Lacan, Jacques (1901-1981)

French psychoanalyst and theorist. His attempt to reinterpret Sigmund Freud in terms of the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure has influenced studies in literature, social ideology, aesthetics, and philosophy, but has had little effect on the practice of psychoanalysis. His main work is Ecrits/Writings 1966.

Lacan rejects the notion of a stable, coherent, autonomous self and argues that the self is formed in a complex network (the ‘symbolic order’) of language and social customs. It follows that the self is inherently unstable and ‘neurotic’. In Lacan's theories, Freud's Oedipal stage is replaced by the child's entry in to language and society, the secure sense of narcissistic self-sufficiency giving way to a realization of difference, alienation, and loss.