Jacques Lacan
1901–1981 · Postmodernism · Prominent
Lacan was a French psychoanalyst who reread Freud through the linguistics of his day and announced that the unconscious is structured like a language. Enter language as a child and it splits you from your own wanting: what you desire arrives through words and through other people, so it never belongs to you outright. He sorted mental life into three orders, the symbolic, the imaginary and the real.
Signature
The position Lacan is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Identity
- leans Changing
- Language
- Différance
Positions on the 2 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
18 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Lacan refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Ethics Basis
- Other
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Social Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Language
- Différance
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Human Nature
- No-Self
What is human nature?