Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (b. 13 April 1901–d. 9 September 1981) arguably is the most creative and influential figure in the history of psychoanalysis after Sigmund Freud. Lacan portrays himself as an embattled defender of Freud’s true legacy within and beyond analytic circles, the lone champion of a “return to Freud.” His teachings emphasize the crucial differences between the Freudian unconscious and speciously similar notions such as that of the id as a dark, seething cauldron of irrational, animalistic instincts. He stresses especially the centrality of language in psychoanalysis, with the unconscious subject at stake in analysis being constituted and sustained through socio-symbolic mediations (as per Lacan’s famous thesis according to which “the unconscious is structured like a language”). Dubbed “the French Freud,” Lacan significantly broadened and deepened Freudianism through putting Freud’s discoveries into conversation with a wide range of other disciplines and orientations. In particular, Lacan’s reflections draw frequently and extensively on the resources of 19th- and 20th-century Continental philosophical currents such as German idealism, structuralism, semiotics, phenomenology, and existentialism. Indeed, not only did Lacan inspire the formation of distinctly Lacanian clinical approaches—perhaps his greatest worldwide impact has been (and continues to be) in the fields of the theoretical humanities, themselves heavily indebted to the past two centuries of European philosophy. Over the course of recent decades, Lacan’s concepts/theories of, for instance, the mirror stage, subjectivity, language, desire, drive, jouissance, fantasy, and the objet petit a all have come to serve as key components in numerous scholars’ explorations of issues and instances relating to philosophy, art, literature, cinema, culture, politics, and religion, among other areas of concern. Furthermore, like Freud, Lacan remains a source of heated controversy among various commentators and critics right up through the present day.