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

"I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realized in my Notes
history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what
has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the
process of becoming." (From Écrits)
Lacan translated Martin Heidegger's work into French and the evidence of Heidegger's influence
can be read in Lacan's essay The Function and Field of Speech in Psychoanalysis, in which he
concentrates on the idea that subjectivity is symbolically constituted. Lacan was also influenced by
Hegel's work, and by his discussions with both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. He was the first to
introduce structural linguistics to psychoanalytical theory, and because of this he attracted attention
both nationally and, later in the 1970s, internationally. He was considered unorthodox and unusual
in his psychoanalytical practice, and his lectures were a form of practice alongside his work as an
analyst, in that they put his theory into practical form. His lectures made his theory evident: that
language can say something other than what it says, and that it speaks through humans as much
as they speak it.
Language is of the Symbolic order, one of three orders that constitute the subject in Lacanian
psychoanalysis, the other two being the Imaginary and the Real. The Imaginary is the place where
the subject fails to see the lack of reality in the symbolic, and mis-recognizes its nature, believing
in its transparency. The Imaginary is the place of necessary illusion. At the level of the Imaginary,
the de-centering of the subject that occurs at the Mirror Phase is not acknowledged. The Real can
be understood, in one sense, as that that is always "in its place," because only what is absent from
its place can be symbolized. The Symbolic is the substitute for what is missing from its place;
language cannot be in the same place as its referent.
In the years 1964-73 Lacan departed further still from Freud and traditional psychoanalysis. His
discourse became uniquely "Lacanian", and he became known for his neologisms and complex
diagrams. His view of the ego as the seat of neurosis rather than the place of psychic integration,
and the Symbolic order as the primary place for subject formation, made his work groundbreaking.
He still claimed to be continuing Freud's work, which had only been obscured by Freud's followers,
and this accusation caused tension within the SFP. Lacan left this group in 1963 to form the École
Freudienne de Paris (EFP). The decision to start the new group was inspired by a series of lectures,
given at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, in which he read Freud's texts closely but also
introduced new terms to the readings from outside the original work.

In 1920, on being rejected as too thin for military service, he entered medical school and,
in 1926, specialised in psychiatry at the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris. He was especially
interested in the philosophies of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger and attended the
seminars about Hegel given by Alexandre Kojève. Sometime in that decade, and until
1938, Lacan sought psychoanalysis by Rudolph Loewenstein. The analysis was lengthy
and perhaps not wholly successful: "Loewenstein... often expressed his opinion orally to
the people around him: the man was unanalyzable. And Lacan was unanalyzable in
those conditions".

These lecture attracted still more attention from outside the psychoanalytical circle, including the
press, who associated Lacan with the "structuralists" practicing in France at the same time. The
training methods of Lacan's new school, the EFP, departed considerably from the traditional
training offered to analysts at the IPA, causing the IPA distress. Tension between Lacan and the
traditional psychoanalytic community grew greater still when he took the position of "Scientific
Director" at the University of Paris at Vincennes in 1974, heading the department of psychoanalysis
which had opened in 1969. Lacan hoped the new department at the University would integrate
linguistics, logic and mathematics with psychoanalytical training, giving it a scientific rigor.

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