Talk:Lacanian movement

Lacanian lacuna
As of the revision dated 6 December 2012, this article manages to explain the Lacanian movement's origins, how a school was set up and how various schisms transpired, and a couple of criticisms.... all without even coming close to saying what the movement is, what its tenets or approaches (or whatever characteristics a movement has other than the names and addresses of the players) are! This gap is mirrored in the TOC, which goes from early history to post-Lacan, with no "meat in the middle of the sandwich". The closest we get is this tantalizing bit: "here remained within the movement a broad division between 'the "old school" or first generation of Lacanians', focused on 'the crucial role of the symbolic'[7] and the new, more formalist group centred around Jacques-Alain Miller." Is this some sort of performance art or inadvertent irony? --Middle 8 (talk) 19:32, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
 * What about inadvertent performance art? Jacobisq (talk) 11:01, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

What is this about?
It fails the primary question, "What?". It does not even explain what the movement is about --Legolas558 (talk) 09:46, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I had the same question. Apparently, the answer is controversial.  Here is a snippet from the current article:  "...haunted by a past of betrayals and conflict[20] - by faction after faction claiming their segment of Lacanian thought as the only genuine one[21] - reunification of any kind has proven very problematic..."  I know pretty much nothing about the subject, but a quick duckduckgo reveals a source of sorts.  I'll put the stuff below in the article, and see if somebody who knows more about will step up. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:26, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Lacan became well-known in 1932 in psychiatry/psychology, and at least in France, famous in 1966; from about then until his death in 1981 is when the Lacanian movement flourished, with him as the unwilling leader ("I am a Freudian" he told his would-be followers -- as opposed to a Lacanian). The original movement largely followed a modified theoretical approach to Freudian psychoanalysis (especially Lacanian 'language' aka jargon); the other distinguishing characteristic was that actual psychoanalytic sessions were much shorter and more intense than was typical in other traditions.  The movement splintered into competing factions after Lacan's death in 1981, all claiming to be the authentic Lacanians.

Organisation v Theory
Have reshaped page in the light of the comments above; but it remains primarily a study of the organisation of the Lacanian movement, not of its beliefs. For those interested in the evolution of Lacan's ideas, Jacques Lacan is probably the best place to start; for individual concepts, their own wikilinks.

Whether a different page called Lacanianism on the intellectual content/contexts of the m'nt would be a useful addition to WP is another matter....probably yes, judging from the above....Jacobisq (talk) 11:11, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Possible merge
While taking note of the comments from Jacobisq above, I have to say that at the moment there doesn't seem a clear distinction in these two articles (Lacanianism and Lacanian movement) between organisation/structure and practice/beliefs. It would probably be better to tackle these two inextricably interwoven parts of this subject as different sections of the same page. Having one article explaining, for example, the history of the changes in the focus of Lacan's thought while the other article tackles the changes in the movement as a result of these changes in focus seems to be an unnecessarily confusing and overlapping approach. The fact that the Lacanian movement uses the term "Lacanianism" more than twice as often in the body of the text as it does the term "Lacanian movement", and the fact that the term Lacanians is used indiscriminately for both give some indication of their intertwined nature, as does Roudinesco's quote in the article (“the history of psychoanalysis in France became subordinate to that of Lacanianism...the Lacanian movement occupied thereafter the motor position in relation to which the other movements were obliged to determine their course'”). Unless some clear distinction can be made between Lacanianism and the Lacanian movement, or some less confounded titles can be found, I think it's time to re-merge the articles. Grutness...wha?  13:33, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I note that there is has been no argument put for not merging them (over almost 3 years), so ... ✅ Klbrain (talk) 14:32, 26 May 2017 (UTC)