Freud | LACANONLINE.COM

The Case of Sigmund Freud

Owen Hewitson - LacanOnline.com May 18, 2010 The Case of Sigmund Freud2017-03-26T21:37:24+00:00 Freud No Comment

This documentary was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the autumn of 2000 to mark the centenary of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. As Freud scholars often remind us,...

Reading ‘The Unconscious’

Owen Hewitson - LacanOnline.com May 3, 2010 Reading ‘The Unconscious’2017-03-26T21:38:02+00:00 Freud 6 Comments

The Unconscious 1915 Standard Edition Volume XIV Before going into depth on this important paper we can note the fact that at the very outset Freud differentiates between two...

Reading ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love

Owen Hewitson - LacanOnline.com May 3, 2010 Reading ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love2017-03-26T21:39:33+00:00 Freud 3 Comments

On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love II) 1912 Standard Edition Volume XI Despite the huge volume of psychoanalytic...

Reading ‘Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’

Owen Hewitson - LacanOnline.com May 3, 2010 Reading ‘Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’2017-03-26T21:40:23+00:00 Freud No Comment

Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence 1896 Standard Edition Volume III The central thesis of the 1894 paper The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence restated: that it is possible to distinguish...

Reading ‘The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’

Owen Hewitson - LacanOnline.com May 3, 2010 Reading ‘The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence’2017-03-26T21:41:37+00:00 Freud 3 Comments

The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence 1894 Standard Edition Volume III Freud’s point of departure in this paper is the contemporary agreement between he, Breuer and Janet, on the idea that...

Reading the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

Owen Hewitson - LacanOnline.com May 3, 2010 Reading the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis2017-03-26T21:42:46+00:00 Freud 3 Comments

Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 1915 – 1916 SE Volume XVI As the purpose of these lectures is to introduce the reader to psychoanalytic theory, there is no need to...

Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst, 1901 - 1981.
Trained as a psychiatrist, he abandoned the profession in favour of psychoanalysis in the early thirties. After publishing his paper on the Mirror Stage in 1949, for which he is probably best known to the general public, in the early fifties Lacan embarked on a project he called the 'Return to Freud'.

Lacan began holding yearly seminars, starting in 1952, re-examining Freud's work. At the time, the theory and technique of psychoanalysis was facing a complete overhaul at the hands of post-Freudian psychoanalysts, many of whom had emigrated to the United States after the war. Lacan railed against their teaching of Freud, seeing it as an oversimplification of his work and a corruption of psychoanalytic technique reducing it to the status of life management. Through his seminars he offered another interpretation of Freud's work and psychoanalytic theory. Inventive, radical and adventurous, many still believe Lacan's to be a creative mis-reading of Freud.

However Lacan's seminars grew in popularity and as his teaching developed from a reading of Freud's text to an elaboration of his own concepts his teaching became more influential. Lacan continued to give yearly seminars until the year before his death in 1981. By that time, he had become a major intellectual figure in public life and had both created and disbanded his own school, separating his members both from the established psychoanalytic institutions and from each other.

Today, Lacanian theory is advanced by a number of disparate groupings of his followers and the technique of psychoanalysis he developed is practiced clinically by Lacanian analysts around the world.