Transcriptions of his seminars, given between and , were also published. Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing the philosophical dimension of Freud's thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from predicate logic and topology. Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his followers from the International Psychoanalytic Association.
His father was a successful soap and oils salesman. His mother was ardently Catholic β his younger brother entered a monastery in An interest in philosophy led him to a preoccupation with the work of Spinoza , one outcome of which was his abandonment of religious faith for atheism. There were tensions in the family around this issue, and he regretted not persuading his brother to take a different path, but by his parents had moved to Boulogne and he was living in rooms in Montmartre.
During the early s, Lacan actively engaged with the Parisian literary and artistic avant-garde. Having met James Joyce , he was present at the Parisian bookshop where the first readings of passages from Ulysses in French and English took place, shortly before it was published in In , after being rejected for military service on the grounds that he was too thin, Lacan entered medical school.
In their only recorded instance of direct communication, Lacan sent a copy of his thesis to Sigmund Freud who acknowledged its receipt with a postcard. Its exhaustive reconstruction of her family history and social relations, on which he based his analysis of her paranoid state of mind, demonstrated his dissatisfaction with traditional psychiatry and the growing influence of Freud on his ideas.
In Autumn , Lacan began his training analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein , which was to last until The congress chairman, Ernest Jones , terminated the lecture before its conclusion, since he was unwilling to extend Lacan's stated presentation time. Insulted, Lacan left the congress to witness the Berlin Olympic Games. No copy of the original lecture remains, Lacan having decided not to hand in his text for publication in the conference proceedings.
