Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan (April 13, 1901 - September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst.

He reiterated Sigmund Freud's findings. In opposition to the dominating anglo-american ego-psychologists[?] of his time the focus of his work was the powerlessness[?] of the ego in relation to the unconscious. After having obtained a medical degree he settled in Paris, where he worked as an analyst.

Lacan argued that the psychoanalytic movement towards understanding the ego as an active and dominating force in the self was a misinterpretation of the Freudian roots. Lacan stated that the self remained in eternal internal conflict and that only extensive self-deceit made the situation bearable.

Lacan also initiated the idea of imaginary, symbolic and the Real which he explained the three aspects of human psychic structure[?]. Through the interaction between the triad relationship, Lacan revised Freudian orthodoxical ideas about a stable psychic reality. The Imaginary, the pre-linguistic aspect, formulates human primitive self-knowledge[?] while the symbolic, the linguistic collaboration, generates a community-wide reflection of the primitive self-knowledge and creates the very first set of rules that govern behavior. The Real is a very difficult concept which Lacan in his later year had made it a matheme[?].

External links and references

• The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis (1959)