Jacques Lacan

In January 1934, Lacan married Marie-Louise Blondin. The couple had three children, Caroline, born in January 1937; Thibaut, born in August 1939 and Sibylle, born in 1940.

Possibly from 1938, while he was still married to Marie-Louise, Lacan became involved with Sylvia Bataille née Maklès, wife of his friend Georges Bataille and an acclaimed actress. They had a daughter named Judith born on 3 July 1941.

After the birth of Judith, Marie-Louise requested divorce, which was granted sometime in 1945. Lacan and Sylvia got married in 1953, remaining together until his death. Judith grew up to be a psychoanalyst and married Jacques-Alain Miller, another Lacanian psychoanalyst and writer.

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was born 13 April 1901, in Paris into a prosperous middle bourgeoisie family. His father, Alfred Charles Marie Paul Lacan, was ‘representant de commerce’, dealing successfully in soap and oil. His mother, Émilie Philippine Marie Lacan nee Baudry, was an ardent Catholic.

Jacques was possibly born eldest of his parents’ four children, having two brothers named Raymond and Marc-Marie Lacan, and a sister named Magdeleine-Marie Lacan. Later, one of his brothers, Marc-Marie, joined the church and became a priest. Nothing is known about Raymond. They were brought up in strict Catholic tradition.

In 1907, Jacques began his education at Collège Stanislas de Paris, a prestigious Catholic school, run by Jesuit priests and graduated from there in 1918. He was a brilliant and hardworking student, excelling in philosophy and Latin. However, his grades in other subjects were just honorable.

His teacher’s comment in his 1916-1917 report card projects him as rather eccentric and proud. He was also occasionally annoying and never seemed to be able to manage his time. Neither did he behave like other boys, often suffering from listlessness and melancholy.

After completing his baccalauréat, he tried to enter the military service; but was rejected because he was very thin. Possibly in 1920, he entered Faculté de médecine de Paris to study medicine and graduated from there sometime in 1927.

From the autumn of 1932 to 1938, Lacan worked with Rudolph Lowenstein and received training under him. Meanwhile in 1934, he developed his first version of ‘mirror phase’, presenting it at the Fourteenth Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in Marienbad in 1936. However, it failed to have any impact.

Although Lagan did not publish the paper he continued elaborating it. In 1940, he had it published in the form of two essays in Encyclopédie française. But very soon, as Germany occupied France, Société psychanalytique de Paris of which he was a member closed down, halting all academic works.

In 1940, Lacan was called up to serve at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris, where he remained for the duration of the Second World War, shelving his personal studies. He did not publish any paper until 1945.

In 1948, he was appointed to the Committee of Teaching at the Société psychanalytique de Paris (SPP). In the following year, he wrote SPP’s statues, opening psychoanalysis training to nonmedical students and granting them the rights to practice.

In 1949, he completed a more complex variant of ‘mirror phase’, which he presented at the Sixteenth Congress of International Psychoanalytical Association, held at Zürich. It earned him considerable acclaim.

In 1953, Lacan became famous as he started conducting regular seminars at the University of Paris. In these seminars, held over a period of 27 years, he urged the attendees to return to Freud. Over the time, they began to yield tremendous influence on psychiatric analysis and practice.

Sometime after June 1953, Lacan and his colleagues left Société Parisienne de Psychanalyse over a disagreement concerning Lacan’s ‘variable-length session’, which drastically reduced the fifty-minute analytical hour. Thereafter, he formed Société Française de Psychanalyse (SFP) with four of colleagues, but was deprived from acquiring membership in the International Psychoanalytical Association.

From 1953, he started holding his seminars at Hôpital Sainte-Anne, presenting case histories of patients. Simultaneously, he also started studying Freud's works in relation to contemporary philosophy, linguistics, ethnology, biology, and topology, writing many articles on them.

Over 1950s, Lacan continued to develop his theories, many of which were against the accepted principle. However, to act effectively, he needed to be a member of International Psychoanalytical Association, which was denied to the members of to Société Française de Psychanalyse.

In August 1963, International Psychoanalytical Association sent messages to Société Française de Psychanalyse that they would get the membership only if Lacan’s name was removed from its list of training analysts. SFP accepted the condition and thus Lacan was stripped of his standing.