Serge Leclaire

Serge Leclaire (6 July 1924 – 8 August 1994) was a French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Initially analyzed by Jacques Lacan, he 'became the first French "Lacanian"'.

Subsequently he developed into 'one of the most respected and distinguished of all French analysts'.

Leclaire was born in 1924 in Strasbourg under the name Liebschutz, his family changing their name in wartime to escape persecution. Initially interested in Eastern philosophy, he then turned to psychoanalysis, and studied medicine and psychiatry in Paris (where he met Wladimir Granoff). He successfully defended his medical dissertation in 1957.

At the start of the fifties, Lacan 'was beginning to gather round him the most brilliant members of the third generation of French psychoanalysis. Among them were the musketeers of the future troika: Serge Leclaire, Wladimir Granoff, and Francois Perrier'. All three followed Lacan into the Societe Francaise de Psychanalyse during the 1953 split.

There Leclaire 'was made an associate member in 1954 and served as secretary from 1957 to 1962. He became president of the society in 1963, the year of the second split of the French psychoanalytic groups'. He was also, between 1961 and 1965, a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA).

Leclaire believed passionately that 'any break between Lacan and the IPA would be a calamity at once for Freudianism in France, for Lacan, and for the IPA', and worked tirelessly to prevent one on Lacan's behalf. He was ultimately unsuccessful, and indeed Lacan, despite the way 'Leclaire kept him informed of every important development' eventually 'accused Leclaire of betraying him'. Notwithstanding, Leclaire followed Lacan into the Ecole Freudienne de Paris, founded in 1964, but continued to work on the unification of French psychoanalysis.

In 1969, Leclaire was the originator of the first Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes), a project first opposed and then taken over by Lacan. After the latter's death, and the disintegration of the Lacanian movement, 'Serge Leclaire had refused to found a school; he wanted to give the younger generation a chance. But ten years later he made a great come-back on the French psychoanalytic scene' in an attempt to reuify the fragmented Lacanians. '"His initiative triggered things off. To begin with, everyone was against the founding of an order...But his analysis of the situation was accurate"'.

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