Jacques Lacan Quotes
Jacques Marie Emile Lacan was a French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst whose return to Freud through structural linguistics reshaped psychoanalytic theory and exerted a wide influence on twentieth-century continental philosophy, literary theory, and feminist thought. His seminars, held in Paris from 1953 onward and published over decades, developed the famous distinctions of the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real, the mirror stage, and the structuring of the unconscious like a language. The quotes below are attributed to Jacques Lacan, organized by topic.
Browse Jacques Lacan by topic
Jacques Lacan on Knowledge
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“Interview in 1957 [ specific citation needed ]”
The man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth. -
“The important thing is not that the unconscious determines neurosis- of that one Freud can quite happily, like Pontius Pilot, wash his hands. Sooner or later, something would have been found, humeral determinate, for example- for Freud, it would be quite immaterial. For what the unconscious does it to show us the gap through which neurosis recreates a harmony with a real- a real that may not be determined.”
The Freudian Unconscious and Ours -
“The Freudian Unconscious and Ours”
The important thing is not that the unconscious determines neurosis- of that one Freud can quite happily, like Pontius Pilot, wash his hands. Sooner or later, something would have been found, humeral determinate, for example- for Freud, it would be quite immaterial. For what the unconscious does it to show us the gap through which neurosis recreates a harmony with a real- a real that may not be de -
“It is not without effect that, even in a public speech, one directs one's attention at subjects, touching them at what Freud calls the navel- the navel of the dreams , he writes , to designate their ultimately unknown centre- which is simply, like the anatomical navel that represents it, that gap of which I have already spoken.”
The Freudian Unconscious and Ours -
“The Freudian Unconscious and Ours”
It is not without effect that, even in a public speech, one directs one's attention at subjects, touching them at what Freud calls the navel- the navel of the dreams , he writes , to designate their ultimately unknown centre- which is simply, like the anatomical navel that represents it, that gap of which I have already spoken. -
“Discontinuity, then, is the essential form in which the unconscious first appears to us as a phenomenon-discontinuity, in which something is manifested as a vacillation.”
The Freudian Unconscious and Ours -
“The Freudian Unconscious and Ours”
Discontinuity, then, is the essential form in which the unconscious first appears to us as a phenomenon-discontinuity, in which something is manifested as a vacillation. -
“The Freudian Unconscious and Ours”
Nature provides-I must use the word- signifies, and these signifies organize human relation in a creative way, providing them with structures and shaping them.
Jacques Lacan on Life
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“The man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth.”
Interview in 1957 [ specific citation needed ]
Jacques Lacan on Love
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Attributed to Jacques Lacan:
“Desire is always desire of the Other.”
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Attributed to Jacques Lacan:
“Love is giving what you do not have to someone who does not want it.”
Jacques Lacan on Mind
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Attributed to Jacques Lacan:
“The unconscious is structured like a language.”
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Attributed to Jacques Lacan:
“The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation.”
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“There are thoughts in this field of the beyond of consciousness, and it is impossible to represent these thoughts other than in the same homology of determination in which the subject of the I think finds himself in relation to the articulation of the I doubt.”
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978) | The Unconscious and Repetition
Jacques Lacan on Nature
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“Nature provides-I must use the word- signifies, and these signifies organize human relation in a creative way, providing them with structures and shaping them.”
The Freudian Unconscious and Ours
Jacques Lacan on Politics
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“The father, the Name-of-the-father, sustains the structure of desire with the structure of the law- but the inheritance of the father is that which Kierkegaard designates for us, namely, his sin.”
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978) | Of the Network of Signifiers
Jacques Lacan on Truth
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Attributed to Jacques Lacan:
“The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.”