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L

LACAN, JACQUES (1901–1981). The
contribution of Jacques Lacan to philo-
sophy and the human sciences can be
summed up in his famous assertion that
“the unconscious is structured like lan-
guage.” With this, he brings together
Ferdinand de Saussure’s conception of
language and Sigmund Freud’s concep-
tion of the unconscious. Lacan’s crucial
assumption remained that language is a
self-regulating system of signs rather than
signs or words which refer to an indepen-
dent reality. Lacan analyzes language in
terms of its internal structures, i.e., what
language is in itself as a formal system of
relations, and not in terms of what lan-
guage refers to or is about. Lacan insisted
that Freud’s original insights were dis-
torted by positivist or scientist methods
which reduce the unconscious to the
behavior of the ego. In the late 1950s
Lacan would accuse the International
Psychoanalytic Association of reducing
(Freudian) psychoanalysis to a mechani-
cal causal behaviorism. He went on to
demonstrate that psychoanalysis as tool
for understanding the practice(s) of lan-
guage extends its sphere of influence to

the human sciences and so to the condi-

tions for all meaning and values. In this

way, Lacan extends his work and influ-

ence to the texts of philosophy, literature,

and theology, generating controversy and

often troublesome practices. At issue was

the Lacanian view that psychoanalysis, or

eventually “psycholinguistics,” is no more

than the science of provoking and seek-

ing to understand the language of the

unconscious; it cannot give any promise

of a cure. Lacan’s controversial theories

and practices kept him at the center of

debates within and outside of the profes-

sion of psychoanalysis, notably in the

debates of postmodern philosophers and

theorists. In his lecture, “On the Death of

God,” Lacan claims that Freud himself

might be counted among “the great theo-

logians of our century” because he exam-

ines the manifestations and deformations

of a religious function, that is, the reli-

gious form of the commandment to

love the Lord God your Father and your

neighbor as yourself. In other words,

Lacan saw in Freud what we might see in

Lacanian psycholinguistics: the persistent

life of God, despite claims to “the death