Lacan's Psychoanalysis: Four Basic Concepts and Basic Contents

Jacques Lacan (1901-1981), a French psychiatrist, was the most independent and controversial European psychoanalyst after World War II, and was called "Freudian in France". Lacan severely criticized the American psychoanalysis school which deviated from Freud's subconscious theory and moved towards "self-psychology". In the United States, psychoanalytic therapy pays attention to self-awareness, explains pathological psychological defense, and promotes the growth of adaptability without conflict and contradiction. Lacan completely denied this practice. According to him, the "self" that does not exist in the conflict-free field is hostile to the subconscious and the main psychoanalytic process. He believes that psychoanalysis is a kind of consultation, not a kind of treatment. Lacan, with his typical way of playing with words, satirizes the American attempt to turn psychoanalysis into a practical scientific research, which is "non-psychology" and "marginal psychology". When the English word "experimental" is split in two and a half, it becomes "ex-mental" and "per-mental". For Lacan, the study of animals excludes the concept of psychology, because psychology is bound to be related to language, meaning and values.

Lacan believes that Freud's early work The Interpretation of Dreams is the essence of psychoanalysis. He put forward the theory that the subconscious is quite similar to "natural language" in structure; Psychoanalysis, as a theory and therapy, discovers this natural language by recapture the associative chain with specific meaning. An example of Lacan's theoretical emphasis on linguistics is his reinterpretation of Oedipus complex. He believes that this complex includes children's activities from the image stage to the polysemous symbol stage. At first, the baby's psychological activity was in the mirror image stage, just like Casos saw his reflection in the water by the stream. When babies acquire the ability of language and symbol recognition, the meaning of images changes through these media. The baby becomes the subject of division, and the subconscious becomes "another" and another language.

Lacan's works are mysterious, obscure, skillful, poetic and difficult to read. Existentialism, New hegelianism and linguistic theory all have great influence on Lacan. Especially his later works are even more difficult to understand, because he put topology and mathematics at the center of theory.

A. Si Tong once commented that Lacan became the center of radical thoughts among French intellectuals and was extremely interested in western literature and social criticism. The clinical methods he used were opposed by psychoanalysts of relevant organizations. The most prominent point is that he sometimes ends the diagnosis and treatment only by talking for 5- 10 minutes. However, Lacan attacked the psychoanalytic association in turn, saying that it only pursued and maintained the "authority" of its members. He claimed that psychoanalysis is only a "call" to patients, and psychoanalysts can only have authority over themselves.