Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (UK: /læˈkɒ̃/,^[3] US: /ləˈkɑːn/,^[4]^[5] French: [ʒak maʁi emil lakɑ̃]; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud",^[6] Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book Écrits. Transcriptions of his seminars, given between 1954 and 1976, were also published.^[7] His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself.

"Lacan" redirects here. For other uses, see Lacan (disambiguation).

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Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing the philosophical dimension of Freud's thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from predicate logic and topology. Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his followers from the International Psychoanalytic Association.^[8] In consequence, Lacan went on to establish new psychoanalytic institutions to promote and develop his work, which he declared to be a "return to Freud", in opposition to prevalent trends in psychology and institutional psychoanalysis collusive of adaptation to social norms.

Clinical contributions[edit]

Variable-length session[edit]

The "variable-length psychoanalytic session" was one of Lacan's crucial clinical innovations,^[92] and a key element in his conflicts with the IPA, to whom his "innovation of reducing the fifty-minute analytic hour to a Delphic seven or eight minutes (or sometimes even to a single oracular parole murmured in the waiting-room)"^[93] was unacceptable. Lacan's variable-length sessions lasted anywhere from a few minutes (or even, if deemed appropriate by the analyst, a few seconds) to several hours. This practice replaced the classical Freudian "fifty minute hour".

With respect to what he called "the cutting up of the 'timing'", Lacan asked the question, "Why make an intervention impossible at this point, which is consequently privileged in this way?"^[94] By allowing the analyst's intervention on timing, the variable-length session removed the patient's former certainty as to the length of time that they would be on the couch.^[95]^: 18 When Lacan adopted the practice, "the psychoanalytic establishment were scandalized"^[95]^: 17^[96]—and, given that "between 1979 and 1980 he saw an average of ten patients an hour", it is perhaps not hard to see why. Psychoanalysis was "reduced to zero",^[24]^: 397, though the treatments were no less lucrative.

At the time of his original innovation, Lacan described the issue as concerning "the systematic use of shorter sessions in certain analyses, and in particular in training analyses";^[97] and in practice it was certainly a shortening of the session around the so-called "critical moment"^[98] which took place, so that critics wrote that "everyone is well aware what is meant by the deceptive phrase 'variable length' ... sessions systematically reduced to just a few minutes".^[99] Irrespective of the theoretical merits of breaking up patients' expectations, it was clear that "the Lacanian analyst never wants to 'shake up' the routine by keeping them for more rather than less time".^[100] Lacan's shorter sessions enabled him to take many more clients than therapists using orthodox Freudian methods, and this growth continued as Lacan's students and followers adopted the same practice.^[101]

Accepting the importance of "the critical moment when insight arises",^[102] object relations theory would nonetheless suggest that "if the analyst does not provide the patient with space in which nothing needs to happen there is no space in which something can happen".^[103] Julia Kristeva would concur that "Lacan, alert to the scandal of the timeless intrinsic to the analytic experience, was mistaken in wanting to ritualize it as a technique of scansion (short sessions)".^[104]

Legacy[edit]

In his introduction to the 1994 Penguin edition of Lacan's The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, translator and historian David Macey describes Lacan as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud".^[6] His ideas had a significant impact on post-structuralism, critical theory, French philosophy, film theory, and clinical psychoanalysis.^[115]

In 2003, Rabaté described "The Freudian Thing" (1956) as one of his "most important and programmatic essays".^[105]