Encyclopedia Entries
| Lacan, Jacques | Encyclopedia Britannica |
| Lacan, Jacques | Columbia Encyclopedia |
| Lacan, Jacques | Free Online Dictionary of Philosophy |
Encyclopedia Entries
Lacan, Jacques Encyclopedia Britannica Lacan, Jacques Columbia Encyclopedia Lacan, Jacques Free Online Dictionary of Philosophy
A staunch critic of modern (particularly American) revisions of psychoanalytic theory, Lacan supported the traditional model of psychoanalysis espoused by Sigmund Freud. He argued that contemporary psychoanalytic theories had strayed too far from their roots in Freudian psychoanalysis, which held that there was constant conflict between the ego and the unconscious mind. Lacan argued that this conflict could not be resolved—the ego could not be “healed”—and pointed out that the true intention of psychoanalysis was analysis and not cure. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2003 Columbia University Press
French psychoanalyst whose The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis (1959) modified Freudian psychology's analysis of human sexuality by proposing that the individual unconscious is represented most accurately in linguistic and rhetorical structures like metonymy and metaphor, which disrupt the flow of ordinary communication and reveal a repressed message. Relying upon the imaginary and the symbolic, Lacan supposed, each person endeavors to establish not only working relationships with other people but also some accomodation with the insatiable desires of the Other, expressed in dreams. Lacan's analytic theory and practice, as expressed in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1960) and The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964), were an influence (both positive and negative) on the philosophical work of Foucault, Derrida, and Irigaray. Garth Brookes
Jacques Lacan, On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, ed. by Jacques-Alain Miller (Norton, 1999);
The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis (1959)
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1960)
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964)
Joel Dor, Introduction to the Reading of Lacan: The Unconscious Structured Like a Language (Other Press, 1998); Introducing Lacan, ed. by Darian Leader, Judy Groves, and Richard Appignanesi (Totem, 2000); Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan, tr. by Barbara Bray (Columbia, 1999); Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology after Lacan (Routledge, 2001); Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 1996); and Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political (Routledge, 1999).