Jacques Lacan(1901-1981)
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was an influential and controversial French
psychoanalyst, from a Catholic family, who were vinegar merchants.
Witnessing the hideous suffering of World War I veterans prompted him
to become a doctor.
Lacan's wife Sylvia Bataille was an acclaimed French actress (Renoir's Crime of Monsieur Lange and his A Day in the Country) whose first husband was the troubled surrealist novelist Georges Bataille (Ma mere, Story of the Eye - both filmed 2004). The Batailles' daughter Laurence (1930-1966) also became a psychiatrist and acted in Renoir's movie French Cancan.
Lacan himself was influenced by surrealists, including Spanish painter Salvador Dali, inspiring Lacan to devise a unique synthesis of psychiatry and Surrealism. He pushed for psychiatry to go "back to Freud's" basic principles, and his theories have been categorized as "post-structuralism." His interdisciplinary approach has been credited with his theories becoming influential outside of psychology, for example, in philosophy. His students include anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and philosopher Michel Foucault. His critics include the U.S. linguist Noam Chomsky.
Lacan much preferred public seminars to writing.
Lacan's wife Sylvia Bataille was an acclaimed French actress (Renoir's Crime of Monsieur Lange and his A Day in the Country) whose first husband was the troubled surrealist novelist Georges Bataille (Ma mere, Story of the Eye - both filmed 2004). The Batailles' daughter Laurence (1930-1966) also became a psychiatrist and acted in Renoir's movie French Cancan.
Lacan himself was influenced by surrealists, including Spanish painter Salvador Dali, inspiring Lacan to devise a unique synthesis of psychiatry and Surrealism. He pushed for psychiatry to go "back to Freud's" basic principles, and his theories have been categorized as "post-structuralism." His interdisciplinary approach has been credited with his theories becoming influential outside of psychology, for example, in philosophy. His students include anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and philosopher Michel Foucault. His critics include the U.S. linguist Noam Chomsky.
Lacan much preferred public seminars to writing.
