Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (/ləˈkɑːn/; French: [ʒak lakɑ̃]; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". 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. 2Biography 3Early 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. In 1920, after being rejected for military service on the grounds that he was too thin, Lacan entered medical schoo