Jacques Lacan and his Linguistic Conception of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Jacques Lacan, the founder of the linguistic conception of psychoanalysis, has brought about the last, as we think, split within the psychoanalytic movement. He himself defined his work as a reinterpretation of the idea of Sigmund Freud. The Lacanean school, however, may be perceived as an original theory, developing psychoanalysis on the basis of the output and methods of linguistics and structuralism, a theory which treats language as the principal object of analysis. The paper presents a professional biography of Lacan, a history of the institutions he has founded and of his conflict with the psychoanalytic milieu; it presents the basic conceptions of the Lacanean theory: the mirror stage and its role in the forming of the subject (as opposed to illusion which is supposed to be ego); desire as a consequent of the basic lack, an effect of the dialectic of need and request through its dissatisfaction a constant source of psychic energy; unawareness of the language structure as well as the main mechanisms and laws which govern it − metaphor, that is condensation, and metonymy, that is shift. He points at some implications of the Lacanean theory as to the understanding and therapy of psychic disorders