Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (French: [ʒak lakɑ̃]; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called “the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud”.[2] Lacan’s post-structuralist theory rejected the belief that reality can be captured in language.[3]
Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France’s intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers. His interdisciplinary work was as a “self-proclaimed Freudian….’It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish. I am a Freudian’;”[4] and featured the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, identification, and language as subjective perception. His ideas have had a significant impact on critical theory, literary theory, 20th-century French philosophy, sociology, feminist theory, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis.