Lacan was a French Psychoanalyst - approx 1900-1980.
   He lived in Paris and became independent by 1950. In 1960 he
published and began his first seminars.
   The International Organization for Psychoanalysis had banished him -
probably for various reasons. I believe that, in depth, the fact that he
base his psychology on a paranoiac foundation of the human personality
did not please many people. Also the fact that he was identifying the
function of the Psychoanalyst as the being-for-death was upsetting. But
officially, he was ostracized because he interrupted his own
psychoanalysis and, when he began to practice, he did not apply the rule
of the fixed time for his sessions. Sometimes he stopped the session
after 5 minutes, sometime the session would last more than one hour.

   He began to teach, created his own school, and became quite famous.
During the sixties, students in France, like in USA were more or less
rioting. He was a kind of reference for the intellectual revolutionaries
of this time.
   His teaching, actually has been beautiful. Not only was he mastering
the language with great art, but he helped for remarkable advances in
the theory of Psychoanalysis.
   During many years, the censorship of the International has been
efficient and Lacan has not been well known outside of Paris. But
eventually his reputation has overcome his opponents. You can find many
sites on the Web who focus on Lacan. A New York based web site can be
find at
http://www.lacan.com
   Lacan was friend with artists like Dali, he help a lot for the theory
of femininity. If you visit these sites you will find a kind of
sophisticated snobbism which was his way of life.

   About Collective Psychology, Lacan established great foundations for
Artificial Intelligence, but did not go very far in pure Sociology. He
made an early attempt with a guy named Roger Cailloix. He wrote
fascinating essays on the conception of time and how it is on the base
of the social link that the individual can develop a notion of time.
   My reference to Collective Psychology is linked to Freud.
   It was hard for Freud's disciples to ostracize their master - it was
easier, and is it classical, to ignore what he said. Early in his
career, Freud began to realize that the individual psychology that he
was supposed to analyze was closely linked to the collective psychology.
But defining the Collective Psychology was very hard. Freud did not
believe that the crowd had a soul, as did the fascists of his time. He
did not believed either in a Collective Unconscious as his disciple Jung
was thinking. So he spend most of his life and devoted most of his
writing for understanding how could be described the link between one's
thoughts and one's folks.
   Most of Freud's book are actually about civilization, religion and
history in a social perspective. At the end of his life, he could
clearly write that if one could not bridge the individual and the
collective psychology one should better stop any practice of
Psychoanalysis. But he did not stop himself and nobody was interested to
hear this condemnation of an exiting practice.

   If you spend some time on my site
http://www.akhnaton.com
   you will not only see that Psychoanalysis proves that it can indeed
enlighten the knowledge of our history. I have continued Freud first
attempt to understand the origin of 'our' Western religion. You will
find also the only graph (except for early squiggles) that Freud ever
draw in his books - which is an attempt to set a diagram for the mass
psychology (as Copernicus made an attempt for the mass dynamics said
Lacan). Very little attention is usually drawn toward these fields
within the Freudian domain. However, I believe that, for instance, the
professionalism of the psychoanalyst cannot be studied without counting
with this collective psychology dimension.

Dr. William THEAUX NY, 1998/05/26 23:21:32
http://www.akhnaton.com
http://www.dnafoundation.com

Deanachka wrote:

> Im a little confused,
> Who exactly is Lacan?
> What is Collective Psychology?
> And Im not sure I understand the point,, please explain further,,
> Thanx, Diana