Application of Jacques Lacan's theories Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Application of Jacques Lacan's theories - Essay Example This movement took place mostly in France and gathered such bright and original thinkers as Lacan, Foucault, Althusser, Poulantzas and others. This movement had more an ideological than an organisational nature because all of its participants had a particular individuality and independent way in science, so, they denied their affiliation to the Structuralism. Jacques-Marie Emile Lacan took up the study of medicine in 1920 and specialised in psychiatry from 1926. He undertook his own analysis around this time with Rudolph Loewenstein and this continued until 1938. Lacan was very active in the world of Parisian writers, artists and intellectuals of the time: he was a friend of Andr Breton, Salvador Dal and Pablo Picasso, and attended the mouvement Psych founded by Maryse Choisy. Several of his articles were published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure and he was present at the first public reading of James Joyce's Ulysses. In his studies he had a particular interest in the philosophic work of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger and, alongside many other Parisian intellectuals of the time, he also attended the famous seminars on Hegel given by Alexandre Kojve. France had not proved the most favo... Lacan was very active in the world of Parisian writers, artists and intellectuals of the time: he was a friend of Andr Breton, Salvador Dal and Pablo Picasso, and attended the mouvement Psych founded by Maryse Choisy. Several of his articles were published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure and he was present at the first public reading of James Joyce's Ulysses. In his studies he had a particular interest in the philosophic work of Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger and, alongside many other Parisian intellectuals of the time, he also attended the famous seminars on Hegel given by Alexandre Kojve. France had not proved the most favourable testing-ground for Freud's theories. In 1907 Freud wrote to Jung of the difficulties the psychoanalytic movement had in making any headway there. He put this down to the national character, observing that 'it has always been hard to import things into France. The difficulty experienced by psychoanalysis was greatly increased by the fact that it was simultaneously perceived as Teutonic and Jewish, and was thus subject both to anti-German and to anti-semitic prejudice which were strong in French intellectual circles. It was in this atmosphere that Jacques Lacan developed his own theoretical system. Given the strength of the prevailing cultural chauvinism it is perhaps not surprising that Lacan should have begun by importing into psychoanalysis concepts which had been formulated in a completely different framework and whose originator neither intended nor imagined that they would eventually be married to the theories of Freud. Lacan presented his first analytic paper on the 'Mirror Phase' at the 1936 Congress of the International