Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan
Born	(1901-04-13)13 April 1901 Paris, France
Died	9 September 1981(1981-09-09) (aged 80) Paris, France
Education	Collège Stanislas (1907–1918)
Alma mater	University of Paris (certificate of specialist in legal medicine, 1931; M.D., 1932)
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Psychoanalysis Structuralism Post-structuralism
Institutions	University of Paris VIII
Main interests	Psychoanalysis
Notable ideas	Mirror phase The Real The Symbolic The Imaginary Graph of desire
Influences Sigmund Freud Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault Theodor Reik Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Martin Heidegger Ferdinand de Saussure Roman Jakobson Karl Jaspers Alexandre Kojève Claude Lévi-Strauss Karl Marx Salvador Dali Georges Bataille Henri Wallon
Influenced Alain Badiou, Louis Althusser, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Jacques-Alain Miller, Slavoj Žižek, Éric Laurent, Elisabeth Roudinesco, Lacanian movement, Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (/ləˈkɑːn/;French: [ʒak lakɑ̃]; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced many leading French intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially those associated with post-structuralism. His ideas had a significant impact on post-structuralism, critical theory, linguistics, 20th-century French philosophy, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis.

Lacan was born in Paris, the eldest of Émilie 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 Collège Stanislas between 1907 and 1918. During the early 1920s, Lacan attended right-wing Action Française political meetings, of which he would later be highly critical, and met the founder, Charles Maurras. By the mid-1920s, Lacan had become dissatisfied with religion and became an atheist. He quarreled with his family over this issue.

In 1920, after being rejected for military service on the grounds that he was too thin, Lacan entered medical school. Between 1927 and 1931, after completing his studies at the faculty of medicine of the University of Paris, he specialised in psychiatry at the Sainte-Anne Hospital (Centre hospitalier Sainte-Anne ()) in Paris under the direction of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault. During that period, he was especially interested in the philosophies of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger and attended the seminars about Hegel given by Alexandre Kojève.