Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
Born	1951
Residence	United States
Fields	Comparative Literature
Institutions	University of Washington, Seattle
Notable awards	1987 – Prix de la Psyché 1994 – The Salomon Katz Distinguished Lectureship in the Humanities 1997 – Gradiva Award

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen (born 1951), is Professor of Comparative Literature and French at the University of Washington in Seattle. Born to Danish parents, he began his studies in France and emigrated to the United States in 1986. He is the author of many works on the history and philosophy of psychiatry, psychoanalysis and hypnosis. His constructivist analysis of the co-production of psychical "facts" emphasises the accuracy of historical accounts of mental disorders. He is known for his positions in virulent debates about psychoanalysis – called the Freud Wars – especially with regard to his 2005 publication of Le Livre noir de la psychanalyse ("The Black Book of Psychoanalysis"). In a review entitled Folies à plusieurs. De l'hystérie à la dépression ("Many madnesses. From hysteria to depression"), Pierre-Henri Castel calls Borch-Jacobsen "one of the most polemic thinkers with regard to the Freud Wars".

Borch-Jacobsen studied philosophy with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, two philosophers close in thought to, and in dialogue with, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan.

In 1981 at the University of Strasbourg he submitted his doctoral dissertation on The Freudian Subject and then began teaching in the department of Psychoanalysis at Vincennes University in Paris, where Jacques Lacan had first made his mark.

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