Page 143 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Digvijay Pandya, LPU Unit 13: The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious—Jacques Lacan: An Introduction

Unit 13: The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious— Notes
Jacques Lacan: An Introduction

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
13.1 Biography
13.2 Lacan’s Major Concepts
13.3 The Three Orders
13.4 Clinical Contributions
13.5 Writings and Writing Style
13.6 His Criticisms
13.7 Summary
13.8 Key-Words
13.9 Review Questions
13.10 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Know about Lacan.
• Discuss Biography and His Works.

Introduction

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent
contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial
psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced
France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers. His
interdisciplinary work was as a "self-proclaimed Freudian....'It is up to you to be Lacanians if you
wish. I am a Freudian'"; and featured the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, identification,
and language as subjective perception. His ideas have had a significant impact on critical theory,
literary theory, 20th-century French philosophy, sociology, feminist theory, film theory and clinical
psychoanalysis.

13.1 Biography

Early life
Lacan was born in Paris, the eldest of Emilie 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 Jesuit Collège Stanislas. During the early 1920s,
Lacan attended right-wing Action Française political meetings and met the founder, Charles
Maurras. By the mid-1920s, Lacan had become dissatisfied with religion and quarrelled with his
family over it.
A growing psychoanalytical movement in France had been showing a particular interest in similar
patients. Lacan wrote his thesis for his doctorat d'état in 1932 titled De la psychose paranoïaque

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