Jacques Lacan is undoubtedly the most philosophical of psychoanalytic authors. He developed his psychoanalytic theory of subjectivity—as a ferocious critique of the modern metaphysical tradition—in direct dialogue with a number of major philosophical figures: Descartes, Kant, Heidegger, and many others.

Lacan never had any formal philosophical training. After studying medicine and psychiatry, he got involved in the surrealist movement in the early 1930s. Along with Sartre and Bataille, he participated in Alexandre Kojève's famous seminars on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spiritat the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Lacan joined the Société Psychanalytique de Paris in 1936. Both his theories—specifically his critique of ego psychology, which he carried out under the label of a "return to Freud"—and his practice of short psychoanalytic sessions caused discord within the French and the international psychoanalytic movement in the fifties. As a...