Does Jacques Lacan enjoy any credibility in contemporary psychology?
Psychoanalysis as a whole has been under strong criticism from the more “scientific” psychology. 1) “Lacanian psychoanalysis integrates psychoanalysis with semiotics and Hegelian philosophy, and is practiced throughout the world. It is especially popular in France and Latin America. Lacanian psychoanalysis is a departure from the traditional British and American psychoanalysis, which is predominantly Ego psychology. Lacan frequently used the phrase “retourner à Freud” in his seminars and writings meaning “back to Freud” as he claimed that his theories were an extension of Freud’s own, contrary to those of Anna Freud, the Ego Psychology, object relations and “self” theories. Lacan’s first major contributions concern the “mirror stage”, the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic, and the claim the “unconscious is structured as a language”” “Exchanges between critics and defenders of psychoanalysis have often been so heated that they have come to be characterized as the Freud Wars. Popper a
