Jacques Lacan (Pre-published version)

Abstract

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was born on April 13, 1901 and died on September 9 1981. He was a French psychoanalyst and philosopher and was a very controversial figure on the French psychoanalytic scene. He was a polymathic intellectual presence across a number of fields of human inquiry, whose work has had strong influences on psychiatry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, literary and critical theory and film studies. He was a presence in the Student revolts in 1968, and his work has been increasingly translated into English. A selection from his writings entitled Écrits – A Selection, and a volume from his ongoing seminar series, Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, both published in 1977, and translated by Alan Sheridan, were the books that brought him to the attention of students of literature and theory in the Anglophone world. He gave a seminar in Paris for 27 years, which attracted all of the major intellectual figures of the time, and these books are being translated and published in English on an ongoing basis.