The Lacanian movement is the termed used for that brand of Freudian psychoanalysis derived from the work of Jacques Lacan.
The exact status of the Lacanian movement in relation to the work of Freud has been (and remains) problematic: Lacan himself is famously reported as informing his followers, 'It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish. I am a Freudian'.[1]
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Lacan's theories began to crystallize into a distinct movement sometime after W W II: Serge Leclaire for example saw Lacan as 'the spokesperson of an innovative Freudianism that he had supported ever since 1950, when he became the first French "Lacanian"'.[2]
The early sixties were marked by the struggle 'to gain IPA recognition for the French form of Freudianism that was "Lacanianism"'.[3] The failure of that struggle meant that in 1964 Lacan instead 'founded the École Freudienne de Paris, which was never to gain recognition but which did become a vital - if conflict-ridden - institution until its dissolution in 1980'.[4] As a result, it is arguable, 'starting in 1964, the history of psychoanalysis in France became subordinate to that of Lacanianism...the Lacanian movement occupied thereafter the motor position in relation to which the other movements were obliged to determine their course'.[5]
Élisabeth Roudinesco has suggested that 'Lacanianism, born of subversion and a wish to transgress, is essentially doomed to fragility and dispersal';[6] and a few years after its inauguration the EDF underwent another painful split over the question of analytic qualifications. There remained within the movement a broad division between 'the "old school" or first generation of Lacanians', focused on 'the crucial role of the symbolic'[7] and the new, more formalist group centred around Jacques-Alain Miller.
'More than twenty associations emerged from the dissolution of the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP, the Freudian School of Paris)',[8] (which was followed shortly by the death of Lacan himself). 'Between 1885 and 1993 fourteen more associations came into being in eight years';[9] nor did the process stop there. 'Allegations of misuse of authority triggered a massive crisis in the Lacanian community during the late 1990s, eventually leading to the dissension of literally hundreds of analysts across the globe from Miller's "World Association of Psychoanalysis"'.[10]
Not without reason, then, the new millennium has seen the claim that 'the recent history of the Lacanian movement in France has become a tale of irremediable conflicts, betrayals, institution building and breaking'.[11]
As to causes, to a large extent, 'the debates pervading Lacanian psychoanalysis have been sustained by...Lacanian psychoanalysts themselves, pitting one version of the master's narrative against the other, in an attempt to preserve the purity of his doctrine'.[12]
'Although there are of course Lacanian analysts in the non-Francophone world, many more "Lacanians" are to be found in university departments of English or Philosophy than in clinical practice',[13] and critics would see the spread of Lacanianism as little more than an intellectual fad - part of 'the "sociology of superficial knowledge"...lacaniens as mere charlatans'.[14]
While the Lacanian movement is sometimes seen in religious terms - 'and who would deny that the Lacanian School was just such a sect?'[15] - there is one major difference between most religions and the Lacanian community: 'it is fairly easy to get out of it, but excruciatingly difficult to get into'.[16]