The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis

1973 seminar by Jacques Lacan

The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis is the 1978 English language translation of a seminar held by Jacques Lacan. The original was published in Paris by Le Seuil in 1973. The Seminar was held at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris between January and June 1964 and is the eleventh in the series of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. The text was published by Jacques Alain Miller.

In January 1963, Serge Leclaire succeeded Lacan as president of the S. F. P. (Societé Francaise de Psychanalyse). In May, envoys from the I. P. A (International Psychoanalytic Association) visited Paris and meet with Leclaire. Not only did they express doubts about Lacan's attitude towards Freud, but they also claimed that Lacan manipulates transference through the short session: he must be excluded from the training courses. At the Congress of Stockholm, in July, the I. P. A. votes an ultimatum: within three months Lacan's name has to be crossed off the list of didacticians. Two weeks before the expiration of the deadline fixed by the I. P. A. (October 31), a motion was called for Lacan's name to be removed from the list of training analysts. On November 19 a general meeting had to make a final decision on I. P. A. 's conditions regarding Lacan. Lacan then wrote a letter to Leclaire announcing he would not attend the meeting because he could foresee the disavowal. Thus, on November 19, the members' majority takes the position in favor of the ban. As a result, Lacan no longer is one of the didacticians. The next day, his seminar on "The Names of the Father" was to start at Sainte Anne: he announced its end. Fragments of it would be published in L'excommunication. Lacan then founded L'École Française de Psychanalyse that would become L'École Freudienne de Paris (E. F. P.): "I hereby found the École Française de Psychanalyse, by myself, as alone as I have ever been in my relation to the psychoanalytic cause." In early 1964, with Claude Lévi Strauss and Fernand Braudel's support, he was appointed lecturer at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He begins his new seminar on "The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis" on January 15 in the Dussane room at the École Normale Supérieure.

Seminar on The Purloined Letter, Écrits, transl. by Jeffrey Mehlman, "French Freud" in Yale French Studies 48, 1972.