Blackwell Reference Online

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Jacques-Marie Emile Lacan was among the leading psychoanalysts of the twentieth century. He combined Freudian theory with Marxist notions that have contributed to advancing knowledge about self-expression and personal development. His work has extended well beyond his life and has influenced many radical and Marxist intellectuals, including Slavoj Žižek and others who seek to merge psychoanalysis with healthy and contented human development. Unlike modern psychologists from a range of perspectives, Lacan embraced major elements of Freudianism and advanced the discourse. Lacan was born on April 13, 1901 in Paris, France to a bourgeois Catholic family. He was educated at the Collège de Stanislas and after receiving his baccalaureate, undertook medical study. Against his father's wishes, Lacan chose to specialize in psychiatry under the direction of Gaetan Gatian de Clérambault and was awarded his doctorate for the completion of a doctoral thesis on paranoid psychosis in 1932. In 1934 he became a member of the Société Psychoanalytique de Paris (SSP). He is especially known for his lectures, which he delivered at various institutions from 1953 to 1981; in all his work, Lacan attempts to reformalize Freudian psychoanalysis. In 1963 he founded the Ecole Freudienne de Paris (EFP) but dissolved it in 1980 in favor of the Ecole pour la Cause Freudienne, saying that “it is up to you to be ... log in or subscribe to read full text