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Influential as perhaps no other analyst since Freud himself, Jacques Lacan was born in Paris in 1901, took up the study of medicine in 1920 and specialised in psychiatry from 1926. In 1932 he completed his doctoral thesis: “Paranoid Psychosis and its Relations to the Personality”. He began his analysis around this time with Rudolph Loewenstien and this continued until 1938. A friend of Andrè Breton, Salvador Dali and Picasso, Lacan was very active in the world of Parisian writers, artists and intellectuals of the time; he made contributions to several Surrealist publications and was present at the first public reading of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. Instead of confining himself in his studies to the standard texts in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Lacan read widely and with a particular interest in the philosophic work of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger; alongside many other Parisian intellectuals of the time, he also attended the famous seminars on Hegel given by Alexandre Kojève.  

Influential as perhaps no other analyst since Freud himself, Jacques Lacan was born in Paris in 1901, took up the study of medicine in 1920 and specialised in psychiatry from 1926. In 1932 he completed his doctoral thesis: “Paranoid Psychosis and its Relations to the Personality”. He began his analysis around this time with Rudolph Loewenstien and this continued until 1938. A friend of Andrè Breton, [[Salvador Dali]] and [[Pablo Picasso]], Lacan was very active in the world of Parisian writers, artists and intellectuals of the time; he made contributions to several Surrealist publications and was present at the first public reading of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. Instead of confining himself in his studies to the standard texts in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Lacan read widely and with a particular interest in the philosophic work of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger; alongside many other Parisian intellectuals of the time, he also attended the famous seminars on Hegel given by Alexandre Kojève.  

Lacan presented his first paper on ‘The Mirror Phase’ at the 1936 Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in Marienbad.  He was called up to serve in the French army after the German occupation of France and was posted to the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris.  After the end of the war Lacan visited England for a five week study trip, meeting English analysts Wilfred Bion and John Rickman. He was much influenced by Bion’s analytic work with groups and this contributed to Lacan’s own later emphasis on study groups (in France, Cartels) as a structure with which to advance theoretical work in psychoanalysis.  Lacan’s conclusions from this time are collected in the 1947 paper ‘English Psychiatry and the War’.  

Lacan presented his first paper on ‘The Mirror Phase’ at the 1936 Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in Marienbad.  He was called up to serve in the French army after the German occupation of France and was posted to the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris.  After the end of the war Lacan visited England for a five week study trip, meeting English analysts Wilfred Bion and John Rickman. He was much influenced by Bion’s analytic work with groups and this contributed to Lacan’s own later emphasis on study groups (in France, Cartels) as a structure with which to advance theoretical work in psychoanalysis.  Lacan’s conclusions from this time are collected in the 1947 paper ‘English Psychiatry and the War’.  

Lacanian work is an established feature of the psychoanalytic tradition in France, Belgium, Argentina, Spain and many other European and non-European countries. It has been estimated that about half the world’s analytic population (of approximately 20,000 practitioners) are trained in Lacanian frameworks, although in many countries they represent either more or less than this average.

Lacanian work is an established feature of the psychoanalytic tradition in France, Belgium, Argentina, Spain and many other European and non-European countries. It has been estimated that about half the world’s analytic population (of approximately 20,000 practitioners) are trained in Lacanian frameworks, although in many countries they represent either more or less than this average.