Lacan, Jacques

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (1901–1981) ranks among the most important and original psychoanalytic thinkers. His career spanned over 50 momentous years of French intellectual history (from Surrealism and phenomenology to structuralism and poststructuralism), while his enormously influential seminar combining a careful rereading of Freud with the elaboration of his own conceptual innovations ran nearly 30 years (1953–1980). By the 1960s, unofficial transcripts of Lacan's seminars were being widely circulated and discussed, and the publication of his massive Écrits in 1966 (selections translated into English) was a major intellectual event. Lacan's rebellion against the “ego psychology” of the International Psychoanalytical Association was easily identified with the student revolt of May 1968. He was both critical and supportive of the students. He honored their strike against the ...