Editing Jacques Lacan (section)

==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 [[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>