanie Klein]]... Through her we know the function of the imaginary primordial enclosure formed by the ''imago'' of the mother's body",<ref>Lacan, ''Ecrits'' p. 197 and p. 20</ref> as well as upon "the notion of the [[transitional object]], introduced by [[D. W. Winnicott]]... a key-point for the explanation of the genesis of [[fetishism]]".<ref>Lacan, ''Ecrits'' p. 250</ref> Nevertheless, "Lacan systematically questioned those psychoanalytic developments from the 1930s to the 1970s, which were increasingly and almost exclusively focused on the child's early relations with the mother... the pre-Oedipal or Kleinian mother";<ref>Lisa Appignanesi/John Forrester, ''Freud's Women'' (London 2005) p. 462</ref> and Lacan's rereading of Freud—"characteristically, Lacan insists that his return to Freud supplies the only valid model"<ref>David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan, ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis'' (London 1994) p. xxii</ref>—formed a basic conceptual starting-point in that oppositional strategy.

Lacan thought that Freud's ideas of "slips of the tongue", jokes, and the interpretation of dreams all emphasized the agency of language in subjects' own constitution of themselves. In "[[The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud]]," he proposes that "the psychoanalytic experience discovers in the unconscious the whole structure of language". The unconscious is not a primitive or archetypal part of the mind separate from the conscious, linguistic ego, he explained, but rather a formation as complex and structurally sophisticated as consciousness itself. Lacan is associated with the idea that "the unconscious is structured like a language", but the first time this sentence occurs in his work,<ref>Lacan, "Of Structure as an Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever". In ''The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man: The Structuralist Controversy'', ed. R. Macksey & E. Donato, Baltimore & London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970, 186–195</ref> he clarifies that he means that both the unconscious and language are structured, not that they share a single structure; and that the structure of language is such that the subject cannot necessarily be equated with the speaker. This results in the self being denied any point of reference to which to be "restored" following trauma or a crisis of identity.

[[André Green (psychoanalyst)|André Green]] objected that "when you read Freud, it is obvious that this proposition doesn't work for a minute. Freud very clearly opposes the unconscious (which he says is constituted by thing-presentations and nothing else) to the pre-conscious. What is related to language can only belong to the pre-conscious".{{r|Jacobus2005|at=5n}} Freud certainly contrasted "the presentation of the ''word'' and the presentation of the ''thing''... the unconscious presentation is the presentation of the thing alone"<ref>Sigmund Freud, ''On Metapsychology'' (Penguin 1984) p. 207</ref> in his metapsychology. Dylan Evans, however, in his ''Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis,'' "... takes issue with those who, like André Green, question the linguistic aspect of the unconscious, emphasizing Lacan's distinction between ''das Ding'' and ''die Sache'' in Freud's account of thing-presentation".{{r|Jacobus2005|at=8n}} Green's criticism of Lacan also included accusations of intellectual dishonesty, he said, "[He] cheated everybody... the return to Freud was an excuse, it just meant going to Lacan."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.apadivisions.org/division-39/publications/reviews/dead-mother|title=The Dead Mother: The Work of André Green (Book Review)|website=apadivisions.org|access-date=21 May 2019|archive-date=18 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191218203151/https://www.apadivisions.org/division-39/publications/reviews/dead-mother|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Mirror stage===
{{Main|Mirror stage}}
Lacan's first official contribution to psychoanalysis was the [[mirror stage]], which he described as "formative of the function of the 'I' as revealed in psychoanalytic experience." By the early 1950s, he came to regard the mirror stage as more than a moment in the life of the infant; instead, it formed part of the permanent structure of subjectivity. In the "imaginary order", the subject's own image permanently catches and captivates the subject. Lacan explains that "the mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body-image".<ref>Lacan, J., "Some Reflections on the Ego" in ''Écrits''</ref>

As this concept developed further, the stress fell less on its historical value and more on its structural value.<ref name="dylan_evans">{{cite book | last=Evans | first=D. |author-link=Dylan Evans | title=An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis | publisher=Routledge | year=1996 | isbn=978-0-415-13522-1 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iD3r5sbu_rkC}}</ref> In his fourth seminar, "La relation d'objet," Lacan states that "the mirror stage is far from a mere phenomenon which occurs in the development of the child. It illustrates the conflictual nature of the dual relationship. "

The mirror stage describes the formation of the [[Id, ego and super-ego|ego]] via the process of objectification, the ego being the result of a conflict between one's perceived visual appearance and one's emotional experience. This identification is what Lacan called "alienation". At six months, the baby still lacks physical co-ordination. The child is able to recognize itself in a mirror prior to the attainment of control over their bodily movements. The child sees its image as a whole and the synthesis of this image produces a sense of contrast with the lack of co-ordination of the body, which is perceived as a fragmented body. The child experiences this contrast initially as a rivalry with its image, because the wholeness of the image threatens the child with fragmentation—thus the mirror stage gives rise to an aggressive tension between the subject and the image. To resolve this aggressive tension, the child identifies with the image: this primary identification with the counterpart forms the ego.<ref name="dylan_evans"/> Lacan understood this moment of identification as a moment of jubilation, since it leads to an imaginary sense of mastery; yet when the child compares its own precarious sense of mastery with the omnipotence of the mother, a depressive reaction may accompany the jubilation.<ref>Lacan, J., "La relation d'objet" in ''Écrits''.</ref>

Lacan calls the [[Specular reflection|specular]] image "orthopaedic," since it leads the child to anticipate the overcoming of its "real specific prematurity of birth." The vision of the body as integrated and contained, in opposition to the child's actual experience of motor incapacity and the sense of his or her body as fragmented, induces a movement from "insufficiency to anticipation."<ref>Lacan, J., "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I", in Écrits: a selection, London, Routledge Classics, 2001; p. 5</ref> In other words, the mirror image initiates and then aids, like a crutch, the process of the formation of an integrated sense of self.

In the mirror stage a "misunderstanding" (''méconnaissance'') constitutes the ego—the "me" (''moi'') becomes alienated from itself through the introduction of an [[The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)|imaginary]] dimension to the subject. The mirror stage also has a significant [[The Symbolic|symbolic]] dimension, due to the presence of the figure of the adult who carries the infant. Having jubilantly assumed the image as their own, the child turns their head towards this adult, who represents the big [[Other (philosophy)|other]], as if to call on the adult to ratify this image.<ref>Lacan, Tenth Seminar, "L'angoisse," 1962–1963</ref>

===Other===
While [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] uses the term "other", referring to ''der Andere'' (the other person) and ''das Andere'' (otherness), Lacan (influenced by the seminar of [[Alexandre Kojève]]) theorizes [[alterity]] in a manner more closely resembling [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel's]] philosophy.

Lacan often used an [[Matheme|algebraic symbology]] for his concepts: the big other (''l'Autre'') is designated ''A'', and the little other (''l'autre'') is designated ''a''.<ref name="seminar_II">Lacan, J., ''The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), {{ISBN|978-0-393-30709-2}}</ref> He asserts that an awareness of this distinction is fundamental to analytic practice: "the analyst must be imbued with the difference between ''A'' and ''a'', so he can situate himself in the place of Other, and not the other".<ref name="dylan_evans" />{{rp|135}} Dylan Evans explains that:

* The little other is the other who is not really other, but a reflection and projection of the ego. Evans adds that for this reason the symbol ''a'' can represent both the little other and the ego in the schema L.<ref>Schema L in ''The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis''.</ref> It is simultaneously the counterpart and the specular image. The little other is thus entirely inscribed in the imaginary order.
* The big other designates radical alterity, an other-ness which transcends the illusory otherness of the imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Lacan equates this radical alterity with language and the law, and hence the big other is inscribed in the order of the symbolic. Indeed, the big other ''is'' the symbolic insofar as it is particularized for each subject. The other is thus both another subject, in its radical alterity and unassimilable uniqueness, and also the symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject."<ref>Dylan Evans, ''An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis'' (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 133; translation modified<!--but how much of this is translation?-->.</ref>

For Lacan "the Other must first of all be considered a locus in which speech is constituted," so that the other as another subject is secondary to the other as symbolic order.<ref>Lacan, J., "The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955–1956," translated by [[Russell Grigg (philosopher)|Russell Grigg]] (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997)</ref> We can speak of the other ''as a subject'' in a secondary sense only when a subject occupies this position and thereby embodies the other for another subject.<ref>Lacan, J., ''Le séminaire. Livre VIII: Le transfert, 1960–1961.'' ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1994).</ref>

In arguing that speech originates in neither the ego nor in the subject but rather in the other, Lacan stresses that speech and language are beyond the subject's conscious control. They come from another place, outside of consciousness{{mdash}}"the unconscious is the discourse of the Other".<ref>Lacan, J., "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'" in ''Écrits''.</ref> When conceiving the other as a place, Lacan refers to Freud's concept of psychical locality, in which the unconscious is described as "the other scene".

"It is the mother who first occupies the position of the big Other for the child", Dylan Evans explains, "it is she who receives the child's primitive cries and retroactively sanctions them as a particular message".<ref name="dylan_evans"/> The castration complex is formed when the child discovers that this other is not complete because there is a "[[lack (manque)]]" in the other. This means that there is always a [[Sign (semiotics)|signifier]] missing from the trove of signifiers constituted by the other. Lacan illustrates this incomplete other graphically by striking a bar through the symbol ''A''; hence another name for the castrated, incomplete other is the "barred other".<ref>Lacan, J., "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious" in ''Écrits'' and ''Seminar V: Les formations de l'inconscient''</ref>

===Phallus===
[[Feminism|Feminist]] thinkers have both utilised and criticised Lacan's concepts of castration and the [[Phallus#Psychoanalysis|phallus]]. Feminists such as [[Avital Ronell]]{{Citation needed|date=September 2024}}, [[Jane Gallop]],<ref>Gallop, Jane, ''Reading Lacan''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985</ref> and [[Elizabeth Grosz]],<ref name="Grosz">Elizabeth A. Grosz, ''Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction''</ref> have interpreted Lacan's work as opening up new possibilities for feminist theory.

Some feminists have argued that Lacan's phallocentric analysis provides a useful means of understanding gender biases and imposed roles, while others, most notably [[Luce Irigaray]], accuse Lacan of maintaining the [[sexism|sexist]] tradition in psychoanalysis.<ref>Irigary, Luce, ''This Sex Which Is Not One'' 1977 (Eng. trans. 1985)</ref> For Irigaray, the phallus does not define a single axis of gender by its presence or absence; instead, gender has two positive poles. Like Irigaray, French philosopher [[Jacques Derrida]], in criticizing Lacan's concept of castration, discusses the phallus in a [[chiasmus]] with the hymen, as both one and other.<ref>Derrida, Jacques, ''[[Dissemination (Derrida)|Dissemination]]'' (1983)</ref><ref>Butler, Judith. ''Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"'' (1993)</ref>

===Three orders (plus one)===
Lacan considered psychic functions to occur within a universal matrix. The Real, Imaginary and Symbolic are properties of this matrix, which make up part of every psychic function. This is not analogous to Freud's concept of [[id, ego and superego]] since in Freud's model certain functions take place within components of the psyche while Lacan thought that all three orders were part of every function. Lacan refined the concept of the orders over decades, resulting in inconsistencies in his writings. He eventually added a fourth component, the [[sinthome]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bailly|first=Lionel|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9S6tMvU21K0C|title=Lacan: A Beginner's Guide|date=1 December 2012|publisher=Oneworld Publications|isbn=978-1-78074-162-8|language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|77}}

====The Imaginary====
{{Main|The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)}}
[[The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)|The Imaginary]] is the field of images and imagination. The main illusions of this order are synthesis, [[autonomy]], duality, and resemblance. Lacan thought that the relationship created within the [[mirror stage]] between the ego and the reflected image means that the ego and the Imaginary order itself are places of radical alienation: "alienation is constitutive of the Imaginary order".<ref name="seminar_III">Lacan, ''Seminar III: The Psychoses''.</ref> This relationship is also [[narcissistic]].

In ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis'', Lacan argues that [[the Symbolic]] order structures the visual field of the Imaginary, which means that it involves a linguistic dimension. If the signifier is the foundation of the symbolic, the signified and signification are part of the Imaginary order. Language has symbolic and Imaginary connotations—in its Imaginary aspect, language is the "wall of language" that inverts and distorts the discourse of the Other. The Imaginary, however, is rooted in the subject's relationship with his or her own body (the image of the body). In ''Fetishism: the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real'', Lacan argues that in the sexual plane the Imaginary appears as sexual display and courtship love.

Insofar as identification with the analyst is the objective of analysis, Lacan accused major psychoanalytic schools of reducing the practice of psychoanalysis to the Imaginary order.<ref>Écrits, "The Directions of the Treatment."</ref> Instead, Lacan proposes the use of the symbolic to dislodge the disabling fixations of the Imaginary—the analyst transforms the images into words. "The use of the Symbolic", he argued, "is the only way for the analytic process to cross the plane of identification."<ref name="seminar_XI">Lacan, J. ''Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis''.</ref>

====The Symbolic====
{{Main|The Symbolic}}
In his Seminar IV, "La relation d'objet", Lacan argues that the concepts of "Law" and "Structure" are unthinkable without language—thus [[the Symbolic]] is a linguistic dimension. This order is not equivalent to language, however, since language involves the Imaginary and the Real as well. The dimension proper to language in the Symbolic is that of the [[Sign (semiotics)|signifier]]—that is, a dimension in which elements have no positive existence, but which are constituted by virtue of their mutual differences.

The Symbolic is also the field of radical alterity—that is, the Other; the unconscious is the discourse of this Other. It is the realm of the Law that regulates desire in the [[Oedipus complex]]. The Symbolic is the domain of culture as opposed to the Imaginary order of nature. As important elements in the Symbolic, the concepts of [[death]] and [[lack (manque)|lack (''manque'')]] connive to make of the [[Pleasure principle (psychology)|pleasure principle]] the regulator of the distance from [[Das ding an sich|the Thing]] (in German, "''das Ding an sich''") and the [[death drive]] that goes "beyond the pleasure principle by means of repetition"{{mdash}}"the death drive is only a mask of the Symbolic order".<ref name="seminar_II"/>

By working in the Symbolic order, the analyst is able to produce changes in the subjective position of the person undergoing psychoanalysis. These changes will produce imaginary effects because the Imaginary is structured by the Symbolic.<ref name="dylan_evans"/>

====The Real====
{{Main|The Real}}
Lacan's concept of [[the Real]] dates back to 1936 and his doctoral thesis on [[psychosis]]. It was a term that was popular at the time, particularly with [[Émile Meyerson]], who referred to it as "an [[ontological]] absolute, a true [[being-in-itself]]".<ref name="dylan_evans" />{{rp|162}} Lacan returned to the theme of the Real in 1953 and continued to develop it until his death. The Real, for Lacan, is not synonymous with [[reality]]. Not only opposed to [[The Imaginary (psychoanalysis)|the Imaginary]], the Real is also exterior to [[the Symbolic]]. Unlike the latter, which is constituted in terms of oppositions (i.e. presence/absence), "there is no absence in the Real".<ref name="seminar_II"/> Whereas the Symbolic opposition "presence/absence" implies the possibility that something may be missing from the Symbolic, "the Real is always in its place".<ref name="seminar_XI"/> If the Symbolic is a set of differentiated elements (signifiers), the Real in itself is undifferentiated{{mdash}}it bears no fissure. The Symbolic introduces "a cut in the real" in the process of signification: "it is the world of words that creates the world of things—things originally confused in the 'here and now' of the all in the process of coming into being".<ref>Lacan, J., "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis" in ''Écrits''.</ref> The Real is that which is outside language and that resists symbolization absolutely. In Seminar XI Lacan defines the Real as "the impossible" because it is impossible to imagine, impossible to integrate into the Symbolic, and impossible to attain.<ref name="seminar_XI"/>{{rp|280}}  It is this resistance to symbolization that lends the Real its traumatic quality. Finally, the Real is the object of [[anxiety (mood)|anxiety]], insofar as it lacks any possible mediation and is "the essential object which is not an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety ''par excellence''."<ref name="seminar_II"/>

====The Sinthome====
{{Main|Sinthome}}
The term "sinthome" ({{IPA|fr|sɛ̃tom|lang}}) was introduced by Jacques Lacan in his seminar ''Le sinthome'' (1975–76). According to Lacan, ''sinthome'' is the Latin way (1495 Rabelais, IV,63<ref>The term used by Rabelais is not sinthome but ''symptomates'': "Amis, respondit Pantagruel, à tous les doubtes et questions par vous proposées compete une seule solution, et à tous telz symptomates et accidents une seule medicine." (François Rabelais, ''Les Cinq Livres'', La Pochothèque, 1994, p. 1193)</ref>) of spelling the Greek origin of the French word ''symptôme'', meaning [[symptom]]. The seminar is a continuing elaboration of his [[topology]], extending the previous seminar's focus (''RSI'') on the [[Borromean rings|Borromean Knot]] and an exploration of the writings of [[James Joyce]]. Lacan redefines the psychoanalytic symptom in terms of his topology of the subject.

In "Psychoanalysis and its Teachings" (''Écrits'') Lacan views the symptom as inscribed in a writing process, not as ciphered message which was the traditional notion. In his seminar "L'angoisse" (1962–63) he states that the symptom does not call for interpretation: in itself it is not a call to the [[Other (philosophy)|Other]] but a pure ''[[jouissance]]'' addressed to no-one. This is a shift from the linguistic definition of the symptom{{mdash}}as a [[Sign (linguistics)|signifier]]{{mdash}}to his assertion that "the symptom can only be defined as the way in which each subject enjoys (''jouit'') the unconscious in so far as the unconscious determines the subject". He goes from conceiving the symptom as a message which can be deciphered by reference to the unconscious structured like a language to seeing it as the trace of the particular modality of the subject's ''jouissance''.

===Desire===
Lacan's concept of desire is related to [[Hegel]]'s ''Begierde'', a term that implies a continuous force, and therefore somehow differs from Freud's concept of ''Wunsch''.<ref name="Macey">Macey, David, "On the subject of Lacan" in ''Psychoanalysis in Contexts: Paths between Theory and Modern Culture'' (London: Routledge 1995).</ref> Lacan's desire refers always to unconscious desire because it is unconscious desire that forms the central concern of psychoanalysis.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to lead the analysand<!--not a spelling error: "a·nal·y·sand n. A person who is being psychoanalyzed" --> to recognize his/her desire and by doing so to uncover the truth about his/her desire. However this is possible only if desire is articulated in speech:<ref name="Fink">Fink, Bruce, ''The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance'' (Princeton University Press, 1996), {{ISBN|978-0-691-01589-7}}</ref> "It is only once it is formulated, named in the presence of the other, that desire appears in the full sense of the term."<ref name="seminar_I">Lacan, J., ''The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I: Freud's Papers on Technique 1953–1954''(W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), {{ISBN|978-0-393-30697-2}}</ref> And again in ''[[The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis]]'': "what is important is to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring desire into existence. The subject should come to recognize and to name her/his desire. But it isn't a question of recognizing something that could be entirely given. In naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world."<ref name="Lacan">Lacan, J., ''The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954–1955''(W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), {{ISBN|978-0-393-30709-2}}</ref> The truth about desire is somehow present in discourse, although discourse is never able to articulate the entire truth about desire; whenever discourse attempts to articulate desire, there is always a leftover or surplus.<ref name="Écrits">Lacan, J., "The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Powers" in ''Écrits: A Selection'' translated by Bruce Fink (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), {{ISBN|978-0393325287}}</ref>

Lacan distinguishes desire from need and from [[Demand (psychoanalysis)|demand]]. Need is a biological [[instinct]] where the subject depends on the Other to satisfy its own needs: in order to get the Other's help, "need" must be articulated in "demand". But the presence of the Other not only ensures the satisfaction of the "need", it also represents the Other's love. Consequently, "demand" acquires a double function: on the one hand, it articulates "need", and on the other, acts as a "demand for love". Even after the "need" articulated in demand is satisfied, the "demand for love" remains unsatisfied since the Other cannot provide the unconditional love that the subject seeks. "Desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second."<ref name="Phallus">Lacan, J., "The Signification of the Phallus" in ''Écrits''</ref> Desire is a surplus, a leftover, produced by the articulation of need in demand: "desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need".<ref name="Phallus"/> Unlike need, which can be satisfied, desire can never be satisfied: it is constant in its pressure and eternal. The attainment of desire does not consist in being fulfilled but in its reproduction as such. As [[Slavoj Žižek]] puts it, "desire's ''raison d'être'' is not to realize its goal, to find full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire".<ref name="Žižek">Žižek, Slavoj, ''The Plague of Fantasies'' (London: Verso 1997), p. 39.</ref>

Lacan also distinguishes between desire and the drives: desire is one and drives are many. The drives are the partial manifestations of a single force called desire.<ref>Lacan, J. ''The Seminar: Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), {{ISBN|978-0393317756}}</ref> Lacan's concept of "''[[objet petit a]]''" is the object of desire, although this object is not that towards which desire tends, but rather the cause of desire. Desire is not a relation to an object but a relation to a [[lack (manque)|lack (''manque'')]].

In ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis'' Lacan argues that "man's desire is the desire of the Other." This entails the following:
# Desire is the desire of the Other's desire, meaning that desire is the object of another's desire and that desire is also desire for recognition. Here Lacan follows [[Alexandre Kojève]], who follows Hegel: for Kojève the subject must risk his own life if he wants to achieve the desired prestige.<ref name="Kojève">Kojève, Alexandre, ''Introduction to the Reading of Hegel'', translated by James H. Nichols Jr. (New York: Basic Books 1969), p. 39.</ref> This desire to be the object of another's desire is best exemplified in the Oedipus complex, when the subject desires to be the phallus of the mother.
# In "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious",<ref>Lacan, J., ''Écrits: A Selection'' translated by Bruce Fink (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), {{ISBN|978-0393325287}}</ref> Lacan contends that the subject desires from the point of view of another whereby the object of someone's desire is an object desired by another one: what makes the object desirable is that it is precisely desired by someone else. Again Lacan follows Kojève. who follows Hegel. This aspect of desire is present in hysteria, for the hysteric is someone who converts another's desire into his/her own (see Sigmund Freud's "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" in SE VII, where Dora desires Frau K because she identifies with Herr K). What matters then in the analysis of a hysteric is not to find out the object of her desire but to discover the subject with whom she identifies.
# ''Désir de l'Autre'', which is translated as "desire for the Other" (though it could also be "desire of the Other"). The fundamental desire is the incestuous desire for the mother, the primordial Other.<ref>Lacan, J. ''The Seminar: Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), {{ISBN|978-0393316131}}</ref>
# Desire is "the desire for something else", since it is impossible to desire what one already has. The object of desire is continually deferred, which is why desire is a [[metonymy]].<ref>Lacan, J., "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason since Freud" in ''Écrits: A Selection'' translated by Bruce Fink (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), {{ISBN|978-0393325287}}</ref>
# Desire appears in the field of the Other{{mdash}}that is, in the unconscious.

Last but not least for Lacan, the first person who occupies the place of the Other is the mother and at first the child is at her mercy. Only when the father articulates desire with the Law by castrating the mother is the subject liberated from desire for the mother.<ref>Lacan, J. '' Le Séminaire: Livre IV. La relation d'objet, 1956–1957'' ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris; Seuil, 1994)</ref>

===Drive===
Lacan maintains Freud's distinction between drive (''Trieb'') and instinct (''Instinkt''). Drives differ from biological needs because they can never be satisfied and do not aim at an object but rather circle perpetually around it. He argues that the purpose of the drive (''Triebziel'') is not to reach a goal but to follow its aim, meaning "the way itself" instead of "the final destination"{{mdash}}that is, to circle around the object. The purpose of the drive is to return to its circular path and the true source of ''[[jouissance]]'' is the repetitive movement of this closed circuit.<ref name="ReferenceA">The Seminar, Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis</ref> Lacan posits drives as both cultural and symbolic constructs: to him, "the drive is not a given, something archaic, primordial".<ref name="ReferenceA"/> He incorporates the four elements of drives as defined by Freud (pressure, end, object and source) to his theory of the drive's circuit: the drive originates in the erogenous zone, circles round the object, and returns to the erogenous zone. Three grammatical voices structure this circuit:
# the active voice (to see)
# the reflexive voice (to see oneself)
# the passive voice (to be seen)
The active and reflexive voices are autoerotic{{mdash}}they lack a subject. It is only when the drive completes its circuit with the passive voice that a new subject appears, implying that, prior to that instance, there was no subject.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Despite being the "passive" voice, the drive is essentially active: "to make oneself be seen" rather than "to be seen". The circuit of the drive is the only way for the subject to transgress the pleasure principle.

To Freud sexuality is composed of partial drives (i.e. the oral or the anal drives) each specified by a different erotogenic zone. At first these partial drives function independently (i.e. the polymorphous perversity of children), it is only in puberty that they become organized under the aegis of the genital organs.<ref>Freud, ''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'', S.E. VII</ref> Lacan accepts the partial nature of drives, but (1) he rejects the notion that partial drives can ever attain any complete organization{{mdash}}the primacy of the genital zone, if achieved, is always precarious; and (2) he argues that drives are partial in that they represent sexuality only partially and not in the sense that they are a part of the whole. Drives do not represent the reproductive function of sexuality but only the dimension of ''[[jouissance]]''.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

Lacan identifies four partial drives: the oral drive (the erogenous zones are the lips (the partial object the breast{{mdash}}the verb is "to suck"), the anal drive (the anus and the faeces, "to shit"), the scopic drive (the eyes and the gaze, "to see") and the invocatory drive (the ears and the voice, "to hear"). The first two drives relate to demand and the last two to desire.

The notion of dualism is maintained throughout Freud's various reformulations of the drive-theory. From the initial opposition between sexual drives and ego-drives (self-preservation) to the final opposition between the life drives (''Lebenstriebe'') and the death drives (''Todestriebe'').<ref>Freud, ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', S.E. XVIII</ref> Lacan retains Freud's dualism, but in terms of an opposition between the symbolic and the imaginary and not referred to different kinds of drives. For Lacan all drives are sexual drives, and every drive is a death drive (''pulsion de mort'') since every drive is excessive, repetitive and destructive.<ref>Position of the Unconscious, ''Ecrits''</ref>

The drives are closely related to desire, since both originate in the field of the subject.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> But they are not to be confused: drives are the partial aspects in which desire is realized{{mdash}}desire is one and undivided, whereas the drives are its partial manifestations. A drive is a demand that is not caught up in the dialectical mediation of desire; drive is a "mechanical" insistence that is not ensnared in demand's dialectical mediation.<ref>Slavoj Zizek, ''Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture''</ref>

===Other concepts===
{{Col-begin}}
{{Col-2}}
* [[Foreclosure (psychoanalysis)]]
* The [[Four discourses]]
* The [[graph of desire]]
* [[Lack (manque)]]
* The [[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis|"Lamella"]]
{{Col-2}}
* [[Matheme]]
* [[Name of the Father]]
* ''[[Objet petit a]]''
* [[Sinthome]]
{{Col-end}}

==Lacan on error and knowledge==
Building on Freud's ''[[The Psychopathology of Everyday Life]]'', Lacan long argued that "every unsuccessful act is a successful, not to say 'well-turned', discourse", highlighting as well "sudden transformations of errors into truths, which seemed to be due to nothing more than perseverance".<ref>Jacques Lacan, ''Ecrits: A Selection'' (London 1997) p. 58 and p. 121</ref> In a late seminar, he generalised more fully the psychoanalytic discovery of "truth—arising from misunderstanding", so as to maintain that "the subject is naturally erring... discourse structures alone give him his moorings and reference points, signs identify and orient him; if he neglects, forgets, or loses them, he is condemned to err anew".<ref>[[Jacques-Alain Miller]], "Microscopia", in Jacques Lacan, ''Television'' (London 1990) p. xxvii</ref>

Because of "the alienation to which speaking beings are subjected due to their being in language",<ref>Bruce Fink, ''The Lacanian Subject'' (Princeton 1997) p. 173</ref> to survive "one must let oneself be taken in by signs and become the dupe of a discourse... [of] fictions organized in to a discourse".<ref name="Miller, p. xxvii">Miller, p. xxvii</ref> For Lacan, with "masculine knowledge irredeemably an erring",<ref>Seminar XXI, quoted in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose eds., ''Feminine Sexuality'' (New York 1982) p. 51</ref> the individual "must thus allow himself to be fooled by these signs to have a chance of getting his bearings amidst them; he must place and maintain himself in the wake of a discourse... become the dupe of a discourse... ''les non-dupes errent''".<ref name="Miller, p. xxvii"/>

Lacan comes close here to one of the points where "very occasionally he sounds like [[Thomas Kuhn]] (whom he never mentions)",<ref>Oliver Feltham, "Enjoy your Stay", in Justin Clemens/Russell Grigg, ''Jacques Lacan and the Other side of psychoanalysis'' (2006) p. 180</ref> with Lacan's "discourse" resembling Kuhn's "[[paradigm]]" seen as "the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community".<ref>Thomas Kuhn, ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' (London 1970) p. 175</ref>

==Clinical contributions==

===Variable-length session===<!-- "Variable-length session" redirects here -->
The "variable-length psychoanalytic session" was one of Lacan's crucial clinical innovations,<ref>John Forrester, 'Dead on Time: Lacan's Theory of Temporality' in: Forrester, ''The Seductions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida'' Cambridge: C.U.P., pp. 169–218, 352–370</ref> and a key element in his conflicts with the IPA, to whom his "innovation of reducing the fifty-minute analytic hour to a [[Delphic Oracle|Delphic]] seven or eight minutes (or sometimes even to a single oracular ''parole'' murmured in the waiting-room)"<ref>Janet Malcolm, ''Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession'' (London 1988) p. 4</ref> was unacceptable. Lacan's variable-length sessions lasted anywhere from a few minutes (or even, if deemed appropriate by the analyst, a few seconds) to several hours.{{Citation needed|date=December 2010}} This practice replaced the classical [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] "fifty minute hour".

With respect to what he called "the cutting up of the 'timing'", Lacan asked the question, "Why make an intervention impossible at this point, which is consequently privileged in this way?"<ref>Jacques Lacan, ''Écrits: A Selection'' (London 1996) p. 99</ref> By allowing the analyst's intervention on timing, the variable-length session removed the patient's former certainty as to the length of time that they would be on the couch.<ref name="Fink 1996">Bruce Fink, ''A Clinical Introduction to Lacananian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique'' (Newhaven: Harvard, 1996)</ref>{{rp|18}} When Lacan adopted the practice, "the psychoanalytic establishment were scandalized"<ref name="Fink 1996" />{{rp|17}}<ref>{{cite web |title=La scission de la Société Psychanalytique de Paris en 1953, quelques notes pour un rappel historique |last=de Mijolla |first=Alain |publisher=Société Psychanalytique de Paris |url=http://www.spp.asso.fr/Main/HistoirePsy/Articles/Items/1.htm |access-date=8 April 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081216163350/http://www.spp.asso.fr/main/HistoirePsy/Articles/Items/1.htm |archive-date=16 December 2008 }}</ref>—and, given that "between 1979 and 1980 he saw an average of ten patients an hour", it is perhaps not hard to see why. Psychoanalysis was "reduced to zero",{{r|n=Roudinesco 1997|p=397}}, though the treatments were no less lucrative.

At the time of his original innovation, Lacan described the issue as concerning "the systematic use of shorter sessions in certain analyses, and in particular in training analyses";<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lacan |first=Jacques |date=4 July 1953|title=Letter to Rudolph Loewenstein |journal=[[October (journal)|October]] |volume=40 |page=65 |isbn=978-0-262-75188-9}}</ref> and in practice it was certainly a shortening of the session around the so-called "critical moment"<ref>Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, ''Lacan: The Absolute Master'' (1991) p. 120</ref> which took place, so that critics wrote that "everyone is well aware what is meant by the deceptive phrase 'variable length' ... sessions systematically reduced to just a few minutes".<ref>Cornélius Castoriadis, in Roudinesco (1997) p. 386</ref> Irrespective of the theoretical merits of breaking up patients' expectations, it was clear that "the Lacanian analyst never wants to 'shake up' the routine by keeping them for more rather than less time".<ref>[[Sherry Turkle]], ''Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution'' (London 1978) p. 204</ref> Lacan's shorter sessions enabled him to take many more clients than therapists using orthodox Freudian methods, and this growth continued as Lacan's students and followers adopted the same practice.<ref>David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan, ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis'' (London 1994) p. xiv and xxxv</ref>

Accepting the importance of "the critical moment when insight arises",<ref>R. Horacio Etchegoyen, ''The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique'' (London 2005) p. 677</ref> [[object relations theory]] would nonetheless suggest that "if the analyst does not provide the patient with space in which nothing ''needs'' to happen there is no space in which something ''can'' happen".<ref>Michael Parsons, ''The Dove that Returns, the Dove that Vanishes'' (London 2000) pp. 16–17</ref> [[Julia Kristeva]] would concur that "Lacan, alert to the scandal of the timeless intrinsic to the analytic experience, was mistaken in wanting to ritualize it as a technique of scansion (short sessions)".<ref>Julia Kristeva, ''Intimate Revolt'' (New York 2002) p. 42</ref>

==Writings and writing style==
According to Jean-Michel Rabaté, Lacan in the mid-1950s classed the seminars as commentaries on Freud rather than presentations of his own doctrine (like the writings), while Lacan by 1971 placed the most value on his teaching and "the interactive space of his seminar" (in contrast to [[Sigmund Freud]]). Rabaté also argued that from 1964 onward, the seminars include original ideas. However, Rabaté also wrote that the seminars are "more problematic" because of the importance of the interactive performances, and because they were partly edited and rewritten.<ref name=LTtF-Rabaté2003>{{Citation |last=Rabaté |first=Jean-Michel |title=Lacan's turn to Freud |date=2003 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-lacan/lacans-turn-to-freud/306335BEAEBD023D003CED49DFAD49F9 |work=The Cambridge Companion to Lacan |pages=1–24 |editor-last=Rabaté |editor-first=Jean-Michel |series=Cambridge Companions to Literature |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-80744-9 |access-date=2022-05-26 |archive-date=19 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180619053859/https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-lacan/lacans-turn-to-freud/306335BEAEBD023D003CED49DFAD49F9 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Most of Lacan's psychoanalytic writings from the 1940s through to the early 1960s were compiled with an index of concepts by Jacques-Alain Miller in the 1966 collection, titled simply ''Écrits''. Published in French by Éditions du Seuil, they were later issued as a two-volume set (1970/1) with a new "Preface". A selection of the writings (chosen by Lacan himself) were translated by [[Alan Sheridan]] and published by Tavistock Press in 1977. The full 35-text volume appeared for the first time in English in Bruce Fink's translation published by [[W. W. Norton & Company|Norton & Co]]. (2006). The ''Écrits'' were included on the list of [[Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century|100 most influential books of the 20th century]] compiled and polled by the broadsheet ''[[Le Monde]]''.

Lacan's writings from the late sixties and seventies (thus subsequent to the 1966 collection) were collected posthumously, along with some early texts from the nineteen thirties, in the Éditions du Seuil volume ''Autres écrits'' (2001).

Although most of the texts in ''Écrits'' and ''Autres écrits'' are closely related to Lacan's lectures or lessons from his Seminar, more often than not the style is denser than Lacan's oral delivery, and a clear distinction between the writings and the transcriptions of the oral teaching is evident to the reader.

An often neglected aspect of Lacan's oral and writing style is his influence from his colleague and personal friend [[Henry Corbin]], who introduced Lacan to the thought of [[Ibn Arabi]].<ref>Élisabeth Roudinesco, ''Jacques Lacan'' (Malden: Polity Press, 1999), 11, 89, 98, 435.</ref><ref>Jacques Lacan, ''L'éthique de la psychanalyse: Séminaire VII'' (Paris : Seuil, 1986), 224-225.</ref><ref>Jacques Lacan, ''Le Triomphe de La Religion précédé de Discours aux Catholiques'' (Paris: Seuil, 2005), 65.</ref> Similarities have been pointed out between the writing styles of Lacan and Ibn Arabi.<ref>Abdesselem Rechak, ''Le grand secret de la psychanalyse'' (Mandeure: self-published, 2020).</ref>

[[Jacques-Alain Miller]] is the sole editor of [[The Seminars of Jacques Lacan|Lacan's seminars]], which contain the majority of his life's work. "There has been considerable controversy over the accuracy or otherwise of the transcription and editing", as well as over "Miller's refusal to allow any critical or annotated edition to be published".<ref>David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan, ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis'' (London 1994) p. x</ref> Despite Lacan's status as a major figure in the history of [[psychoanalysis]], some of his seminars remain unpublished. Since 1984, Miller has been regularly conducting a series of lectures, "L'orientation lacanienne." Miller's teachings have been published in the US by the journal ''[[Lacanian Ink]].''

Lacan's writing is notoriously difficult, due in part to the repeated [[Hegelian]]/[[Alexandre Kojève|Kojèvean]] allusions, wide theoretical divergences from other psychoanalytic and philosophical theory, and an obscure prose style. For some, "the impenetrability of Lacan's prose... [is] too often regarded as profundity precisely because it cannot be understood".<ref>Richard Stevens, ''Sigmund Freud: Examining the Essence of his Contribution'' (Basingstoke 2008) p. 191n</ref> Arguably at least, "the imitation of his style by other [[Lacanian movement|'Lacanian' commentators]]" has resulted in "an obscurantist antisystematic tradition in Lacanian literature".<ref>Yannis Stavrakakis, ''Lacan and the Political'' (London: Routledge, 1999) pp. 5–6</ref>

Although Lacan is a major influence on psychoanalysis in France and parts of Latin America, in the English-speaking world his influence on [[clinical psychology]] has been far less and his ideas are best known in the arts and humanities. However, there are Lacanian psychoanalytic societies in both North America and the United Kingdom that carry on his work.<ref name="dylan_evans"/>

One example of Lacan's work being practiced in the United States is found in the works of Annie G. Rogers (''A Shining Affliction''; ''The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma''), which credit Lacanian theory for many therapeutic insights in successfully treating sexually abused young women.<ref>e.g. ''A Shining Affliction'' {{ISBN|978-0-14-024012-2}}</ref> Lacan's work has also reached Quebec, where The Interdisciplinary Freudian Group for Research and Clinical and Cultural Interventions (GIFRIC) claims that it has used a modified form of Lacanian psychoanalysis in successfully treating psychosis in many of its patients, a task once thought to be unsuited for psychoanalysis, even by psychoanalysts themselves<!--pscyhoanalysis not to treat psychosis???-->.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.gifric.com/388.htm | title=Le 388 | access-date=14 March 2015 | archive-date=24 February 2015 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150224104421/http://www.gifric.com/388.htm | url-status=live }}</ref>

==Legacy==
In his introduction to the 1994 Penguin edition of Lacan's ''[[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis|The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis]]'', translator and historian [[David Macey]] describes Lacan as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]]".<ref name=controversial_quote>[[David Macey]], "Introduction", Jacques Lacan (1994). ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis'', London: Penguin Books, p. xiv</ref> His ideas had a significant impact on [[post-structuralism]], [[critical theory]], [[20th-century French philosophy|French philosophy]], [[film theory]], and clinical psychoanalysis.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Marta | first=Jan | title=Lacan and post-Structuralism | journal=The American Journal of Psychoanalysis | publisher=Springer Science and Business Media LLC | volume=47 | issue=1 | year=1987 | issn=0002-9548 | doi=10.1007/bf01252332 | pages=51–57| pmid=2437811 | s2cid=21435280 }}</ref> Theorists such as [[Rafael Holmberg]] have argued that Lacanian psychoanalysis even contributes to a criticism of the idea of [[Nature]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Holmberg |first1=Rafael |title=The Unhappy Category of Nature |journal=Culture, Theory and Critique |date=2024 |pages=1–16 |doi=10.1080/14735784.2024.2400152 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

In 2003, Rabaté described "The Freudian Thing" (1956) as one of his "most important and programmatic essays".<ref name=LTtF-Rabaté2003/>

==Criticism==
{{Criticism section|date=September 2025}}
===Theory of psychoanalysis===
[[Social psychologist]], psychoanalyst, and [[humanistic]] [[philosopher]] [[Erich Fromm]] rejected Lacan's view on psychonalysis whereby "true psychoanalysis is founded on the relation between man and talk [''parole''],"<ref name=autres>{{cite book |last=Lacan|first=Jacques |date=2001 |title=Autres Ecrits |language=French|trans-title=Other Writings|publisher=[[Seuil]] |isbn= 978-2020486477}}</ref> and denounced the reduction of analysis to "a pure and simple exchange of words," arguing that the relation is instead about an "exchange of signs." Fromm supports "clarity and unambiguity" in the communication with others (''autrui'') and opposes the Lacanian "wordplay [that] is associated with the provision of meaning."<ref>Onfray, Michel: "Erich Fromm et la psychanalyse humaniste" ("Erich Fromm and the humanist psychoanalysis"). Conference held in the [[Université populaire de Caen]], transmitted on ''[[France Culture]]'', 16 August 2011</ref> Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalyst [[Élisabeth Roudinesco]], in her biography of Lacan, writes that she found some writings of her subject "incomprehensible", as also recorded by [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]],<ref name=vie>{{cite book |last= Roudinesco|first=Élisabeth|author-link= Élisabeth Roudinesco|date=1993 |title=Jacques Lacan: Esquisse d'une vie, histoire d'un système de pensée|language=French|trans-title=Sketch of a life, history of a system of thought|publisher=[[Fayard]] |isbn= 978-2213031460}}</ref>{{rp|206}} [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]],<ref name=vie/>{{rp|305}} and [[Martin Heidegger]].<ref name=vie/>{{rp|306}}

Former Lacan student [[Didier Anzieu]], in a 1967 article titled "Against Lacan," described him as a "danger" because he kept his students tied to an "unending dependence on an idol, a logic, or a language," by holding out the promise of "fundamental truths" to be revealed "but always at some further point ...and only to those who continued to travel with him." According to [[Sherry Turkle]], these attitudes are "representative of how most members of the [[École Freudienne de Paris|Association]] talk about Lacan."{{efn|When the French Society of Psychoanalysis requested official recognition from and affiliation with the ''Association Psychanalytique Internationale'' ([[International Psychoanalytical Association]]) in 1959, the API demanded the sidelining of Jacques Lacan as a didactician. Two currents of the ''[[Société Française de Psychanalyse]]'' (French Society of Psychoanalysis) then stood opposed to each other: one, which became the majority in the SFP in November 1963, was led by Daniel Lagache; while a second current, which became the minority, brought together the supporters of Jacques Lacan.}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Turkle |first=Sherry |date=1978 |url=https://www.scribd.com/document/228963082/Psychoanalytic-Politics-Freud-s-French-Revolution-Sherry-Turkle |access-date=October 24, 2023 |author-link=Sherry Turkle |title=Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0465066070 |archive-date=2 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231102081400/https://www.scribd.com/document/228963082/Psychoanalytic-Politics-Freud-s-French-Revolution-Sherry-Turkle |url-status=live }}</ref>

By 1977, Lacan was declaring that he was not "too keen" (French: ''pas chaud-chaud'') to claim that "when one practices psychoanalysis, one knows where one goes", stating that "psychoanalysis, like every other human activity, undoubtedly participates in abuse. One does as if one knows something."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lacan |first1=Jacques |date=1977 |title=Ouverture de la section clinique |language=French |url=http://www.gnipl.fr/Recherche_Lacan/wp-content/uploads/1977%20LACAN%20OUVERTURE%20A%20LA%20SECTION%20CLINIQUE.pdf |access-date=29 October 2023 |trans-title=Opening of the clinical section |journal=Ornicar? |issue=9 |pages=7–24 |archive-date=29 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231029193731/http://www.gnipl.fr/Recherche_Lacan/wp-content/uploads/1977%20LACAN%20OUVERTURE%20A%20LA%20SECTION%20CLINIQUE.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>

Lacan's [[charismatic authority]] has been linked to the many conflicts among his followers and in the analytic schools he was involved with.<ref>Jacqueline Rose, ''On Not Being Able To Sleep: Psychoanalysis and the Modern World'' (London 2003) p. 176</ref> His intellectual style has also come in for much criticism. Eclectic in his use of sources,<ref>Philip Hill, ''Lacan for Beginners'' (London 1997) p. 8</ref> Lacan has been seen as concealing his own thought behind the apparent explication of that of others.{{r|n=Roudinesco 1997|p=46}} Thus, his "return to Freud" was called by [[Malcolm Bowie]] "a complete pattern of dissenting assent to the ideas of Freud {{Nowrap|. . .}} Lacan's argument is conducted on Freud's behalf and, at the same time, against him".<ref>Malcolm Bowie, ''Lacan'' (London 1991) pp. 6–7</ref> Bowie has also suggested that Lacan suffered from both a love of [[system]] and a deep-seated opposition to all forms of system.<ref>Adam Phillips, ''On Flirtation'' (London, 1996), pp. 161–2.</ref>

===Therapeutic practice===
Lacan, in his psychoanalytic practice, came to hold sessions of diminishing duration.<ref>{{cite book |last=Borch-Jacobsen |first=Mikkel |author-link=Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen|date= 2005 |editor-last=Meyer|editor-first=Catherine|title=Le livre noir de la psychanalyse|language=French|trans-title=The black boom of Psychoanalysis |publisher=Les Arènes|pages=228–323|trans-chapter=A Zero Theory|chapter=Une Théorie Zéro|isbn=978-2912485885}}</ref> Eventually, Lacan's student relates, they often lasted no more than five minutes, held sometimes with Lacan standing in the typically open door of the room.{{efn|Godin relates, without criticizing this, that Lacan would often read ''[[Le Figaro]]'' throughout a session, "turning the pages noisily" and sometimes exclaiming 'this is insane!' at what he was reading. And he'd never give change if the client did not have the exact amount of money for the session.}} According to Godin, Lacan sometimes struck patients, once literally kicking out a female patient.<ref name=standing>{{cite book |last=Godin|first=Jean-Guy |date=2001 |title=Jacques Lacan, 5, rue de Lille|language=French|trans-title=Jacques Lacan, 5, Lille street|publisher=[[Seuil]] |isbn= 978-2020121606}}</ref>{{rp|82}} Author and Lacanian psychoanalyst [[Jacques-Alain Miller]], who also was his son in law, asserts that "[Lacan]'s morality derives from a superior cynicism."<ref name=cynic>{{cite journal |last1=Onfray|first1=Michel|author-link1=Michel Onfray |last2= Miller|first2=Jacques-Alain |author-link2= Jacques-Alain Miller|date=2010 |title=En finir avec Freud |language=French|trans-title=To be done with Freud|journal=Philosophie Magazine|issue=36 |pages=10–15|url=|quote=Sa morale relève d'un cynisme supérieur.}}</ref>

Lacan was criticised for being aggressive with his clients, often physically hitting them, sometimes sleeping with them,<ref name=anti/>{{rp|304}}{{efn|In her biography, Roudinesco clarifies that this would happen "always away from the place where the analysis was taking place."}} and charging "exorbitant amounts of money" for each session.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rey|first=Pierre |date=2016 |orig-date=1st pub. 1988 |title=Une saison chez Lacan|language=French|trans-title=A season at Lacan's|publisher=Éditions Points|isbn= 978-2020121606}}</ref>{{efn|Rey, who was ''[[Marie Claire]]'' editor, relates that he, in order to be able to meet the prices of Lacan, for whom he constantly felt "gratitude," abandoned journalism and started writing best-sellers.}} [[Jean Laplanche]] argued that Lacan could have "harmed" some of his clients.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=André|first1=Jacques|date=2012|title=Hommage à Jean Laplanche|journal=Le Carnet Psy|volume=6|issue=164|pages=58–61|language=French|url=https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-carnet-psy-2012-6-page-58.htm|access-date=29 October 2023|quote=[Lacan] avait pu nuire à certains de ses analysants.|archive-date=29 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231029193729/https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-carnet-psy-2012-6-page-58.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>

Others have been more forceful still, describing him as "The Shrink from Hell"<ref name=stu>{{cite web|date=7 April 2018|last=Jeffries|first=Stuart|title=The selfish shrink: life with Jacques Lacan|website=[[The Spectator|The Spectator Australia]]|access-date=31 October 2023|url-access=subscription|url=https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/04/the-selfish-shrink-life-with-jacques-lacan/|archive-date=31 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231031191737/https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/04/the-selfish-shrink-life-with-jacques-lacan/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=tallis>{{cite web|last1=Tallis|first1=Raymond|title=The Shrink from Hell|url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/the-shrink-from-hell/159376.article|website=[[Times Higher Education]]|access-date=31 October 2023|date=31 October 1997|archive-date=20 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231020231914/https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/the-shrink-from-hell/159376.article|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=dick>{{cite web|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/jacques-lacan-was-sort-of-a-dick-323/|last1=Wolters|first1=Eugene|title=French Philosopher Jacques Lacan Was Sort of a Dick|website=[[Vice (magazine)|Vice]]|access-date=31 October 2023|date=8 October 2014|archive-date=31 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231031191737/https://www.vice.com/en/article/4w75en/jacques-lacan-was-sort-of-a-dick-323|url-status=live}}</ref> and focusing on the many associates{{endash}}from lovers and family to colleagues, patients, and editors{{endash}}who were left damaged in his wake.

===Feminist criticism===
Many feminist thinkers have criticized Lacan's thought. American philosopher [[Cynthia Willett]] accuses Lacan for portraying the mother less as a "loving", "nurturing" presence in the infant's world, than as a "[[whore]]" who abandons the child to a "higher [[Auction|bidder]] for her affections",<ref>{{cite book |last=Willett |first=Cynthia |date=1998|author-link=Cynthia Willett |title=Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities|publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0415912105}}</ref> while [[Judith Butler]], philosopher and [[gender studies]] scholar, reworks these notions as "gender performativity".<ref>{{cite book |last= Butler |first=Judith |date=2006|author-link=Judith Butler|title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity|publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0415389556}}</ref>

[[Psycholinguistics|Psycholinguist]] and [[Cultural studies|cultural theorist]] [[Luce Irigaray]] "ridicules" through "mimicry and exaggeration" these representations of femininity posited as natural and proper by Lacan.<ref>{{cite book |last= Irigaray|first=Luce |date=1985|author-link=Luce Irigaray|title=Speculum of the Other Woman|publisher=[[Cornell University]] Press |isbn= 978-0801493300}}</ref> Irigaray accuses Lacan of perpetuating [[Phallocentrism|phallocentric]] mastery in philosophical and psychoanalytic discourse.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Irigaray|first1=Luce |date=2011 |title=Cosi Fan Tutti|journal=Continental Aesthetics Reader}}</ref>{{efn|Irigaray too has been criticized by Sokal and Bricmont for ostensibly misusing scientific terminology in her work. Among their points of criticism are the interest Irigaray claims Einstein had in "accelerations without electromagnetic re-equilibrations", her confusing [[special relativity]] with [[general relativity]], and her claim (Irigaray, ''To Speak is Never Neutral'', 2017) that Einstein's [[mass–energy equivalence]] equation is a "sexed equation" since "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us".}}

Others have echoed this accusation, seeing Lacan as trapped in the very [[phallocentric]] mastery his language ostensibly sought to undermine.<ref>[[Jacqueline Rose]], "Introduction – II", in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, ''Feminine Sexuality'' (New York 1982) p. 56</ref> The result, [[Castoriadis]] would maintain, was to make all thought depend upon Lacan himself, and thus to stifle the capacity for independent thought among all those around him.{{r|n=Roudinesco 1997|p=386}}

In an interview with anthropologist James Hunt, Sylvia Lacan said of her late husband: "He was a man who worked tremendously hard. Tremendously intelligent. He was...what is called, well, a domestic tyrant... But he was worth the trouble. I have absolutely no reproaches to make against him. Just the contrary. But it was not possible to be a wife, a mother to my children, and an actress at the same time."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hunt|first=Jamer Kennedy|date=1995|title=Absence to presence: The life history of Sylvia [Bataille] Lacan (France)|url=https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/16832/9610654.PDF?sequence=1&isAllowed=y|access-date=24 October 2020|website=Rice Digital Scholarship|archive-date=15 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220215011545/https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/16832/9610654.PDF?sequence=1&isAllowed=y|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Mathematics in psychoanalysis===
In their work ''[[Fashionable Nonsense]]'' (1997), through which their stated intention was to show that "famous intellectuals" abuse scientific terminology and concepts,{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|p=x}} professors of physics [[Alan Sokal]] and [[Jean Bricmont]] examine Lacan's frequent references to [[mathematics]]. They are highly critical of his use of terms from mathematical fields, accusing him of "superficial erudition", of abusing scientific concepts that he does not understand, and of producing statements that are "[[not even wrong]]".{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|r={{cite book | last1=Sokal | first1=Alan |author-link=Alan Sokal |last2=Bricmont |first2=Jean |author2-link=Jean Bricmont | title=[[Fashionable Nonsense|Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science]] | publisher=Picador USA | publication-place=New York | year=1998 | isbn=0-312-20407-8 | oclc=39605994}}|p=21|q=[Lacan] mixes [the terms] up arbitrarily and without paying attention to their meaning.}}

In 1960, the mathematical "calculations" he presents in a seminar are assessed as "pure fantasies".{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|p=25-26}}

Sokal and Bricmont find Lacan to be "fond" of [[topology]], in which, though, they see Lacan committing serious errors. He uses technical terms erroneously, e.g. "[[Topological space|space]]", "[[Bounded set (topological vector space)|bounded]]", "[[Closed set|closed]]", and even "topology" itself, and posits claims about a literal and not just symbolic or even [[metaphor]]ical relation of topological mathematics with [[neurosis]].{{efn|E.g. Lacan states: "[The] [[torus]] really exists and it is exactly the structure of the [[Neurosis|neurotic]]. It is not an [[analogy|analogon]]; it is not even an [[abstraction]], because an abstraction is some sort of diminution of reality, and I think [the torus] is reality itself." Lacan (1970)}}{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|p=18-21}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Lacan |first=Jacques |date= 1 May 1970 |editor-last1= Macksey|editor-first1=Richard |editor-last2= Donato |editor-first2=Eugenio |title=The Languages of Criticism & the Sciences of Man: the Structuralist Controversy|publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University]] Press|pages=186–200 |chapter=Of structure as an inmixing of an otherwise prerequisite to any subject whatsoever|isbn=978-0801810473}}</ref>

In the book's preface, the authors state they shall not enter into the debate over the purely psychoanalytic part of Lacan's work.{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|p=17}} Nonetheless, after presenting their case, they comment that "Lacan never explains the relevance of his mathematical concepts for psychoanalysis", stating that "the link with psychoanalysis is not supported by any argument". Equally meaningless they find his "famous formulae of sexuation" offered in support for the maxim "There are no sexual relations". Considering the "cryptic writings", the "play on words" and "fractured syntax", as well as the "reverent exegesis" accorded to Lacan's work by "disciples", they point out a similarity to religiosity.{{efn|They end with posing the rhetorical question whether we are "dealing with a new religion".}}{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|p=31-37}}

===Incomprehensibility===
Several critics have dismissed Lacan's work wholesale. French philosopher {{ill|François Roustang|fr}} called it an "incoherent system of [[pseudo-scientific]] gibberish", and quoted [[linguist]] [[Noam Chomsky]]'s opinion that Lacan was an "amusing and perfectly self-conscious [[charlatan]]".<ref name=roustang>{{cite book |url=http://bactra.org/reviews/lacanian-delusion/ |last=Roustang |first=François |date=1986 |title=Lacan, de l'équivoque à l'impasse |language=French |trans-title=Lacan, from ambiguity to dead end |publisher=[[Les Éditions de Minuit]] |pages=100–110 |chapter=L'illusion lacanienne |trans-chapter=The Lacanian Delusion |isbn=978-2707311085 |access-date=2 February 2016 |archive-date=10 December 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151210101642/http://bactra.org/reviews/lacanian-delusion/ |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Noam Chomsky]], in a 2012 interview on ''Veterans Unplugged'', said: "[Q]uite frankly I thought [Lacan] was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven't the slightest idea. I don't see anything there that should be influential."<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/noam_chomsky_slams_zizek_and_lacan_empty_posturing.html|title= Noam Chomsky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Empty 'Posturing'|last= Springer|first= Mike|date= 28 June 2013|website= Open Culture|access-date= 31 August 2018|archive-date= 19 March 2022|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20220319200117/http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/noam_chomsky_slams_zizek_and_lacan_empty_posturing.html|url-status= live}}</ref>

Academic and former Lacanian analyst [[Dylan Evans]]{{efn|Evans published a dictionary of Lacanian terms in 1996, titled ''An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis''.}} came to dismiss Lacanianism as lacking a sound scientific basis and as harming rather than helping patients. He criticized Lacan's followers for treating Lacan's writings as "holy writ".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Evans |first1=Dylan |chapter=From Lacan to Darwin |title=The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative|url=https://archive.org/details/literaryanimalev00gott_879 |url-access=limited |date=2005|pages=[https://archive.org/details/literaryanimalev00gott_879/page/n64 38]–55|publisher=[[Northwestern University Press]]|location=[[Evanston, Illinois]]|editor1=Jonathan Gottschall|editor2=David Sloan|citeseerx=10.1.1.305.690 }}</ref> [[Richard Webster (British author)|Richard Webster]] decries what he sees as Lacan's obscurity, arrogance, and the resultant "[[Cult]] of Lacan".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020910203351/http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html |url-status=usurped |archive-date=10 September 2002 |title=The Cult of Lacan |publisher=Richardwebster.net |date=14 June 1907 |access-date=18 June 2011}}</ref>

[[Roger Scruton]] included Lacan in his book ''Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left'', and named him as the only 'fool' included in the book—his other targets merely being misguided or frauds.<ref>{{Cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/10/fools-frauds-and-firebrands-thinkers-of-the-new-left-roger-scuton-review | title=Fools, Frauds and Firebrands by Roger Scruton review – a demolition of socialist intellectuals| newspaper=The Guardian| date=10 December 2015| last1=Poole| first1=Steven}}</ref>

In ''Les Freudiens hérétiques'', the 8th tome of his work ''Contre-histoire de la philosophie'' (''Anti-History of Philosophy''),<ref name=anti>{{cite book |last= Onfray |first=Michel|author-link=Michel Onfray |date=2013 |title=Les Freudiens hérétiques : Contre-histoire de la philosophie|language=French|trans-title=The heretic Freudians: Anti-History of Philosophy|volume= 8th |publisher=[[Éditions Grasset]] |isbn=978-2246802686}}</ref> philosopher and author [[Michel Onfray]] describes Lacan's ''[[Écrits]]'' as "illegible".<ref name=anti/>{{rp|49}} According to Onfray, Lacan engages in constant [[word play]], has a taste for the formulaic, and deploys "incantatory [[glossolalia]]" and unnecessary [[neologism]]s.{{efn|In 2002, the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis, ''École lacanienne de psychanalyse'', edited and published a book titled ''789 Neologismes de Jacques Lacan'' (Epel publishers).}} He calls Lacan a "charlatan" and a "dandy figure" who "sinks into [[autism]]", eventually becoming senile.<ref name=anti/>{{rp|49–50}}

==Works==
Selected works published in English listed below. More complete listings can be found at [http://www.lacan.com/bibliographies.htm Lacan.com] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050405161817/http://lacan.com/bibliographies.htm |date=5 April 2005 }}.
{{Col-begin}}
{{Col-2}}
* ''Écrits: A Selection'', transl. by [[Alan Sheridan]], New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977, {{ISBN|0393300471}}.
* ''Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English'', transl. by Bruce Fink, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006, {{ISBN|0393329259}}.
* ''Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne'', edited by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, transl. by Jacqueline Rose, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1983, {{ISBN|0393016331}}.
* ''First Writings'', transl. by Russell Grigg, Cambridge, Polity, 2025.
* ''My Teaching'', transl. by David Macey, Verso, London, 2008, {{ISBN|9781844672714}}
* ''The Seminar, Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953–1954'', edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by [[John Forrester (historian)|John Forrester]], W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1988, {{ISBN|0393306976}}.
* ''The Seminar, Book II. [[The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis]], 1954–1955'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by [[Sylvana Tomaselli]], W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1988, {{ISBN|0393307093}}.
* ''The Seminar, Book III. The Psychoses'', edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Russell Grigg, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1993, {{ISBN|0393316122}}.
* ''The Seminar, Book V. Formations of the Unconscious'', edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Russell Grigg, Polity Press, New York, 2017, {{ISBN|0745660371}}.
* ''The Seminar, Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Dennis Porter, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1992, {{ISBN|0393316130}}.
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* ''The Seminar, Book VIII. Transference'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Bruce Fink, Polity Press, New York, 2015, {{ISBN|0745660398}}.
* ''The Seminar, Book X. Anxiety, 1962–1963'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by A. R. Price, Polity Press, New York, 2014, {{ISBN|074566041X}}.
*''The Seminar, Book XI. [[The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis]], 1964'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Alan Sheridan, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1977, {{ISBN|0393317757}}.
*''The Seminar, Book XVII. The Other Side of Psychoanalysis'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Russell Grigg, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2007, {{ISBN|0393330400}}.
*''The Seminar, Book XIX. ...or Worse'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, Polity Press, New York, 2018, {{ISBN|0745682448}}. 
*''The Seminar, Book XX. Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Bruce Fink, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1998, {{ISBN|0393319164}}.
*''The Seminar, Book XXIII. The Sinthome'', ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by A.R. Price, Polity Press, New York, 2016, {{ISBN|1509510001}}.
*''[[Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment]]'', ed. Joan Copjec, trans. [[Rosalind Krauss]], [[Jeffrey Mehlman]], et al., W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1990, {{ISBN|0393335674}}.
*''The Triumph of Religion'', transl. by Bruce Fink, Cambridge: Polity, 2015.
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==See also==
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*[http://www.lacan.com/rolleyes.htm Chronology of Jacques Lacan] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181211191659/http://www.lacan.com/rolleyes.htm |date=11 December 2018 }}
*[http://www.lacan.com/seminars1.htm The Seminars of Jacques Lacan] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181219155958/http://lacan.com/seminars1.htm |date=19 December 2018 }}
*[http://www.lacan.com/bibliographyxx.htm Jacques Lacan's Complete French Bibliography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051227235532/http://www.lacan.com/bibliographyxx.htm |date=27 December 2005 }}
*[http://www.lacan.com/hotel.htm Of Structure as the Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051228002010/http://www.lacan.com/hotel.htm |date=28 December 2005 }} – Johns Hopkins University (1966)
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*[http://www.lacan.com/kantsade.htm Jacques Lacan; Kant with Sade] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060225083033/http://www.lacan.com/kantsade.htm |date=25 February 2006 }}
*[http://www.lacan.com/purloined.htm The Seminar on "The Purloined Letter"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060328141754/http://www.lacan.com/purloined.htm |date=28 March 2006 }}
*[http://www.lacan.com/papin.htm The Crime of the Papin Sisters] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070106125938/http://www.lacan.com/papin.htm |date=6 January 2007 }}
*[http://www.lacan.com/zizlola.htm Love beyond Law] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101126101546/http://lacan.com//zizlola.htm |date=26 November 2010 }} – further discussions by Žižek on Desire in the Lacanian conceptual edifice
{{Col-end}}

==Footnotes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist|35em}}

==Further reading==
===Biographical works===
* Lacan, Sibylle (2019). ''A Father: Puzzle''. Cambridge Ms: MIT Press.
* [[Catherine Millot|Millot, Catherine]] (2018). ''Life With Lacan''. Cambridge: Polity.
* [[Élisabeth Roudinesco|Roudinesco, Élisabeth]] (1999). ''Jacques Lacan: An Outline of a Life and History of a System of Thought''. Cambridge: Polity. Translated by [[Barbara Bray]]. (Originally published by Columbia University Press as ''Jacques Lacan'' (1997) with no subtitle).

===Introductory texts===
* {{cite book | last1=Benvenuto | first1=B. | last2=Kennedy | first2=R. | title=The Works of Jacques Lacan: An Introduction |location =London| publisher=Free Association Books | year=1986 | isbn=9780946960200 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=buMtAAAAYAAJ}}
* [[Malcolm Bowie|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. 
* [[Elizabeth Grosz|Grosz, Elizabeth]] (1991). ''Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction''. London: Routledge.
* Hill, Philip (2009). ''Lacan for Beginners''. Danbury, Connecticut: For Beginners.
* Homer, Sean (2004). ''Jacques Lacan''. London: Routledge.
* Leader, Darian & Groves, Judy (2010). ''Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide''. London: Icon Books.
* Lee, Jonathan Scott. (2002). ''Jacques Lacan''. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
* [[Todd McGowan|McGowan, Todd]] (2025). ''The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781009300759
*{{cite book | last = Nell|first = Calum |author-link =|date = 2023| title = Jacques Lacan: the Basics| location = Abington, Oxon| publisher = Routledge }}
* Voruz, Veronique and Wolf, Bogdan (eds) (2007). ''The Later Lacan: An Introduction.'' New York: SUNY Press

===Textual commentaries===
==== Écrits ====
* Fink, Bruce (2004) ''Lacan to the Letter: Reading Ecrits Closely''. University of Minnesota Press.
*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.) (2024) ''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====
*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.
* {{cite book | editor-last1=Feldstein | editor-first1=Richard | editor-last2=Jaanus | editor-first2=Maire | editor-last3=Fink | editor-first3=Bruce | title=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 | publisher=State University of New York Press | publication-place=Albany | year=1996 | isbn=0-7914-2780-3 | oclc=42854739}}
* {{cite book | editor-last1=Feldstein | editor-first1=Richard | editor-last2=Jaanus | editor-first2=Maire | editor-last3=Fink | editor-first3=Bruce | title=Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis: the Paris seminars in English | publisher=State University of New York Press | publication-place=Albany | year=1995 | isbn=0-7914-2148-1 | oclc=42854927}}
* {{cite book | editor-last1=Feldstein | editor-first1=Richard | editor-last2=Jaanus | editor-first2=Maire | editor-last3=Fink | editor-first3=Bruce | title=Reading Seminar XX: Lacan's major work on love, knowledge, and feminine sexuality | publisher=State University of New York Press | publication-place=Albany, NY | year=2002 | 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.
* [[Jacques-Alain Miller|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===
* [[Alain Badiou|Badiou, Alain]], "The Formulas of l'Étourdit", New York: ''Lacanian Ink'' 27, Spring 2006.
* {{cite web|last=Badiou|first=A.|url=http://www.lacan.com/badpre.htm|title=Lacan and the Pre-Socratics|website=Lacan Dot Com|year=2006|access-date=27 June 2006|archive-date=18 June 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060618190507/http://lacan.com/badpre.htm|url-status=live}}
* {{cite book | last1=Badiou | first1=A. | last2=Roudinesco | first2=E. | last3=Smith | first3=J.E. | title=Jacques Lacan, Past and Present: A Dialogue | publisher=Columbia University Press | year=2014 | isbn=978-0-231-16511-2 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bhEZBQAAQBAJ}}
* {{cite book | last=Benvenuto | first=Sergio | title=Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan | publisher=Routledge | publication-place=Abingdon, Oxon | year=2020 | 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. 
* {{cite book | last=Fink | first=Bruce | title=Against Understanding, vol. 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key | publisher=Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group | publication-place=London | year=2014 | isbn=978-0-415-63543-1 }}
*[[John Forrester (historian)|Forrester, John]] (1985) ''Language and the Origins of Psychoanalysis'', Basingstoke and London: Macmillan.
* Glynos, Jason and [[Yannis Stavrakakis|Stavrakakis, Yannis]] (eds) (2002). ''Lacan and Science''. London: Karnac Books.
* {{cite book|last=Hendrix|first=John Shannon|author-link=John Shannon Hendrix|title=Architecture and Psychoanalysis: Peter Eisenman and Jacques Lacan|publisher=Peter Lang|location=New York|year=2006|isbn=978-0-820481-71-5}}
* [[Adrian Johnston (philosopher)|Johnston, Adrian]] (2005) ''Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive'', Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
* [[Filip Kovacevic|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, [http://www.lacan.com/frameXVII2.htm "The Paradigms of Jouissance"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130911045844/http://www.lacan.com/frameXVII2.htm |date=11 September 2013 }} New York, ''Lacanian Ink'' 17, Fall 2000.
* Miller, Jacques-Alain, [http://www.lacan.com/symptom8_articles/miller8.html "Suture: Elements of the Logic of the Signifier"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070104103140/http://www.lacan.com/symptom8_articles/miller8.html |date=4 January 2007 }}, Lacan Dot Com, The Symptom 2006.
* Miller, Jacques-Alain, [http://www.lacan.com/lacinkXXIII2.htm "Religion, Psychoanalysis"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091005173011/http://www.lacan.com/lacinkXXIII2.htm |date=5 October 2009 }}, Lacanian Ink 23, Spring 2004.
* Miller, Jacques-Alain, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130721100720/http://www.lacan.com//lacinkXX2.htm "Pure Psychoanalysis, Applied Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy"], ''Lacanian Ink'' 20, Spring 2002.
* {{cite book | last=Miller |first=Jacques-Alain | title=Applied Lacanian Psychoanalysis | publisher=University of Minnesota Press | publication-place=Minneapolis London | year=2013 | isbn=978-0-8166-8319-2 | oclc=842322946 }}
* [[Juan-David Nasio|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.
*{{cite book | last = Neill |first = Calum |author-link =|date = 2014 | title = Without Ground: Lacanian Ethics and the Assumptions of Subjectivity | location = London| publisher = 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.
* [[Jacqueline Rose|Rose, Jacqueline]] (1986) ''Sexuality in the Field of Vision''. London: Verso.
* [[Élisabeth Roudinesco|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.
* [[Moustafa Safouan|Safouan, Moustafa]] (2004) ''Four Lessons of Psychoanalysis'', New York, Other Press.
* Schneiderman, Stuart (1983) ''Jacques Lacan: the Death of an Intellectual Hero'', Harvard University Press.
* {{cite book | last=Soler | first=Colette | title=What Lacan said about women: a psychoanalytic study | publisher=Other Press | publication-place=New York | year=2006 | isbn=978-1-59051-170-1 | oclc=58546399 |translator-last=Holland |translator-first=John}}
* [[Yannis Stavrakakis|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.
* [[Slavoj Žižek|Žižek, Slavoj]], [http://www.lacan.com/zizfour.htm "Jacques Lacan's Four Discourses"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140224093556/http://www.lacan.com/zizfour.htm |date=24 February 2014 }}, ''Lacan Dot Com'', 2008.
* Žižek, Slavoj, [http://www.lacan.com/zizwoman.htm "Woman is One of the Names-of-the-Father, or how Not to misread Lacan´s formulas of sexuation"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060719190529/http://lacan.com/zizwoman.htm |date=19 July 2006 }}, Lacan Dot Com, 2005.
* Žižek, Slavoj, 'The object as a limit of discourse: approaches to the Lacanian real', ''Prose Studies'', 11 (3), 1988, pp. &nbsp;94–120.
* Žižek, Slavoj, "Jacques Lacan as Reader of Hegel", New York, ''Lacanian Ink'' 27, Fall 2006.
* Žižek, Slavoj, (2006) [http://www.lacan.com/essays ''How to Read Lacan''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091212041726/http://www.lacan.com/essays/ |date=12 December 2009 }} London: Granta Books.

==External links==
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* [[Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research]]
* [[World Association of Psychoanalysis]]
*[http://www.lacan.org/ Homepage of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis and the San Francisco Society for Lacanian Studies] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041017083813/http://www.lacan.org/ |date=17 October 2004 }}
*[http://www.londonsociety-nls.org.uk/ The London Society of the New Lacanian School. Site includes online library of clinical & theoretical texts] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414125601/http://www.londonsociety-nls.org.uk/ |date=14 April 2021 }}
*[http://www.lacan.com/lacan1.htm Lacan Dot Com] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181211222017/http://www.lacan.com/lacan1.htm |date=11 December 2018 }}
<!-- Read [[WP:EL]] before adding links -->

{{Continental philosophy}}
{{Psychotherapy}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lacan, Jacques}}
[[Category:Jacques Lacan| ]]
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