Jacques Marie mile Lacan (French: [ak lak] ; 13 April 1901 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and

d psychiatrist who has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Lacan's post-structuralist theory rejected the belief that reality can be captured in language. Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the post-structuralist philosophers His interdisciplinary work was as a "self-proclaimed Freudian....'It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish. I am a Freudian';" and featured the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, identification, and language as subjective perception. His ideas have had a significant impact on critical theory, literary theory, 20th-century French philosophy, sociology, feminist theory, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis.