Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (/ləˈkɑːn/;[3] French: [ʒak lakɑ̃ ]; 13 April 1901 – 9
Jacques Lacan
September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called
"the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud".[4] Giving yearly seminars in
Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced many leading French intellectuals in the
1960s and the 1970s, especially those associated with post-structuralism. His ideas
had a significant impact on post-structuralism, critical theory, linguistics, 20th-
century French philosophy, film theory, and clinical psychoanalysis.[5]

Born 13 April 1901

Contents Paris, France
Biography Died 9 September 1981
Early life
(aged 80)
1930s
Paris, France
1940s
1950s Education Collège Stanislas
1960s (1907–1918)
1970s University of Paris
Last years (certificate of specialist
Major concepts in legal medicine,
Return to Freud 1931;[1] M.D., 1932)
Mirror stage
Other/other Era 20th-century
Phallus philosophy
Three orders
Region Western philosophy
The Imaginary
The Symbolic School Psychoanalysis
The Real Structuralism
Desire Post-structuralism[2]
Drive Institutions University of Paris VIII
Other concepts
Main Psychoanalysis
Lacan on error and knowledge interests
Clinical contributions Notable Mirror phase
Variable-length session ideas The Real
Writings and writing style The Symbolic
Criticism The Imaginary
Works Graph of desire
See also Split subject
References Objet petit a
Sources Influences
Further reading Influenced
External links

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 went to a monastery in 1929 and Lacan attended the Collège Stanislas
between 1907 and 1918. During the early 1920s, Lacan attended right-wing Action Française political meetings, of which he would
later be highly critical, and met the founder, Charles Maurras. By the mid-1920s, Lacan had become dissatisfied with religion and
became an atheist. He quarreled with his family over this issue.[6][7][8]

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 at the Sainte-
Anne Hospital (Centre hospitalier Sainte-Anne) in Paris under the direction of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault.[1] During that period,
he was especially interested in the philosophies of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger[9] and attended the seminars about Hegel given
by Alexandre Kojève.[10]

1930s
In 1932, after a second year at Saint Anne's Clinique de Maladies Mentales et de l'Encéphale, Lacan became a licensed forensic
psychiatrist. In 1932 he was awarded theDiplôme d'État de docteur en médecine[1][10] (roughly equivalent to an M.D. degree) for his
thesis On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personality (De la Psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la
personnalité suivi de Premiers écrits sur la paranoïa; Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975). It had a limited reception in the 1930s because
it was not published until four decades later, but it did find acclaim, especially by surrealist artists.[11][12] This thesis is thought to
mark Lacan's entry into psychoanalysis. It shows Lacan’s dissatisfaction with traditional psychiatry and the growing influence of
Sigmund Freud on his works. ‘Paranoid Psychosis and its Relation to the Personality’ was based on observations of several patients
with a primary focus on one female patient whom Lacan called Aimee.[13] Also in 1932, Lacan translated 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" ("On some neurotic
mechanisms in jealousy, paranoia and homosexuality"). It was published in the Revue française de psychanalyse. In Autumn of that
same year, Lacan began his training analysis withRudolph Loewenstein, which was to last until 1938.[14]

Two years later Lacan was elected to the Société psychanalytique de Paris. In January 1934 he married Marie-Louise Blondin, and in
January 1937 they had their first child, a daughter named Caroline. Their second child, a son named Thibaut, was born in August
1939.

In 1936, Lacan presented his first analytic report at the Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in Marienbad on
the "Mirror Phase". The congress chairman, Ernest Jones, terminated the lecture before its conclusion, since he was unwilling to
extend Lacan's stated presentation time. Insulted, Lacan left the congress to witness the Berlin Olympic Games. No copy of the
original lecture remains.[15]

Lacan was an active intellectual of the inter-war period—he was associated with André Breton, Georges Bataille, Salvador Dalí, and
Pablo Picasso.[16] For a time, he served as Picasso's personal therapist.[12] He attended the mouvement Psyché that Maryse Choisy
founded. He published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure and attended the first public reading of James Joyce's Ulysses. "[Lacan's]
interest in surrealism predated his interest in psychoanalysis," Dylan Evans explains, speculating that "perhaps Lacan never really
abandoned his early surrealist sympathies, its neo-Romantic view of madness as 'convulsive beauty', its celebration of irrationality,
and its hostility to the scientist who murders nature by dissecting it".[17] Others would agree 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
[18]
provocation as an important element in psycho-analysis itself".

1940s
The Société Psychanalytique de Paris (SPP) was disbanded due to Nazi Germany's occupation of France in 1940. Lacan was called
up to serve in the French army at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris, where he spent the duration of the war. His third child,
Sibylle, was born in 1940.

The following year, Lacan fathered a child,Judith (who kept the name Bataille), withSylvia Bataille (née Maklès), the estranged wife
of his friend Georges Bataille. There are contradictory accounts of his romantic life with Sylvia in southern France during the war.
The official record shows only that Marie-Louiserequested divorce after Judith's birth and that Lacan married Sylvia in 1953.

After the war, the SPP recommenced their meetings. 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. In 1949, Lacan
presented a new paper on themirror stage to the sixteenth IPA congress in Zurich.

1950s
In 1951, Lacan started to hold a private weekly seminar in Paris, in which he urged what he described as "a return to Freud" that
would concentrate on the linguistic nature of psychological symptomatology. 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.

In 1953, after a disagreement over the variable-length session, Lacan and many of his colleagues left the Société Parisienne de
Psychanalyse to form a new group, the Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP). One consequence of this was to deprive the new
group of membership within theInternational 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), 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: analysis' only promise 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." This text formed the foundation of
Lacan's work for the subsequent years. 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.[19]

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.[20] 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"[21] 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 Mannoni, Serge Leclaire
... and Jean Clavreul".[22]

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).[23] In 1967 he
invented the procedure of 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.[24] 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 University of Vincennes
(Paris VIII). However, Lacan's unequivocal comments in 1971 on revolutionary ideals in politics draw a sharp line between the
[25]
actions of some of his followers and his own style of "revolt".

In 1969, Lacan moved his public seminars to the 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 "Symbolic order". Lacan continued to draw widely on various disciplines, working closely on classical Chinese
literature with François Cheng[26] and on the life and work of James Joyce with Jacques Aubert.[27] 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 atYale, Columbia and MIT.[28]

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,
, in January 1980,[29] Lacan travelled
but his teaching continued into the first year of the eighties. After dissolving his School, the EFP
.[30]
to Caracas to found the Freudian Field Institute on 12 July

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.

Major concepts

Return to Freud
Lacan's "return to 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"[31] 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",[32] 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",[33] 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".[34] 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";[35] and Lacan's rereading of Freud—"characteristically, Lacan
insists that his return to Freud supplies the only valid model"[36] —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 subjective constitution. In "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud," he proposes that "the
unconscious is structured like a 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. One
consequence of his idea that the unconscious is structured like a language is that the self is denied any point of reference to which to
be "restored" following trauma or a crisis of identity
.

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
[37] Freud certainly contrasted "the presentation of theword and the presentation of
to language can only belong to the pre-conscious".
the thing... the unconscious presentation is the presentation of the thing alone"[38] in his metapsychology. However Dylan Evans, 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".[39] 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."[40]

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
[41]
second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body-image".

As this concept developed further, the stress fell less on its historical value and more on its structural value.[42] 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 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 themselves in a mirror prior to the attainment of control over
their bodily movements. The child sees their 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 their 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.[42] Lacan understands this moment of identification as a moment of
jubilation, since it leads to an imaginary sense of mastery; yet when the child compares their own precarious sense of mastery with
[43]
the omnipotence of the mother, a depressive reaction may accompany the jubilation.

Lacan calls the 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
ficiency to anticipation."[44] In other words, the mirror image
sense of his or her body as fragmented, induces a movement from "insuf
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 animaginary dimension to the subject. The mirror stage also has a significant 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 bigOther, as if to call on the adult to ratify this image.[45]

Other/other
While Freud uses the term "other", referring to der Andere (the other person) and das Andere (otherness), under the influence of
Alexandre Kojève, Lacan's use is closer toHegel's.

Lacan often used an algebraic symbology for his concepts: the big Other is designated A (for French Autre) and the little other is
designated a (italicized French autre).[46] 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."[47]
Dylan Evans explains that:

1. 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 objet a and the ego in the Schema L.[48] It is simultaneously the counterpart
and the specular image. The little other is thus entirely inscribed in the Imaginary order .
2. The big Other designates radicalalterity, 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 his radical alterity and unassimilable
uniqueness, and also the symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject." [49]

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.[50] We can speak of the Other as a subject in a secondary sense only when a subject
[51]
occupies this position and thereby embodies the Other for another subject.

In arguing that speech originates not in 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—"the unconscious is the discourse
of the Other."[52] 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".[42] 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 signifier
missing from the trove of signifiers constituted by the Other. Lacan illustrates this incomplete Other graphically by striking a bar
."[53]
through the symbol A; hence another name for the castrated, incomplete Other is the "barred Other

Phallus
Feminist thinkers have both utilised and criticised Lacan's concepts of castration and the Phallus. Feminists such as Avital Ronell,
Jane Gallop,[54] and Elizabeth Grosz,[55] have interpreted Lacan's work as opening up new possibilities forfeminist theory.

Some feminists have argued that Lacan's phallocentric analysis provides a useful means of understanding gender biases and imposed
roles, while other feminist critics, most notably Luce Irigaray, accuse Lacan of maintaining the sexist tradition in psychoanalysis.[56]
For Irigaray, the Phallus does not define a single axis of gender by its presence/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.[57][58]

Three orders

The Imaginary
The Imaginary is the field of images and imagination, and deception. The main illusions of this order are synthesis, autonomy,
duality, and similarity. 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."[59] This relationship is alsonarcissistic.

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. On the other hand, the Imaginary 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.[60] 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
[61]
the analytic process to cross the plane of identification."

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 signifier—that is, a dimension in which
elements have no positive existence, but which are constituted by virtue of their mutual dif
ferences.

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 ofdeath and lack (manque) connive to make of thepleasure principle the
regulator of the distance from the Thing ("das Ding an sich") and the death drive that goes "beyond the pleasure principle by means
."[46]
of repetition"—"the death drive is only a mask of the Symbolic order

By working in the Symbolic order, the analyst is able to produce changes in the subjective position of the analysand. These changes
will produce imaginary effects because the Imaginary is structured by the Symbolic.[42]

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".[62] 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, the Real is also exterior tothe Symbolic. Unlike the latter, which is constituted in terms of oppositions (i.e.
presence/absence), "there is no absence in the Real."[46] Whereas the Symbolic opposition "presence/absence" implies the possibility
that something may be missing from the Symbolic, "the Real is always in its place."[61] If the Symbolic is a set of differentiated
elements (signifiers), the Real in itself is undifferentiated—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."[63] 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. It is this resistance to symbolization that lends the Real its traumatic quality. Finally, the Real
is the object of anxiety, insofar as it lacks any possible mediation and is "the essential object which is not an object any longer, but
[46]
this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence."

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.[64] 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 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:[65] "It is only once it is formulated, named in the presence of
the other, that desire appears in the full sense of the term."[66] 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
[67] The truth about desire is somehow present in discourse, although
it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world."
discourse is never able to articulate the entire truth about desire, whenever discourse attempts to articulate desire, there is always a
leftover or surplus.[68]

Lacan distinguishes desire from need and from 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."[69] 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."[69] 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
[70]
puts it, "desire's raison d'être is not to realize its goal, to find full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire."

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.[71] 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 tolack
a (manque).

In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis Lacan argues that "man's desire is the desire of the Other." This entails the
following:

1. 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 followsAlexandre Kojève who follows Hegel: for Kojève the subject must risk his
[72] This desire to be the object of another's desire is best
own life if he wants to achieve the desired prestige."
exemplified in the Oedipus complex, when the subject desires to be the phallus of the mother .
2. In "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious", [73] 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.
3. Désir de l'Autre, which is translated as "desire for the Other" (though could be also "desire of the Other"). The
fundamental desire is the incestuous desire for the mother , the primordial Other.[74]
4. 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 .[75]
5. Desire appears in the field of the Other, 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.
, the subject is liberated from the mother's desire.[76]
Only when the father articulates desire with the law by castrating the mother

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", 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.[77] Lacan posits the drives as both cultural and symbolic constructs—to him, "the drive is not a given,
something archaic, primordial."[77] He incorporates the four elements of the drives as defined by Freud (the pressure, the end, the
object and the 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:

1. the active voice (to see)

2. the reflexive voice (to see oneself)
3. the passive voice (to be seen)
The active and reflexive voices are autoerotic—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 not subject.[77] 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.[78] Lacan accepts the partial nature of drives, but 1) rejects the notion that partial
drives can ever attain any complete organization: the primacy of the genital zone, if achieved, is always precarious; and 2) he argues
that drives are partial in that they only represent sexuality partially 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 ofjouissance.[77]

Lacan identifies four partial drives: the oral drive (the erogenous zones are the lips, the partial object the breast, 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 one between the life drives (Lebenstriebe) and the death drives
(Todestriebe).[79] 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
[80]
every drive is excessive, repetitive and destructive.

The drives are closely related to desire since both originate in the field of the subject.[77] But they are not to be confused: drives are
the partial aspects in which desire is realized—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.[81]

Other concepts
Name of the Father The graph of desire
Foreclosure (psychoanalysis) Matheme
Lack (manque) Sinthome
Objet petit a The Four discourses

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".[82] 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
gets, or loses them, he is condemned to err anew".[83]
reference points, signs identify and orient him; if he neglects, for
 [84] to survive "one must let oneself
Because of "the alienation to which speaking beings are subjected due to their being in language",
be taken in by signs and become the dupe of a discourse... [of] fictions organized in to a discourse".[85] For Lacan, with "masculine
knowledge irredeemably an erring",[86] 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".[85]

Lacan comes close here to one of the points where "very occasionally he sounds like Thomas Kuhn (whom he never mentions)",[87]
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".[88]

Clinical contributions

Variable-length session
The "variable-length psychoanalytic session" was one of Lacan's crucial clinical innovations,[89] and a key element in his conflicts
with the IPA, to whom his "innovation of reducing the fifty-minute analytic hour to a Delphic seven or eight minutes (or sometimes
even to a single oracular parole murmured in the waiting-room)"[90] 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. This practice replaced
the classical 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?"[91] By allowing the analyst's intervention on timing, the variable-length
session removed the patient's—or, technically, "the analysand's"—former certainty as to the length of time that they would be on the
couch.[92] When Lacan adopted the practice, "the psychoanalytic establishment were scandalized"[93][94] —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 reduced to zero",[95] if
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";[96] and in practice it was certainly a shortening of the session around the so-called
"critical moment"[97] 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'.[98] 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".[99]

"Whatever the justification, the practical effects were startling. It does not take a cynic to point out that Lacan was able to take on
many more analysands than anyone using classical Freudian techniques... [and] as the technique was adopted by his pupils and
[100]
followers an almost exponential rate of growth became possible".

Accepting the importance of "the critical moment when insight arises",[101] object relations theory would nonetheless quietly 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".[102] Julia Kristeva, if in very different language, would concur that "Lacan, alert to the scandal of the timeless intrinsic
[103]
to the analytic experience, was mistaken in wanting to ritualize it as a technique of scansion (short sessions)".

Writings and writing style

Most of Lacan's psychoanalytic writings from the forties through to the early sixties 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 Norton & Co. (2006). The Écrits were included on the list of 100 most influential books of the 20th century
compiled and polled by the broadsheetLe 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 volumeAutres 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.

Jacques-Alain Miller is the sole editor of 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".[104] 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 journalLacanian Ink.

Lacan's writing is notoriously difficult, due in part to the repeated Hegelian/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".[105] Arguably at least, "the imitation of his style by other
[106]
'Lacanian' commentators" has resulted in "an obscurantist antisystematic tradition in Lacanian literature".

Though a major influence on psychoanalysis in France and parts of Latin America, Lacan's influence on clinical psychology in the
English-speaking world is negligible, where his ideas are best known in the arts and humanities. However, there are Lacanian
[42]
psychoanalytic societies in both North America and the United Kingdom that carry on his work.

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.[107] Lacan's work has also reached Quebec where The Interdisciplinary Freudian Group for
Research and Clinical and Cultural Interventions (GIFRIC) claims that they have 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.[108]

Criticism
In Fashionable Nonsense (1997), Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont criticize Lacan's use of terms from mathematical fields such as
topology, accusing him of "superficial erudition" and of abusing scientific concepts that he does not understand, accusing him of
producing statements that are not even wrong.[109] However, they note that they do not want to enter into the debate over the purely
psychoanalytic part of Lacan's work.[110]

Other critics have dismissed Lacan's work wholesale. François Roustang 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".[111]
The former Lacanian analyst, Dylan Evans, eventually dismissed Lacanianism as lacking a sound scientific basis and as harming
rather than helping patients, and has criticized Lacan's followers for treating his writings as "holy writ".[42] Richard Webster has
decried what he sees as Lacan's obscurity, arrogance, and the resultant "Cult of Lacan".[112] Others have been more forceful still,
describing him as "The Shrink from Hell"[113][114] and listing the many associates—from lovers and family to colleagues, patients,
and editors—left damaged in his wake.

His type of charismatic authority has been linked to the many conflicts among his followers and in the analytic schools he was
involved with.[115] His intellectual style has also come in for much criticism. Eclectic in his use of sources,[116] Lacan has been seen
as concealing his own thought behind the apparent explication of that of others.[117] Thus his "return to Freud" was called by
Malcolm Bowie "a complete pattern of dissenting assent to the ideas of Freud . . . Lacan's argument is conducted on Freud's behalf
and, at the same time, against him".[118] Bowie has also suggested that Lacan suffered from both a love of system and a deep-seated
opposition to all forms of system.[119]
Many feminist thinkers have drawn attention to faults in Lacan's thought. Philosopher and psychoanalyst
Luce Irigaray accuses Lacan
of perpetuating phallocentric mastery in philosophical and psychoanalytic discourse.[120] Others have echoed this accusation, seeing
Lacan as trapped in the very phallocentric mastery his language ostensibly sought to undermine.[121] The result—Castoriadis would
maintain—was to make all thought depend upon himself, and thus to stifle the capacity for independent thought among all those
around him.[122]

Their difficulties were only reinforced by what Didier Anzieu described as a kind of teasing lure in Lacan's discourse; "fundamental
truths to be revealed . . . but always at some further point".[123] This was perhaps an aspect of the sadistic narcissism that feminists
especially detected in his nature.[124]

Noam Chomsky states "quite frankly I thought he 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.”[125]

Works
Selected works published in English listed below
. More complete listings can be found atLacan Dot Com.

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.
The Seminar, Book I. Freud's Papers on
Technique, 1953–1954, edited by Jacques-
Alain Miller, transl. by 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 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.
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 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 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.
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.

See also
Alain Badiou
Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research
Lacanian Ink
Elisabeth Roudinesco
 World Association of Psychoanalysis
Slavoj Žižek

References
1. 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 Gatian de Clérambault... From 1928–1929, Lacan
studied at the Infirmerie Spéciale pres de la Préfecture de Policeand received a Diplôme de médecin légiste
(specialist in legal medicine) after working at the Hôpital Henri Roussellefrom 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 ..."
2. Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political, Routledge, 2002, p. 13: "Lacan has been hailed as one of the
cornerstones of this movement [poststructuralism] together with Jacques Derrida and others."
3. "Lacan" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lacan). Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
4. David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan,The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis(London 1994) p.
xiv
5. Refer to The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Volume 47, Issue 1, Spring 1987,ISSN 0002-9548 (https://www.w
orldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0002-9548)"Lacan and post-Structuralism", pp. 51–57, by Jan Marta.
6. Roudinesco, Elisabeth, Jacques Lacan & Co.: a history of psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985
, 1990, Chicago
University Press
7. Perry Meisel (April 13, 1997)."The Unanalyzable" (https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/reviews/970413.13meis
elt.html). New York Times.
8. Michael Martin (2007).The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. p. 310.
ISBN 9780521842709. "Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and
psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list,including...Jacques Lacan..."
9. Jon Simons (ed.), Contemporary Critical Theorists: From Lacan to Said
, Edinburgh University Press, 2004, p. 19.
10. Alan D. Schrift (2006),Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers, Blackwell Publishing, p.
149.
11. Cox-Cameron, Olga (2000). "Lacan's Doctoral Thesis: u
Trbulent Preface or Founding Legend".Psychoanalytische
Perspectieven. 41/42: 17–44.
12. Stockwell, Peter (2016).The Language of Surrealism(https://books.google.com/books?id=KZhNDQAAQBAJ&pg=P
A42&lpg=PA42&dq=lacan+breton+picasso&source=bl&ots=bF-6oUQS30&sig=A5YLaM3nyyfmc5wfpQ6vtMpFYSU&
hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwio5uLnhYT aAhUunq0KHYIXDhQQ6AEIVjAE#v=onepage&q=lacan%20breton%20picas
so&f=false). NY: Macmillan International Higher Education. p. 42. ISBN 978-1137392213. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
13. Evans, Julia. "Lacanian Works" (http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=113.). Retrieved September 28, 2014.
14. Laurent, É., "Lacan, Analysand" in Hurly-Burly
, Issue 3.
15. Roudinesco, Elisabeth. "The mirror stage: an obliterated archive"The Cambridge Companion to Lacan.Ed. Jean-
Michel Rabaté. Cambridge: CUP, 2003
16. Desmond, John (2012).Psychoanalytic Accounts of Consuming Desire: Hearts of Darkness(https://books.google.co
m/books?id=dFjmDKmW52AC&pg=PA202&dq=lacan+breton+picasso&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj41ZXbg4T aAh
VPZawKHWhvAJYQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=lacan%20breton%20picasso&f=false). NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
p. 202. ISBN 978-1349321780. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
17. Evans, Dylan, ""From Lacan to Darwin"(http://www.dylan.org.uk/lacan.pdf)Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20
060210151234/http://www.dylan.org.uk/lacan.pdf) 2006-02-10 at the Wayback Machine.", in The Literary Animal;
Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, eds. Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 2005
18. David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan,The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis(London 1994) p.
xv-xvi
19. Le séminaire, Livre VIII: Le transfert, Paris: Seuil, 1991.
20. "Minutes of the IPA: The SFP Study Group" ni Television/A Challenge to the PsychoanalyticEstablishment, pp. 79-
80.
21. Lacan, J., "Founding Act" inTelevision/A Challenge to the PsychoanalyticEstablishment, pp. 97-106.
22. Elisabeth Roudinesco,Jacques Lacan (Cambridge 1997) p. 293
23. Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le psychanalyste à l'École.
24. French Communist Party"official philosopher" Louis Althusser did much to advance this association in the 1960s.
Zoltán Tar and Judith Marcus inFrankfurt school of sociology. ISBN 0-87855-963-9 (p. 276) write "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 herJacques Lacan: A Feminist Introductionthat: "Shortly after the tumultuousevents of
May 1968, Lacan was accused by the authorities of being a subversive, and directly influencing the events that
transpired."
25. Regnault, F., "I Was Struck by What You Said..." Hurly-Burly, 6, 23-28.
26. Price, A., "Lacan's Remarks on Chinese Poetry".Hurly-Burly 2 (2009)
27. Lacan, J., Le séminaire, livre XXIII, Le sinthome
28. Lacan, J., "Conférences et entretiens dans les universités nord-américans".
Scilicet, 6/7 (1976)
29. Lacan, J., "Letter of Dissolution".Television/ A Challenge to the PsychoanalyticEstablishment, 129-131.
30. Lacan, J., "Overture to the 1st International Encounter of the Freudian Field"
, Hurly-Burly 6.
31. Mary Jacobus, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: In the Wake of Klein (Oxford 2005) p. 25
32. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London 1997) p. 197
33. Lacan, Ecrits p. 197 and p. 20
34. Lacan, Ecrits p. 250
35. Lisa Appignanesi/John Forrester, Freud's Women (London 2005) p. 462
36. David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan,The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis(London 1994) p.
xxii
37. Mary Jacobus, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: In the Wake of Klein (Oxford 2005) p. 5n
38. Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology (Penguin 1984) p. 207
39. Mary Jacobus, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: In the Wake of Klein (Oxford 2005) p. 7n
40. "The Dead Mother: The Work of André Green (Book Review)" (http://www.apadivisions.org/division-39/publications/r
eviews/dead-mother.aspx)
41. Lacan, J., "Some Reflections on the Ego" inÉcrits
42. Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis
43. Lacan, J., "La relation d'objet" inÉcrits.
44. Lacan, J., "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I", in Écrits: a selection, London, Routledge
Classics, 2001; p. 5
45. Lacan, Tenth Seminar, "L'angoisse," 1962–1963
46. Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in theechnique
T of
Psychoanalysis 1954–1955(W. W. Norton & Company, 1991), ISBN 978-0-393-30709-2
47. Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 135.
48. Schema L in The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis.
49. Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis(London: Routledge, 1996), p. 133.
50. Lacan, J., "The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955-1956," translated by Russell Grigg (New o
Yrk: W. W. Norton
& Company, 1997)
51. Lacan, J., Le séminaire. Livre VIII: Le transfert, 1960-1961.ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil, 1994).
52. Lacan, J., "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'" inÉcrits.
53. Lacan, J., "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious" inÉcrits and Seminar V: Les formations de l'inconscient
54. Gallop, Jane, Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985;
55. Elizabeth A. Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction
56. Irigary, Luce, This Sex Which Is Not One1977 (Eng. trans. 1985)
57. Derrida, Jacques, Dissemination (1983)
58. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"(1993)
59. Lacan, Seminar III: The Psychoses.
60. Écrits, "The Directions of the Treatment."
61. Lacan, J. Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
.
62. Evans, Dylan, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, p. 162.
63. Lacan, J., "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis" in
Écrits.
64. Macey, David, "On the subject of Lacan" inPsychoanalysis in Contexts: Paths between Theory and Modern Culture
(London: Routledge 1995).
65. Fink, Bruce, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance(Princeton University Press, 1996),
ISBN 978-0-691-01589-7
66. Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I: Freud's Papers on echnique
T 1953–1954(W. W. Norton &
Company, 1988), ISBN 978-0-393-30697-2
67. Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in theechnique
T of
Psychoanalysis 1954-1955(W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), ISBN 978-0-393-30709-2
68. Lacan, J., "The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Powers" inÉcrits: A Selection translated by Bruce
Fink (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), ISBN 978-0393325287
69. Lacan, J., "The Signification of the Phallus" inÉcrits
70. Žižek, Slavoj, The Plague of Fantasies(London: Verso 1997), p. 39.
71. Lacan, J. The Seminar: Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964
(W. W. Norton &
Company, 1998), ISBN 978-0393317756
72. Kojève, Alexandre, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, translated by James H. Nichols Jr. (New York: Basic Books
1969), p. 39.
73. Lacan, J., Écrits: A Selection translated by Bruce Fink (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), ISBN 978-0393325287
74. Lacan, J. The Seminar: Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960(W. W. Norton & Company, 1997),
ISBN 978-0393316131
75. 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
76. Lacan, J. Le Séminaire: Livre IV. La relation d'objet, 1956-1957 ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris; Seuil, 1994)
77. The Seminar, Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
78. Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, S.E. VII
79. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, S.E. XVIII
80. Position of the Unconscious,Ecrits
81. Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture
82. Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London 1997) p. 58 and p. 121
83. Jacques-Alain Miller, "Microscopia", in Jacques Lacan,Television (London 1990) p. xxvii
84. Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject (Princeton 1997) p. 173
85. Miller, p. xxvii
86. Seminar XXI, quoted in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose eds.,Feminine Sexuality (New York 1982) p. 51
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89. John Forrester, 'Dead on Time: Lacan's Theory of Temporality' in: Forrester, The Seductions of Psychoanalysis:
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96. Lacan, Jacques (4 July 1953). "Letter to Rudolph Loewenstein".October. 40: 65. ISBN 0-262-75188-7.
97. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen,Lacan: The Absolute Master(1991) p. 120
98. Cornélius Castoriadis, in Roudinesco (1997) p. 386
99. Sherry Turkle, Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution(London 1978) p. 204
100. David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan,The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis(London 1994) p.
xiv and xxxv
101. R. Horacio Etchegoyen,The Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic T
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102. Michael Parsons, The Dove that Returns, the Dove that Vanishes (London 2000) pp. 16–17
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104. David Macey, "Introduction", Jacques Lacan,The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis(London 1994) p.
x
105. Richard Stevens, Sigmund Freud: Examining the Essence of his Contribution(Basingstoke 2008) p. 191n
106. Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political(London:Routledge, 1999) pp. 5–6
107. e.g.: A Shining Affliction, ISBN 978-0-14-024012-2
108. http://www.gifric.com/388.htm
109. Sokal, Alan D. and Jean Bricmont. 2011.Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science .
Profile Books, p. 21: "he mixes them up arbitrarily and without the slightest regard for their meaning. His 'definition' of
compactness is not just false: it is gibberish."
110. Sokal, Alan D. and Jean Bricmont. 2011.Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
.
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111. Roustang, François, The Lacanian Delusion(http://bactra.org/reviews/lacanian-delusion/)
112. "The Cult of Lacan" (http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html). Richardwebster.net. 1907-06-14. Retrieved
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113. The Shrink from Hell (http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/en/Shrink_from_Hell.htm)
114. Tallis, Raymond. "The Shrink from Hell" (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/the-shrink-from-hell/159376.a
rticle). Times Higher Education Supplement. Retrieved 27 August 2016.
115. Jacqueline Rose, On Not Being Able To Sleep: Psychoanalysisand the Modern World(London 2003) p. 176
116. Philip Hill, Lacan for Beginners (London 1997) p. 8
117. Elisabeth Roudinesco,Jacques Lacan (Cambridge 1997) p. 46
118. Malcolm Bowie, Lacan (London 1991) pp. 6–7
119. Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (London, 1996), pp. 161–2.
120. Luce Irigaray, "Cosi Fan Tutti," in Clive Cazeaux,Continental Aesthetics Reader(New York, 2011), pp. 377–386.
121. Jacqueline Rose, "Introduction – II", in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose,
Feminine Sexuality (New York 1982) p.
56
122. Elisabeth Roudinesco,Jacques Lacan (Cambridge 1997) p. 386
123. Didier Anzieu, in Sherry Tuckle, Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution(London 1978) p. 131
124. Jane Gallop, Feminism and Psychoanalysis: The Daughter's Seduction(London 1982) p. 120 and p. 37
125. http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/noam_chomsky_slams_zizek_and_lacan_empty_posturing.html

Sources
Chronology of Jacques Lacan Jacques Lacan; Kant with Sade
The Seminars of Jacques Lacan The Seminar on "The Purloined Letter"
The Crime of the Papin Sisters
 Jacques Lacan's Complete French
Bibliography
Of Structure as the Inmixing of an Otherness
Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever –
Johns Hopkins University (1966)
Further reading
Badiou, Alain, "The Formulas of l'Étourdit",
New York: Lacanian Ink 27, Spring 2006.
—————, "Lacan and the Pre-Socratics",
Lacan Dot Com, 2006.
—————, Jacques Lacan, Past and
Present: A Dialogue with Elisabeth
Roudinesco, New York: Columbia University
Press, 2014, ISBN 0231165110.
Benvenuto, Bice; Kennedy, Roger, The
Works of Jacques Lacan (London, 1986,
Free Association Books.)
Bowie, Malcolm, Lacan, London: Fontana,
1991.
Bracher, Mark, Massardier-Kenney,
Françoise, Alcorn, Marshall W., Corthell,
Ronald J., Lacanian Theory of Discourse:
Subject, Structure, and Society, New York
University Press, ISBN 0814712991.
Dor, Joel, The Clinical Lacan, New York:
Other Press, 1999.
—————, Introduction to the Reading of
Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a
Language, New York, Other Press, 2001
Elliott, Anthony and Stephen Frosh (eds.),
Psychoanalysis in Contexts: Paths between
Theory and Modern Culture, London and
New York: Routledge, 1995.
Evans, Dylan, An Introductory Dictionary of
Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Routledge, 1996.
Richard Feldstein, Maire Jaanus, Bruce Fink
(eds.), Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan's
Return to Freud, New York, State University
of New York Press, 1996, ISBN 0791427803.
—————,Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's
Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis: The Paris Seminars in
English, New York, State University of New
York Press, 1994. ISBN 0791421481.
—————, Reading Seminar XX: Lacan's
Major Work on Love, Knowledge, and
Feminine Sexuality, State University of New
York Press, 2002, ISBN 0791454320.
Fink, Bruce (1995). The Lacanian Subject:
Between Language and Jouissance.
Love beyond Law – further discussions by
Žižek on Desire in the Lacanian conceptual
edifice
—————, "Suture: Elements of the Logic
of the Signifier", Lacan Dot Com, The
Symptom 2006.
—————, "Religion, Psychoanalysis",
Lacanian Ink 23, Spring 2004.
—————, "Pure Psychoanalysis, Applied
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy",
Lacanian Ink 20, Spring 2002.
—————, Culture/Clinic 1: Applied
Lacanian Psychoanalysis, University of
Minnesota Press, Saint Paul, 2013,
ISBN 0816683190.
Mitchell, Juliet (editor); Lacan, Jacques
(author); Rose, Jacqueline (translator and
editor) (1985). Feminine sexuality: Jacques
Lacan and the école freudienne. New York
London: Pantheon Books W.W. Norton.
ISBN 9780393302110.
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.
—————, Five Lessons on the
Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan,
Albany, SUNY Press, 1998.
—————, Hysteria: The Splendid Child of
Psychoanalysis. Translated by Susan
Fairfield, New York, Other Press, 1999.
Nobus, Dany (ed.), Key Concepts of
Lacanian Psychoanalysis, New York: Other
Press, 1999.
Pettigrew, David and François Raffoul (eds.),
Disseminating Lacan, Albany: SUNY Press,
1996.
Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Lacan, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Rose, Jacqueline, Sexuality in the Field of
Vision (London: Verso, 1986)
Roudinesco, Élisabeth, Lucien Febvre à la
rencontre de Jacques Lacan, Paris 1937.
with Peter Schöttler, Genèses, Année 1993,
Vol.13, n°1.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
ISBN 0-691015-89-9.
—————, A Clinical Introduction to
Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and
Technique, Harvard University Press, 1999,
ISBN 0674135369.
—————, Lacan to the Letter: Reading
Ecrits Closely, University of Minnesota, 2004.
—————, Against Understanding, vol. 1:
Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key,
Routledge, London and New York, 2013,
ISBN 0415635438.
Forrester, John, Language and the Origins of
Psychoanalysis, Basingstoke and London,
Macmillan, 1985.
Gallop, Jane, Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1985.
—————, The Daughter's Seduction:
Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1982.
Glynos, Jason and Stavrakakis, Yannis (eds)
Lacan and Science. London:Karnac Books,
May 2002.
Harari, Roberto, Lacan's Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psychoanalysis: An Introduction,
New York: Other Press, 2004.
—————, Lacan's Seminar on "Anxiety":
An Introduction, New York: Other Press,
2005.
Hendrix, John Shannon (2006). Architecture
and Psychoanalysis: Peter Eisenman and
Jacques Lacan. New York: Peter Lang.
ISBN 0-820481-71-8.
Homer, Sean, Jacques Lacan, London,
Routledge, 2005.
Ireland, Mardy S. (October 2004). "Phallus or
penis: commentary on Cornelia St. John's
paper". Studies in Gender and Sexuality.
Taylor and Francis. 5 (4): 459–472.
doi:10.1080/15240650509349259.
Johnston, Adrian, Time Driven:
Metapsychology and the Splitting of the
Drive, Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 2005.
Kovacevic, Filip, "Liberating Oedipus?
Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory"
(Landham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007)
Lee, Jonathan Scott, Jacques Lacan,
Amherst: The University of Massachusetts
Press, 2002.
Mandal, Mahitosh. Jacques Lacan: From
Clinic to Culture. Hyderabad: Orient
BlackSwan, 2018. Available here.
—————, Jacques Lacan: His Life and
Work. Translated by Bray B. New York,
Columbia University Press, 1997
—————, Jacques Lacan & Co: A History
of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925–1985,
University of Chicago Press, 1990.
————— and Michel Plon, Dictionnaire de
la psychanalyse, Paris, Fayard, 2000.
—————, Généalogies, Paris, Fayard,
1994.
—————, "Lacan, The Plague",
Psychoanalysis and History, ed. John
Forrester, Teddington, Artesian Books, 2008.
Safouan, Moustafa, Four Lessons of
Psychoanalysis, New York, Other Press,
2004.
Schneiderman, Stuart, Jacques Lacan: the
death of an intellectual hero, Harvard
University Press, 1983
Sokal, Alan and Bricmont, Jean,
"Fashionable Nonsense, Postmodernist
Intellectuals' Abuse of Science", New York,
1998.
Soler, Colette, What Lacan Said About
Women, transl. by John Holland, New York,
Other Press, 2006, ISBN 9781590511701.
Stavrakakis, Yannis, Lacan and the Political,
London, Routledge, 1999.
Stavrakakis, Yannis, The Lacanian Left,
Albany: State University of New York Press,
2007.
Turkle, Sherry, Psychoanalytic Politics:
Jacques Lacan and Freud's French
Revolution, New York, Guildford Press,
1992.
————— Wandollheim, Richard, 'Lacan:
an exchange', New York Review of Books,
26 (9), 1979.
Verhaeghe, Paul, On Being Normal and
Other Disorders, New York, Other Press,
2004.
Wilden, Anthony, 'Jacques Lacan: A partial
bibliography', Yale French Studies, 36/37,
1966, pp. 263–268.
Žižek, Slavoj, "Jacques Lacan's Four
Discourses", Lacan Dot Com, 2008.
—————, "Woman is One of the Names-
of-the-Father, or how Not to misread Lacan´s
formulas of sexuation", Lacan Dot Com,
2005.
—————, 'The object as a limit of
discourse: approaches to the Lacanian real',
Prose Studies, 11 (3), 1988, pp. 94–120.
 McGowan, Todd and Sheila Kunkle Eds.,
Lacan and Contemporary Film, New York:
Other Press, 2004.
Miller, Jacques-Alain, "Introduction to
Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar on
Anxiety I ", New York: Lacanian Ink 26, Fall
2005.
—————, "Introduction to Reading
Jacques Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety II",
New York: Lacanian Ink 27, Spring 2006.
—————, "Jacques Lacan's Later
Teachings", New York: Spring Lacanian Ink
21, 2003.
—————, "The Paradigms of Jouissance"
New York, Lacanian Ink 17, Fall 2000.
—————, Interrogating the Real, ed. Rex
Butler and Scott Stephens, London,
Continuum, 2005.
—————, "Jacques Lacan as Reader of
Hegel", New York, Lacanian Ink 27, Fall
2006.
—————, "How to Read Lacan (London:
Granta Books, 2006)
Žižek, Slavoj; Salecl, Renata (eds.), Gaze
and Voice as Love Objects (Durham:
Durham University Press, 1996)

External links
Practice

École de la Cause freudienne

World Association of Psychoanalysis
CFAR – The Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. London-based Lacanian psychoanalytic training agency
Homepage of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis and the San Francisco Society for Lacanian Studies
The London Society of the New Lacanian School. Site includes online library of clinical & theoretical texts
The Freudian School of Melbourne, School of Lacanian Psychoanalysis – Clinical and theoretical teaching and
training of psychoanalysts

Theory

Lacan Dot Com

Links about Jacques Lacan at Lacan.com
"How to Read Lacan" by Slavoj Zizek– full version
Jacques Lacan at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
LacanOnline.com

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