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Jacques Lacan

 
Jacques Lacan

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Jacques Lacan



 
 
Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 psychoanalyst and psychiatrist
Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy....
 who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behaviour....
, philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
, and literary theory
Literary theory

Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes?in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense?considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social prophecy,...
. He gave yearly seminars
The Seminars of Jacques Lacan

Sources*External links*References...
, in Paris, from 1953 until 1981, most influencing France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers. His interdisciplinary work is Freudian, featuring the unconscious
Unconscious mind

The Unconscious is a term invented by the 18th century German philosophy romanticism philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge....
, the castration complex, the ego
EGO

Ego is a Latin word meaning "I ", cognate with the Greek "??? " meaning "I " and may refer to:* Ego, super-ego, and id, a psycho-analytic concept of Sigmund Freud...
; identification; and language as subjective perception, and thus he figures in critical theory
Critical theory

In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory is the examination and critique of society and literature, drawing from knowledge across social sciences and humanities disciplines....
, literary studies, twentieth-century French philosophy
Twentieth-century French philosophy

Twentieth-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War II French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements....
, and clinical psychoanalysis.

acques-Marie-Émile Lacan was born in Paris, the eldest of Emilie and Alfred Lacan's three children.






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Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 psychoanalyst and psychiatrist
Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry and is certified in treating mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy....
 who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behaviour....
, philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
, and literary theory
Literary theory

Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes?in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense?considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social prophecy,...
. He gave yearly seminars
The Seminars of Jacques Lacan

Sources*External links*References...
, in Paris, from 1953 until 1981, most influencing France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers. His interdisciplinary work is Freudian, featuring the unconscious
Unconscious mind

The Unconscious is a term invented by the 18th century German philosophy romanticism philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge....
, the castration complex, the ego
EGO

Ego is a Latin word meaning "I ", cognate with the Greek "??? " meaning "I " and may refer to:* Ego, super-ego, and id, a psycho-analytic concept of Sigmund Freud...
; identification; and language as subjective perception, and thus he figures in critical theory
Critical theory

In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory is the examination and critique of society and literature, drawing from knowledge across social sciences and humanities disciplines....
, literary studies, twentieth-century French philosophy
Twentieth-century French philosophy

Twentieth-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War II French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements....
, and clinical psychoanalysis.

Biography


Early life

Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan was born in Paris, the eldest of Emilie and Alfred Lacan's three children. The middle-class Alfred Lacan was a successful soap and oils salesman. As Émilie was ardently Catholic, the younger brother went to monastery in 1929; Jacques attended the Jesuit Collège Stanislas. During the early 1920s, Jacques Lacan attended right-wing Action Française
Action Française

The Action Fran?aise is a France Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras....
 political meetings and met the founder, Charles Maurras
Charles Maurras

__FORCETOC__ Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras was a France author, poet, and critic. He was a leader and principal thinker of Action Fran?aise, a political movement that was monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary, and is the main intellectual influence of National Catholicism and integral nationalism....
. By the mid-1920s, Jacques had become dissatisfied with religion and quarrelled with his family over it.

In 1920, on being rejected as too-thin for military service, he then directly entered medical school, and, in 1926, specialised in psychiatry at the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris. Academically, he was especially interested in the philosophies of Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers

Karl Theodor Jaspers was a Germany psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. Trained in and practiced psychiatry, Jaspers later turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system....
 and Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was an influential Germany Philosophy. His best known book, Being and Time, is generally considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century....
; and attended the seminars about Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German people philosopher, and with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, one of the creators of German idealism....
 given by Alexandre Kojève
Alexandre Kojève

Alexandre Koj?ve was a Marxist and Hegelian political philosopher, who had a substantial influence on twentieth-century French philosophy....
.

Sometime in that decade, and until 1938, Jacques Lacan sought psychoanalysis by Rudolph Loewenstein
Rudolph Loewenstein (psychoanalyst)

----Rudolph Maurice Loewenstein was a Poland-France-United States psychoanalyst....
.

1930s


In 1931 Jacques Lacan was a licensed forensic psychiatrist; in 1932 he was awarded the Doctorat d'état for the thesis: De la Psychose paranoiaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité (On paranoiac psychosis in its relations to the (paranoiac) personality). Although it was acclaimed beyond psychoanalytic circles, especially by surrealist
Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
 artists, psychoanalysts mostly ignored it. Despite that, in 1934 he was a candidate to the Société Psychoanalytique de Paris. In January of that year, he married Marie-Louise Blondin and they had their first child, daughter Caroline; their second child, a son named Thibaut, was born in August 1939.

In 1936, Lacan presented his first analytic report, about the "Mirror Phase" at the Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association, in Marienbad. The congress chairman, Ernest Jones
Ernest Jones

Alfred Ernest Jones Wales neurologist, psychoanalyst and Sigmund Freud?s official biographer. As the first English-language practitioner of psychoanalysis and as President of both of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association in the 1920s and 1930s, Jones exercised unmatched influence in the establ...
, interrupted and ended Lacan's reporting, unwilling to extend his slated presentation time. Insulted, Dr Lacan left the congress, to witness the Berlin Olympic Games. Unfortunately, no copy of the original lecture remains.

Lacan was an active intellectual of the inter-war period; he associated with André Breton
André Breton

Andr? Breton was a French writer, poet, and surrealist theorist, and is best known as the main founder of surrealism. His writings include the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as pure psychic automatism....
 and Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille was a French people writer. Although subsequent philosophers have been significantly influenced by his thought, Bataille tended not to refer to himself as a philosophy....
, Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dal? i Dom?nech, 1st Marquis of P?bol was a Spain Catalonia surrealist painter born in Figueres.Dal? was a skilled Technical drawing, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealism work....
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego Jos? Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Mar?a de los Remedios Cipriano de la Sant?sima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was a Spanish people Painting, drawing, and Sculpture....
, et al. He attended the mouvement Psyché founded by Maryse Choisy
Maryse Choisy

Maryse Choisy was a France philosophical writer.Choisy followed an atypical path in life. Fascinated by psychoanalysis, she had the idea of introducing its concepts into her novels to better develop their characters; she then undertook to see what else could be brought to literature from other disciplines....
. He published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure
Minotaure

Minotaure, published between 1933 and 1939, was a Surrealist-oriented publication founded by Albert Skira in Paris. The editors were Andr? Breton and Pierre Mabille....
 and attended the first, public reading of Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris....
. His interest in surrealism predated his interest in psychoanalysis. Perhaps Lacan never really abandoned his early surrealist sympathies, its neo-Romantic
Neo-romanticism

The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music and painting. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Dalhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism....
 view of madness as ‘convulsive beauty’, its celebration of irrationality, and its hostility to the scientist who murders nature by dissecting it". Thus Dr Jacques Lacan was more literary than psychoanalytic.

1940s


The Société Psychoanalytique de Paris (SPP) was disbanded due to Nazi Germany's occupation of France in 1940 and Lacan was subsequently 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) with Sylvia Bataille (née Maklès), estranged wife of his friend Georges. There are contradictory stories about his romantic life with Sylvia Bataille
Sylvia Bataille

Sylvia Bataille, born Sylvia Makl?s , was a French actress, born in Paris to a Jewish family. When she was twenty, she married the writer Georges Bataille with whom she has a daughter in 1930, the psychoanalyst Laurence Bataille ....
 in southern France during World War II. The official record shows only that Marie-Louise requested divorce after Judith's birth, and Lacan married Sylvia in 1953.

Following the war, the SPP recommenced their meetings, and Lacan visited England for a five-week study trip, meeting English analysts Wilfred Bion
Wilfred Bion

Wilfred Ruprecht Bion Distinguished Service Order was a UK Psychoanalysis. A pioneer in group dynamics, he was associated with the 'Tavistock group', the group of pioneering psychologists that founded the Tavistock Institute in 1946 on the basis of their shared wartime experiences....
 and John Rickman
John Rickman

John Rickman was an England government official and statistician of the early nineteenth century.Educated at Royal_Grammar_School, Guildford, Magdalen College, Oxford and Lincoln College, Oxford....
. He was influenced by Bion’s analytic work with groups and this contributed to his own later emphasis on study groups as a structure with which to advance theoretical work in psychoanalysis.

In 1949, Lacan presented a new paper on the mirror stage to the sixteenth IPA congress in Zurich.

1950s


In 1951 Lacan started to hold a private weekly seminar in Paris, urging what he described as "a return to Freud" concentrating upon the linguistic nature of psychological symptomatology. Becoming public in 1953, Lacan's twenty-seven year long seminar was very influential in Parisian cultural life as well as in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice.

In 1953, after a disagreement about analytic practice methods, Lacan and many of his colleagues left the Société Parisienne de Psychoanalyse to form a new group the Société Française de Psychanalyse
Société Française de Psychanalyse

The Soci?t? Fran?aise de Psychanalyse was a French psychoanalytic professional body formed in 1953, of which Jacques Lacan was a founding member....
 (SFP). One of the consequences of this was to deprive the new group of membership within the International Psychoanalytical Association
International Psychoanalytical Association

The International Psychoanalytical Association is an association including 11,800 psychoanalysts as members and works with 70 constituent organizations....
.

Encouraged by the reception of "the return to Freud" and of his report - "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis" (Écrits) - Lacan again returned to Freud, re-reading the canon in relation to contemporary philosophy, linguistics, ethnology, biology and topology. From 1953 to 1964 at Sainte-Anne Hospital, he held his and presented case histories of patients. During this period he wrote the texts that are found in Écrits, a selection of which was first published in 1966. In his seventh Seminar of 1959-60, 'The Ethics of Psychoanalysis', Lacan defines his ethical foundations of psychoanalysis and constructs his "ethics for our time"; according to Freud, an ethics that would 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 of 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 functions throughout the years as the background of Lacan's work. He defends three assertions: that psychoanalysis must have a scientific status; that Freudian ideas have radically changed the concepts of subject, of knowledge, and of desire; that the analytic field is the only place from where it is possible to question the insufficiencies of science and philosophy.

1960s


Starting in 1962 a complex negotiation took place to determine the status of the SFP within the IPA. Lacan’s practice—with his controversial indeterminate-length sessions in which he charged a full fee for truncated sessions, had his hair cut during sessions, and Lacan's critical stance towards psychoanalytic orthodoxy—led, in 1963, to a condition being set by the IPA that registration of the SFP was dependent upon removing Lacan from the list of SFP training analysts. Lacan left the SFP to form his own school which became known as the École Freudienne de Paris
École Freudienne de Paris

The ?cole Freudienne de Paris was a France psychoanalytic professional body formed in 1963, of which Jacques Lacan was a founding member.Lacan had been a member of the Soci?t? Fran?aise de Psychanalyse ....
 (EFP)

With Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss

Claude L?vi-Strauss is a French anthropologist....
 and Althusser
Louis Althusser

Louis Pierre Althusser was a Marxist philosophy. He was born in Algeria and studied at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
's support, he was appointed lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He started with a seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis

The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis is the English translation of one of the pivotal works of Jacques Lacan. The blurb describes the book as providing "illuminating insights into the mind of the most controversial psychoanalyst since Freud"....
 in January 1964 in the Dussane room at the École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure

The ?cole normale sup?rieure is a France Grandes ?coles . The ENS was initially conceived during the French Revolution, and intended to provide the First French Republic with a new body of teacher, trained in the critical spirit and secular values of the the Enlightenment....
 (in his first session he thanks the generosity of Fernand Braudel
Fernand Braudel

Fernand Braudel , was the foremost French historian of the postwar era, and a leader of the Annales School. He organized his scholarship around three great projects, each worth several decades of intense study: "The Mediterranean" , "Civilization and Capitalism" , and the unfinished, "Identity of France" ....
 and Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss

Claude L?vi-Strauss is a French anthropologist....
). Lacan began to set forth his own teaching on psychoanalysis to an audience of colleagues who had joined him from the SFP. His lectures also attracted many of the École Normale’s students. He divided the into three sections: the section of pure psychoanalysis (training and elaboration of the theory, where members who have been analyzed but haven't 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); the section for taking inventory of the Freudian field (it concerned the critique of psychoanalytic literature and the analysis of the theoretical relations with related or affiliated sciences (Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le psychanalyste à l'Ecole).

By the 1960s, Lacan was associated, at least in the public mind, with the far left in France. In May 1968 Lacan voiced his sympathy for the student protests and as a corollary a Department of Psychology was set up by his followers at the University of Vincennes (Paris VIII). Echoing this sentiment, "Shortly after the tumultuous events of May 1968, Lacan was accused by the authorities of being a subversive, and directly influencing the events that transpired."

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 till 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 focuses on the development of his concepts of masculine and feminine jouissance
Jouissance

The French word jouissance means enjoyment particularly in an over-the-top or sexual sense.Jouissance, contrasts with plaisir, which is a controlled state that happens within cultural norms....
, and puts special emphasis on his concept of "The Real" as a point of impossible contradiction in the "Symbolic Order". This late work had the greatest influence on feminist thought, as well as upon the informal movement that arose in the 1970s or 1980s called post-modernism.

Major concepts


The 'Return to Freud'

Lacan's "return to Freud" emphasizes a renewed attention to the original texts of Freud and a radical critique of Ego psychology
Ego psychology

Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural -- Id, ego, and super-ego -- model of the mind.An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces....
, Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein was an Austrian-born United Kingdom psychoanalysis who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had a significant impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis....
 and Object relations theory
Object relations theory

Object relations theory is a psychodynamics theory within psychoanalytic psychology. The theory explicates the dynamic process of developing a mind as one grows in relation to real others in the environment....
. Lacan thought that Freud's ideas of "slips of the tongue", jokes, et cetera, all emphasized the agency of language in subjective constitution. In "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud" (Écrits, pp. 161 - 197)) he argued that "the unconscious is structured like a language"; it was not a primitive or archetypal part of the mind separate from the conscious, linguistic ego, but a formation as complex and structurally sophisticated as consciousness itself. If the unconscious is structured like a language, he claimed, then the self is denied any point of reference to which to be 'restored' following trauma or 'identity crisis'.

The mirror stage (le stade du miroir)


Lacan's first official contribution to psychoanalysis was the mirror stage
Mirror stage

The mirror stage was the subject of Jacques Lacan's first official contribution to psychoanalytic theory . He described it in "The Mirror Stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience", the first of his ?crits....
 which he described "... as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience". By the early fifties, he no longer considers the mirror stage as only a moment in the life of the infant, but as the permanent structure of subjectivity. In the paradigm of The Imaginary
The Imaginary

The Imaginary order is one of a triptych of terms in the psychoanalysis theory of Jacques Lacan, along with the The Symbolic and the The Real. The basis of the Imaginary order is the formation of the Id, ego, and super-ego in the "mirror stage"....
 order, the subject is permanently caught and captivated by his own image. Lacan writes, "[T]he mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body-image".

As he further develops the concept, the stress falls less on its historical value and ever more on its structural value. 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
EGO

Ego is a Latin word meaning "I ", cognate with the Greek "??? " meaning "I " and may refer to:* Ego, super-ego, and id, a psycho-analytic concept of Sigmund Freud...
 via the process of objectification, the Ego being the result of feeling dissension between one's perceived visual appearance and one's perceived emotional reality. This identification is what Lacan called alienation. At six months the baby still lacks coordination. However, he can recognize himself in the mirror before attaining control over his bodily movements. He sees his image as a whole, and the synthesis of this image produces a sense of contrast with the uncoordination of the body, which is perceived as a fragmented body. This contrast is first felt by the infant as a rivalry with his own image, because the wholeness of the image threatens him with fragmentation, and thus the mirror stage gives rise to an aggressive tension between the subject and the image. To resolve this aggressive tension, the subject identifies with the image: this primary identification with the counterpart is what forms the Ego. The moment of identification is to Lacan a moment of jubilation since it leads to an imaginary sense of mastery, yet the jubilation may also be accompanied by a depressive reaction, when the infant compares his own precarious sense of mastery with the omnipotence of the mother. This identification also involves the ideal ego which functions as a promise of future wholeness sustaining the Ego in anticipation.

In the Mirror stage a misunderstanding - "méconnaissance" - constitutes the Ego—the 'moi' becomes alienated from himself through the introduction of the Imaginary order subject. It must be said that the mirror stage has also a significant symbolic dimension. The Symbolic
The Symbolic

The Symbolic order is a part of the psychoanalysis theory of Jacques Lacan. Although it is an essentially linguistic dimension, Lacan does not simply equate the symbolic with language, since the latter is involved also in The Imaginary and the Real....
 order is present in the figure of the adult who is carrying the infant: the moment after the subject has jubilantly assumed his image as his own, he turns his head towards this adult who represents the big Other
Other

The Other or constitutive other is a key concept in continental philosophy, opposed to the identity . It refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is 'other' than the concept being considered....
, as if to call on him to ratify this image.

Other/other

While Freud uses the term "other", referring to der Andere (the other person) and "das Andere" (otherness), Lacan's use is more like Hegel's, through Alexandre Kojève.

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). 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'.

  1. The little other is the other who is not really other, but a reflection and projection of the Ego. He is both the counterpart or the other people in whom the subject perceives a visual likeness (semblable), and the specular image or the reflection of one's body in the mirror. In this way the little other is entirely inscribed in The Imaginary order. See Objet Petit a
    Objet Petit a

    In the Psychoanalysis theory of Jacques Lacan, objet petit a stands for the unattainable object of desire . It is sometimes called the object cause of desire....
    .
  2. The big Other designates a radical alterity, an otherness transcending the illusory otherness of the Imaginary because it cannot be assimilated through identification. Lacan equates this radical alterity with language and the law: the big Other is inscribed in The Symbolic order, being in fact the Symbolic insofar as it is particularized for each subject. The Other is then another subject and also the Symbolic order which mediates the relationship with that other subject.


'The Other must first of all be considered a locus, the locus in which speech is constituted'. We can speak of the Other as a subject in a secondary sense, only when a subject may occupy this position and thereby embody the Other for another subject.

When he argues that speech originates not in the Ego nor in the subject, but in the Other, Lacan stresses that speech and language are beyond one's conscious control; they come from another place, outside consciousness, and then 'the unconscious is the discourse of the Other'. When conceiving the Other as a place, Lacan refers to Freud's concept of physical 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, it is she who receives the child's primitive cries and retroactively sanctions them as a particular message". The castration complex is formed when the child discovers that this Other is not complete, that 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 through the symbol A; hence another name for the castrated, incomplete Other is the 'barred Other'.

Feminists thinkers have both criticized and utilized Lacan's concepts of castration and the (Symbolic) Phallus. Many feminists believe that Lacan's phallocentric analysis provides a useful means of understanding gender biases and imposed roles. Some feminist critics, notably Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray

Luce Irigaray is a Belgian people Feminism, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalytic theory and culture theory. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One ....
, accuse Lacan of maintaining the sexist
Sexism

Sexism, a term coined in the late 20th century, refers to the belief or attitude that one gender or sex is inferior to or less valuable than the other....
 tradition in psychoanalysis. For Irigaray, rather than the Phallus defining a single axis of gender by its presence/absence, gender has two positive poles. Like Irigaray, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a France philosophy born in Algeria, who is known as the founder of deconstruction, which was originally a translation of a Heideggerian term from Being and Time, also translated as 'De-structuring'....
, in criticism of Lacan's concept of castration, discusses the phallus in a chiasmus
Chiasmus

In rhetoric, chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted Parallelism ....
 with the hymen, as both one and other, as Derrida returns to Freud's case of the Wolf Man in The Dissemination. Others feminists, such as Judith Butler
Judith Butler

Judith Butler is an United States post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics....
, Jane Gallop
Jane Gallop

Jane Gallop is a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Much of her work centers on reading Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, particularly in the context of the American and French Feminist responses to it....
, and Elizabeth Grosz
Elizabeth Grosz

Elizabeth A. Grosz is an Australian feminist academic living and working in the USA. She is known for philosophical interpretations of the work of French philosophers Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, as well as her readings of the works of French feminists, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Michele Le Doeuff...
, have each interpreted Lacan's work as opening up new possibilities for feminist
Feminism

Feminism is the belief that women should have equal political, social, sexual, intellectual and economic rights to men. It involves various movements, Theory, and philosophies, all concerned with issues of gender difference, that advocate equality for women and that campaign for women's rights and interests....
 theory.

The Three Orders


The Imaginary

Lacan thought the relationship between the Ego and the reflected image means that the Ego and the Imaginary order itself are places of radical alienation
Social alienation

In sociology and critical social theory, alienation refers to an individual's estrangement from traditional community and others in general. It is considered by many that the Atomism of modernity means that individuals have shallower relations with other people than they would normally....
: "alienation is constitutive of the Imaginary order". This relationship is also narcissistic. So the Imaginary is the field of images and imagination, and deception: the main illusions of this order are synthesis, autonomy, duality, similarity.

The Imaginary is structured by the Symbolic order: in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis Lacan argues how the visual field is structured by symbolic laws. Thus the Imaginary 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" which inverts and distorts the discourse of the Other. On the other hand, the Imaginary is rooted in the subject's relationship with its 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.

Lacan accused major psychoanalytic schools of reducing the practice of psychoanalysis to the Imaginary order by making identification with the analyst the objective of analysis (see Écrits, "The Directions of the Treatment"). He proposes the use of the Symbolic as the way to dislodge the disabling fixations of the Imaginary: the analyst transforms the images into words. "The use of the Symbolic is the only way for the analytic process to cross the plane of identification."

The Symbolic

In his Seminar IV "La relation d'objet" Lacan asserts that the concepts of Law
LAW

LAW may refer to:* Anti-tank warfare, e.g. the US Army M72 LAW or the British Army LAW 80*Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights ...
 and Structure
Structure

Structure is a fundamental and sometimes intangible notion covering the recognition, observation, nature , and stability of patterns and relationships of entities....
 are unthinkable without language: thus the Symbolic is a linguistic dimension. Yet, he does not simply equate this order with language since language involves the Imaginary and the Real as well. The dimension proper of 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 differences.

The Symbolic is also the field of radical alterity, that is the Other: the unconscious
Unconscious

Unconscious might refer to:In physiology:* unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli....
 is the discourse of this Other. Besides it is the realm of the Law which regulates desire in the Oedipus complex. We may add that the Symbolic is the domain of culture as opposed to the Imaginary order of nature. As important elements in the Symbolic, the concepts of death
Death

Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that define a life organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby....
 and lack (manque)
Lack (manque)

Lack , is, in Lacan's psychoanalytic philosophy, always related to desire. In his seminar Le transfert he states that lack is what causes desire to arise....
 connive to make of the pleasure principle
Pleasure principle

Pleasure Principle can refer to:* Pleasure principle , a psychoanalytical term coined by Sigmund Freud* Pleasure Principle , a 1978 album by Parlet...
 the regulator of the distance from the Thing (das ding an sich) and the death drive which goes "beyond the pleasure principle by means of repetition"—"the death drive is only a mask of the Symbolic order."

It is by working in the Symbolic order that the analyst can produce changes in the subjective position of the analysand; these changes will produce imaginary effects since the Imaginary is structured by the Symbolic. Thus, it is the Symbolic which is determinant of subjectivity, and the Imaginary, made of images and appearances, is the effect of the Symbolic.

The Real

Not only opposed to the Imaginary, the Real is also located outside the Symbolic. Unlike the latter which is constituted in terms of oppositions, i.e. presence/absence, "there is no absence in the Real." Whereas the Symbolic opposition presence/absence implies the possibility that something may be missing from the Symbolic, "the Real is always in its place." 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.

Thus the Real is that which is outside language, resisting symbolization absolutely. In Seminar XI Lacan defines the Real as "the impossible" because it is impossible to imagine and impossible to integrate into the Symbolic, being impossibly attainable. It is this resistance to symbolization that lends the Real its traumatic quality. In his Seminar "La relation d'objet", Lacan reads Freud's case on "Little Hans." He distinguishes two real elements which intrude and disrupt the child's imaginary pre-oedipical harmony: the real penis which is felt in infantile masturbation and the newly born sister.

Finally, the Real is the object of anxiety
Anxiety

Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. These components combine to create an unpleasant feeling that is typically associated with uneasiness, fear, or worry....
 in that it lacks any possible mediation, and is "the essential object which is not an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence."

Desire


Lacan's désir follows Freud's concept of Wunsch and it is central to Lacanian theories. For the aim of the talking cure - psychoanalysis - is precisely to lead the analysand to uncover the truth about their desire, but this is only possible if that desire is articulated, or spoken. Lacan said that "it is only once it is formulated, named in the presence of the other, that desire appears in the full sense of the term." "That the subject should come to recognize and to name his/her desire, that is the efficacious action of analysis. But it is not a question of recognizing something which would be entirely given. In naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world." "[W]hat is important is to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring desire into existence." Now, although the truth about desire is somehow present in discourse, discourse can never articulate the whole truth about desire: whenever discourse attempts to articulate desire, there is always a leftover, a surplus.

In The Signification of the Phallus Lacan distinguishes desire from need and demand. Need is a biological instinct that is articulated in demand, yet demand has a double function, on one hand it articulates need and on the other acts as a demand for love. So, even after the need articulated in demand is satisfied, the demand for love remains unsatisfied and this leftover is desire. For Lacan "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" (article cited). Desire then is the surplus produced by the articulation of need in demand (Dylan Evans). Lacan adds that "desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need" (article cited). Hence desire can never be satisfied, or as Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj ?i?ek is a Marxist sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic. He was born in Ljubljana, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and Fran?ois Regnault....
 puts it "desire's raison d'être is not to realize its goal, to find full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire."

It is also important to distinguish between desire and the drives. If they belong to the field of the Other (as opposed to love), desire is one, whereas the drives are many. The drives are the partial manifestations of a single force called desire (see "The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis"). If one can surmise that objet petit a
Objet Petit a

In the Psychoanalysis theory of Jacques Lacan, objet petit a stands for the unattainable object of desire . It is sometimes called the object cause of desire....
 is the object of desire, it is not the object towards which desire tends, but the cause of desire. For desire is not a relation to an object but a relation to a lack (manque). Then desire appears as a social construct since it is always constituted in a dialectical relationship.

Drives


Lacan maintains Freud's distinction between Trieb (drive) and Instinkt (instinct) in that drives differ from biological needs because they can never be satisfied and do not aim at an object but rather circle perpetually round it, so the real source of jouissance
Jouissance

The French word jouissance means enjoyment particularly in an over-the-top or sexual sense.Jouissance, contrasts with plaisir, which is a controlled state that happens within cultural norms....
 is to repeat the movement of this closed circuit. In the same Seminar Lacan posits the drives as both cultural and symbolic (discourse) constructs, to him "the drive is not a given, something archaic, primordial". Yet 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 then returns to the erogenous zone. The circuit is structured by the three grammatical voices:
  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. So although it is the "passive" voice, the drive is essentially active, "to make oneself be seen" instead of "to be seen." The circuit of the drive is the only way for the subject to transgress the pleasure principle.

Lacan identifies four partial drives: the oral drive (the erogenous zones are the lips, the partial object the breast), the anal drive (the anus and the faeces), the scopic drive (the eyes and the gaze) and the invocatory drive (the ears and the voice). The first two relate to demand and the last two to desire. If the drives are closely related to desire, they are the partial aspects in which desire is realized: again, desire is one and undivided whereas the drives are partial manifestations of desire.

Other concepts

  • Name of the Father
    Name of the Father

    The Name-of-the-Father is a concept that Jacques Lacan fully developed starting in his Seminar The Psychoses . Lacan plays with the homophony of le nom du p?re and le non du p?re , to emphasize the legislative and prohibitive function of the symbolic father....
  • Oedipal drama and the Oedipal signification
  • Objet Petit a
    Objet Petit a

    In the Psychoanalysis theory of Jacques Lacan, objet petit a stands for the unattainable object of desire . It is sometimes called the object cause of desire....
  • The Seminars of Jacques Lacan
    The Seminars of Jacques Lacan

    Sources*External links*References...
  • Signifier/ Signified
  • The Letter
    The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud

    The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud is an essay by the psychoanalysis theorist Jacques Lacan, originally delivered as a talk on May 9, 1957 and later published in Lacan's 1966 book ?crits....
  • Foreclusion
    Foreclusion

    Foreclusion refers to a process seen by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan as being central in the development of psychosis.In order for the realm of The Symbolic to be bound to the realms of The Imaginary and The Real, Lacan postulates the existence of a paternal function ....
     - Foreclosure
  • Jouissance
    Jouissance

    The French word jouissance means enjoyment particularly in an over-the-top or sexual sense.Jouissance, contrasts with plaisir, which is a controlled state that happens within cultural norms....
  • Lack (manque)
    Lack (manque)

    Lack , is, in Lacan's psychoanalytic philosophy, always related to desire. In his seminar Le transfert he states that lack is what causes desire to arise....
  • The Phallus
    Phallus

    Phallus can refer to a penis, or to an object shaped like a penis. The word comes from Vulgar Latin "phallus", from Ancient Greek "fa????" phallos, penis....
  • Das Ding
  • The gaze
    Gaze

    In analysing visual culture, the concept of The Gaze describes how the viewer gazes upon the people presented and represented. As a concept of social power relations, the 1960s ascendancy of postmodern philosophy and postmodern social theory, as exposited by the intellectuals Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan , popularised usage of '...
  • The four discourses
    Four discourses

    The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued that there were four fundamental types of discourse. These could be expressed as the permutations of a four-term configuration showing the relative positions of the subject, the master signifier, knowledge and objet petit a....
  • The graph of desire
    Graph of desire

    The graph of desire is a conceptual tool from the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan....
  • Sinthome
    Sinthome

    The sinthome is a concept introduced by Jacques Lacan in his seminar Le sinthome . According to Lacan, sinthome is an archaic way of spelling the French word sympt?me, meaning symptom....
  • Lacan's Topology


Writings and seminars

Jacques-Alain Miller
Jacques-Alain Miller

Jacques-Alain Miller is a prominent French Lacanian psychoanalyst....
 is the sole editor of Lacan's , which contain the majority of his life's work. Although Lacan is a major figure in the history of psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behaviour....
, some of these seminars still remain unpublished. Since 1984, Miller has been regularly conducting a series of lectures, "L'orientation lacanienne", within the structure of ParisVIII. Miller's teachings have been published in the US by the journal Lacanian Ink
Lacanian Ink

Lacanian Ink is a cultural journal based in New York City and founded in the Autumn of 1990 by Josefina Ayerza to provide the American intellectual scene with the theoretical perspective of European post-structuralism....
.

Lacan claimed that his Écrits were not to be understood, but would produce a meaning effect in the reader similar to some mystical texts. Lacan's writing is notoriously difficult due to the repeated Hegelian/Kojèvean allusions, wide theoretical divergences from other psychoanalytic and philosophical thinking, as well as his obscure prose style.

Criticism

Some critics have dismissed Lacan and his work wholesale. François Roustang called Lacan's output "extravagant" and an "incoherent system of pseudo-scientific gibberish." In Fashionable Nonsense
Fashionable Nonsense

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science is a book by professors Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. Sokal is best known for the Sokal Affair, in which he submitted a deliberately absurd article to Social Text, a critical theory journal, and was able to get it published....
, Alan Sokal
Alan Sokal

Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics....
 and Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont

Jean Bricmont is a Belgium theoretical physics, Philosophy of science and a professor at the Universit? catholique de Louvain. He works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations....
 accused Lacan of "superficial erudition" and of abusing scientific concepts he does not understand. Defenders of Lacanian thinking claim that these critics misunderstand, or often simply have not read, Lacan's admittedly difficult texts.

Sources

  • Johns Hopkins University - 1966


Bibliography

Selected works published in English listed below. More complete listings can be found at .
  • The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis*, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968
  • Écrits: A Selection*, transl. by Alan Sheridan, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977, and revised version, 2002, transl. by Bruce Fink
  • Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, transl. by Bruce Fink, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006
  • The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
  • The Seminar, Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-1954,, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by J. Forrester, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1988
  • 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.
  • The Seminar, Book III. The Psychoses, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Russell Grigg, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1993.
  • 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.
  • The Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Alan Sheridan, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1977.
  • The Seminar XVII, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by Russell Grigg, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2007.
  • 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.
  • Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, ed. Joan Copjec, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1990.


Works about Lacan's Work and Theory
  • Badiou, Alain
    Alain Badiou

    Alain Badiou is a prominent French philosopher, formerly chair of philosophy at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy....
    , "The Formulas of L'Etourdit" (New York: Lacanian Ink 27, 2006.)
  • —————, , Lacan Dot Com, 2006.
  • Benvenuto, Bice; Kennedy, Roger, The Works of Jacques Lacan (London, 1986, Free Association Books
    Free Association Books

    Free Association Books is an innovative project started in 1980s London. It arose as the brainchild of Robert M. Young and colleagues, who, disillusioned by the decline of the liberatory movement, began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation....
    .)
  • Bowie, Malcolm
    Malcolm Bowie

    Malcolm McNaughtan Bowie FBA was a United Kingdom academic, and List of Masters of Christ's College, Cambridge of Christ's College, Cambridge from 2002 to 2006....
    ,
    Lacan (London: Fontana, 1991). (An introduction.)
  • 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). (A recent overview.)
  • —————, "Matrixial Gaze and Screen: Other than Phallic and Beyond the Late Lacan." In: Laura Doyle (ed.) Bodies of Resistance. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001.
  • —————, "Weaving Trans-Subjective Texture or The Matrixial Sinthome." In: Thurston, Luke (ed.), Re-inventing the Symptom: Essays on the final Lacan. NY: The Other Press, 2002.
  • Evans, Dylan, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Routledge, 1996.
  • Fink, Bruce, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
  • —————, Lacan to the Letter: Reading Ecrits Closely, University of Minnesota, 2004.
  • Forrester, John, Language and the Origins of Psychoanalysis (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1985).
  • Fryer, David Ross, The Intervention of the Other: Ethical Subjectivity in Levinas and Lacan (New York: Other Press, 2004)
  • Gallop, Jane, Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
  • —————, The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.
  • Gherovici, Patricia, The Puerto Rican Syndrome (New York: Other Press, 2003)
  • Glynos, Jason and Yannis Stravrakakis, ED, 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)
  • Homer, Sean, Jacques Lacan (London: Routledge, 2005)
  • Johnston, Adrian, Time Driven: Metapsychology and the Splitting of the Drive (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005)
  • Lander, Romulo, Subjective Experience and the Logic of the Other (New York: Other Press, 2006)
  • Leupin, Alexandre, Lacan Today (New York: Other Press, 2004)
  • Mathelin, Catherine, Lacanian Psychotherpay with Children: The Broken Piano (New York: Other Press, 1999)
  • 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, 2005.)
  • —————, "Introduction to Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar on Anxiety II" (New York: Lacanian Ink 27, 2006.)
  • —————, "Jacques Lacan's Later Teachings" (New York: Lacanian Ink 21, 2003.)
  • —————, "The Paradigms of Jouissance" (New York, Lacanian Ink 17, 2000.)
  • —————, , Lacan Dot Com, 2006.
  • Moustafa, Safouan, Four Lessons of Psychoanalysis (New York: Other Press, 2004)
  • Nasio, Juan-David
    Juan-David Nasio

    Juan-David Nasio was born in 1942 in Rosario, Argentina and is a psychoanalyst....
    ,
    Book of Love and Pain: The Thinking at the Limit with Freud and Lacan. Translated by David Pettigrew and Francois Raffoul (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003)
  • —————, Five Lessons on the Psychoanalytic Theory of Jacques Lacan. Translated by David Pettigrew and Francois Raffoul (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998)
  • —————, Hysteria: The Splendid Child of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Susan Fairfield (New York: Other Press, 1998)
  • Nobus, Dany (ed.), Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. (New York: Other Press, 1999)
  • Pettigrew, David and François Raffoul
    François Raffoul

    Fran?ois Raffoul received his doctorate at the ?cole des hautes ?tudes en sciences sociales in 1995 and is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University....
     (eds.),
    Disseminating Lacan (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996)
  • Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Lacan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
  • Rose, Jacqueline
    Jacqueline Rose

    Jacqueline Rose is a United Kingdom academic who is currently Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London. Born into a liberal Jewish family, Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature....
    ,
    Sexuality in the Field of Vision (London: Verso, 1986)
  • Roudinesco, Élisabeth, "Jacques Lacan: His Life and Work". Translated by Bray B. New York, Columbia University Press, 1997
  • Turkle, Sherry
    Sherry Turkle

    Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a clinical psychology....
    ,
    Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution, 2nd edition, Guildford Press, New York, 1992
  • ————— and Wollheim, Richard, ‘Lacan: an exchange’, New York Review of Books, 26 (9), 1979, p. 44.
  • Soler, Colette, What Lacan Said About Women Translated by (New York: Other Press, 2006)
  • Thurston, Luke (ed.), "Re-inventing the Symptom", NY: Other Press, 2002.
  • Van Haute, Philippe, Against Adaptation: Lacan's "Subversion" of the Subject (New York: Other Press, 2002)
  • Van Haute, Philippe and Tomas Geyskens, Confusion of Tongues: The Primacy of Sexuality in Freud, Ferenczi, and Laplanche (New York: Other Press, 2004)
  • Wilden, Anthony
    Anthony Wilden

    Anthony Wilden is a writer, social theorist, college lecturer, and consultant. Wilden has published numerous books and articles which intersect a number of fields, including systems theory, film theory, structuralism, cybernetics, psychiatry, anthropological theory, water control projects, urban ecosystems, resource conservation, and communi...
    , ‘Jacques Lacan: A partial bibliography’,
    Yale French Studies, 36/37, 1966, pp. 263–268.
  • Žižek, Slavoj, , Lacan Dot Com, 2005.
  • —————, ‘The object as a limit of discourse: approaches to the Lacanian real’, Prose Studies, 11 (3), 1988, pp. 94–120.
  • —————, Interrogating the Real, ed. Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (London and New York: Continuum, 2005).
  • —————, "Jacques Lacan as Reader of Hegel" (New York: Lacanian Ink 27, 2006.)


External links


Introductions



Practice



Theory

  • - radio features and interviews w/ Lacan on ubu.com