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==Criticism==
===Theory of Psychoanalysis===
In ''[[Fashionable Nonsense]]'' (1997), [[Alan Sokal]] and [[Jean Bricmont]] criticize Lacan's use of terms from [[mathematical]] fields, such as [[topology]], accusing him of "superficial erudition", of abusing scientific concepts that he does not understand, and of producing statements that are [[not even wrong]].{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|r={{cite book | last1=Sokal | first1=Alan |author-link=Alan Sokal |last2=Bricmont |first2=Jean |author2-link=Jean Bricmont | title=[[Fashionable Nonsense|Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science]] | publisher=Picador USA | publication-place=New York | year=1998 | isbn=0-312-20407-8 | oclc=39605994}}|p=21|q=he mixes them up arbitrarily and without the slightest regard for their meaning. His 'definition' of compactness is not just false: it is gibberish.}} All the same, they note that they do not want to enter into the debate over the purely psychoanalytic part of Lacan's work.{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|p=17}}▼
[[Social psychologist]], psychoanalyst, and [[humanistic]] [[philosopher]] [[Erich Fromm]] rejected Lacan's view on psychonalysis whereby "true psychoanalysis is founded on the relation between man and talk [''parole''],"<ref name=autres>{{cite book |last=Lacan|first=Jacques |date=2001 |title=Autres Ecrits |language=French|trans-title=Other Writings|publisher=[[Seuil]] |isbn= 978-2020486477}}</ref> and denounced the reduction of analysis to "a pure and simple exchange of words," arguing that the relation is instead about an "exchange of signs." Fromm supports "clarity and unambiguity" in the communication with others (''autrui'') and opposes the Lacanian "wordplay [that] is associated with the provision of meaning."<ref>Onfray, Michel: "Erich Fromm et la psychanalyse humaniste" ("Erich Fromm and the humanist psychoanalysis"). Conference held in the [[Université populaire de Caen]], transmitted on ''[[France Culture]]'', 16 August 2011</ref> Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalyst [[Élisabeth Roudinesco]], in her biography of Lacan, writes that some writings of her subject were "incomprehensible" also to [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]],<ref name=vie>{{cite book |last= Roudinesco|first=Élisabeth|author-link= Élisabeth Roudinesco|date=1993 |title=Jacques Lacan: Esquisse d'une vie, histoire d'un système de pensée|language=French|trans-title=Sketch of a life, history of a system of thought|publisher=[[Fayard]] |isbn= 978-2213031460}}</ref>{{rp|206}} [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]],<ref name=vie/>{{rp|305}}, and [[Martin Heidegger]].<ref name=vie/>{{rp|306}}
Former Lacan student [[Didier Anzieu]], in a 1967 article titled "Against Lacan," described him as a "danger" because he kept his students tied to an "unending dependence on an idol, a logic, or a language," by holding out the promise of "fundamental truths" to be revealed "but always at some further point ...and only to those who continued to travel with him." According to [[Sherry Turkle]], these attitudes are "representative of how most members of the [[École Freudienne de Paris|Association]] talk about Lacan."{{efn|When the French Society of Psychoanalysis requested official recognition from and affiliation with the ''Association Psychanalytique Internationale'' ([[International Psychoanalytical Association]]) in 1959, the API demanded the sidelining of Jacques Lacan as a didactician. Two currents of the ''[[Société Française de Psychanalyse]]'' (French Society of Psychoanalysis) then stood opposed at each other: one current, which became the majority in the SFP in November 1963, was led by Daniel Lagache, and others, while a second current, which became the minority, brought together the supporters of Jacques Lacan.}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Turkle |first=Sherry |date=1978|url=https://www.scribd.com/document/228963082/Psychoanalytic-Politics-Freud-s-French-Revolution-Sherry-Turkle|access-date=October 24, 2023|author-link= Sherry Turkle |title=Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0465066070}}</ref>▼
Others have dismissed Lacan's work wholesale. {{ill|François Roustang|fr}} called it an "incoherent system of [[pseudo-scientific]] gibberish", and quoted [[linguist]] [[Noam Chomsky]]'s opinion that Lacan was an "amusing and perfectly self-conscious [[charlatan]]".<ref>Roustang, François, [http://bactra.org/reviews/lacanian-delusion/''The Lacanian Delusion'']</ref> The former Lacanian analyst Dylan Evans (who published a dictionary of Lacanian terms in 1996) eventually dismissed Lacanianism as lacking a sound scientific basis and as harming rather than helping patients. He criticized Lacan's followers for treating Lacan's writings as "holy writ".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Evans |first1=Dylan |chapter=From Lacan to Darwin |title=The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative|url=https://archive.org/details/literaryanimalev00gott_879 |url-access=limited |date=2005|pages=[https://archive.org/details/literaryanimalev00gott_879/page/n64 38]–55|publisher=[[Northwestern University Press]]|location=[[Evanston, Illinois]]|editor1=Jonathan Gottschall|editor2=David Sloan|citeseerx=10.1.1.305.690 }}</ref> [[Richard Webster (British author)|Richard Webster]] decried what he sees as Lacan's obscurity, arrogance, and the resultant "[[Cult]] of Lacan".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020910203351/http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html |url-status=usurped |archive-date=10 September 2002 |title=The Cult of Lacan |publisher=Richardwebster.net |date=14 June 1907 |access-date=18 June 2011}}</ref> Others have been more forceful still, describing him as "The Shrink from Hell"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/en/Shrink_from_Hell.htm|title=Raymond Tallis|website=www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de|access-date=21 May 2019|archive-date=13 June 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160613142302/http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/en/Shrink_from_Hell.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Tallis|first1=Raymond|title=The Shrink from Hell|url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/the-shrink-from-hell/159376.article|website=Times Higher Education Supplement|access-date=27 August 2016|date=31 October 1997}}</ref> and listing the many associates—from lovers and family to colleagues, patients, and editors—who were left damaged in his wake.▼
By 1977, Lacan was declaring that he was not "too keen" (''pas chaud-chaud'') to say that "when one pracices psychoanalysis, one knows where one goes," claiming that "psychoanalysis, like every other human activity, undoubtedly participates in abuse. One does as if one knows something."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lacan |first1=Jacques |date=1977|title=Ouverture de la section clinique|language=French|url=http://www.gnipl.fr/Recherche_Lacan/wp-content/uploads/1977%20LACAN%20OUVERTURE%20A%20LA%20SECTION%20CLINIQUE.pdf|access-date=29 October 2023|trans-title=Opening of the clinical section |journal=[[Ornicar?]] |issue=9 |pages=7-24 }}</ref>
[[Roger Scruton]] included Lacan in his book ''Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left'', and named him as the only 'fool' included in the book—his other targets merely being misguided or frauds.<ref>{{Cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/10/fools-frauds-and-firebrands-thinkers-of-the-new-left-roger-scuton-review | title=Fools, Frauds and Firebrands by Roger Scruton review – a demolition of socialist intellectuals| newspaper=The Guardian| date=10 December 2015| last1=Poole| first1=Steven}}</ref>▼
Lacan's [[charismatic authority]] has been linked to the many conflicts among his followers and in the analytic schools he was involved with.<ref>Jacqueline Rose, ''On Not Being Able To Sleep: Psychoanalysis and the Modern World'' (London 2003) p. 176</ref> His intellectual style has also come in for much criticism. Eclectic in his use of sources,<ref>Philip Hill, ''Lacan for Beginners'' (London 1997) p. 8</ref> Lacan has been seen as concealing his own thought behind the apparent explication of that of others.{{r|n=Roudinesco 1997|p=46}} Thus, his "return to Freud" was called by [[Malcolm Bowie]] "a complete pattern of dissenting assent to the ideas of Freud {{Nowrap|. . .}} Lacan's argument is conducted on Freud's behalf and, at the same time, against him".<ref>Malcolm Bowie, ''Lacan'' (London 1991) pp. 6–7</ref> Bowie has also suggested that Lacan suffered from both a love of [[system]] and a deep-seated opposition to all forms of system.<ref>Adam Phillips, ''On Flirtation'' (London, 1996), pp. 161–2.</ref>
===Therapeutic practice===
Many feminist thinkers have criticised Lacan's thought. Philosopher and psychoanalyst [[Luce Irigaray]] accuses Lacan of perpetuating [[Phallocentrism|phallocentric]] mastery in philosophical and psychoanalytic discourse.<ref>Luce Irigaray, "Cosi Fan Tutti," in Clive Cazeaux, ''Continental Aesthetics Reader'' (New York, 2011), pp. 377–386.</ref> Others have echoed this accusation, seeing Lacan as trapped in the very phallocentric] mastery his language ostensibly sought to undermine.<ref>[[Jacqueline Rose]], "Introduction – II", in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, ''Feminine Sexuality'' (New York 1982) p. 56</ref> The result, [[Castoriadis]] would maintain, was to make all thought depend upon Lacan himself, and thus to stifle the capacity for independent thought among all those around him.{{r|n=Roudinesco 1997|p=386}}▼
Lacan, in his psychoanalytic practice, came to hold sessions of diminishing duration.<ref name=>{{cite book |last=Borch-Jacobsen |first=Mikkel |author-link=Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen|date= 2005 |editor-last=Meyer|editor-first=Catherine|title=Le livre noir de la psychanalyse|language=French|trans-title=The black boom of Psychoanalysis |publisher=Les Arènes|pages=228–323|trans-chapter=A Zero Theory|chapter=Une Théorie Zéro|isbn=978-2912485885}}</ref> Eventually, they often lasted no more than five minutes, held sometimes with Lacan standing in the open door of the room.<ref name=standing>{{cite book |last=Godin|first=Jean-Guy |date=2001 |title=Jacques Lacan, 5, rue de Lille|language=French|trans-title=Jacques Lacan, 5, Lille street|publisher=[[Seuil]] |isbn= 978-2020121606}}</ref>{{rp|82}}
Lacan was criticised for being aggressive with his clients, often physically hitting them, sometimes sleeping with them,<ref name=anti/>{{rp|304}}{{efn|In her biography, Roudinesco clarifies that this would happen "always away from the place where the analysis was taking place."}} and charging "exorbitant amounts of money" for each session.<ref name=>{{cite book |last=Rey|first=Pierre |date=2016 |orig-date=1st pub. 1988 |title=Une saison chez Lacan|language=French|trans-title=A season at Lacan's|publisher=Éditions Points|isbn= 978-2020121606}}</ref>{{efn|Rey, who was ''[[Marie Claire]]'' editor, relates that in order to be able to meet the prices of Lacan, for whom he constantly felt "gratitude," abandoned journalism and started writing best-sellers.}} [[Jean Laplanche]] argued that Lacan could have "harmed" some of his clients.<ref>{{cite journal |last1= André |first1=Jacques|date=2012 |title=Hommage à Jean Laplanche |journal=Le Carnet Psy|volume=6 |issue=164|pages=58-61|lanuage-French|url=https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-carnet-psy-2012-6-page-58.htm|access-date=29 October 2023|quote= [Lacan] avait pu nuire à certains de ses analysants.}}</ref>
▲of how most members of the [[École Freudienne de Paris|Association]] talk about Lacan."{{efn|When the French Society of Psychoanalysis requested official recognition from and affiliation with the ''Association Psychanalytique Internationale'' ([[International Psychoanalytical Association]]) in 1959, the API demanded the sidelining of Jacques Lacan as a didactician. Two currents of the ''[[Société Française de Psychanalyse]]'' (French Society of Psychoanalysis) then stood opposed at each other: one current, which became the majority in the SFP in November 1963, was led by Daniel Lagache, and others, while a second current, which became the minority, brought together the supporters of Jacques Lacan.}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Turkle |first=Sherry |date=1978|url=https://www.scribd.com/document/228963082/Psychoanalytic-Politics-Freud-s-French-Revolution-Sherry-Turkle|access-date=October 24, 2023|author-link= Sherry Turkle |title=Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud's French Revolution |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0465066070}}</ref>
===Feminist criticism===
Many feminist thinkers have criticised Lacan's thought. American philosopher [[Cynthia Willett]] accuses Lacan for portraying the mother less as a loving, nurturing presence in the infant's world, but rather as a "whore" who abandons the child to a "higher bidder for her affections,"<ref name=>{{cite book |last=Willett |first=Cynthia |date=1998|author-link=Cynthia Willett |title=Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities|publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0415912105}}</ref> while [[Judith Butler]], philosopher and [[gender studies]] scholar, reworks these notions as "gender performativity."<ref>{{cite book |last= Butler |first=Judith |date=2006|author-link=Judith Butler|title=Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity|publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0415389556}}</ref>
▲
In an interview with anthropologist James Hunt, actress [[Sylvia Bataille|Sylvia Bataille-Lacan]] said of her late second husband, Jacques Lacan, that he was "a domestic tyrant."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hunt|first=James Kennedy|date=1995|title=Absence to presence: The life history of Sylvia [Bataille] Lacan (France)|url=https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/16832/9610654.PDF?sequence=1&isAllowed=y|access-date=29 October 2023|website=Rice Digital Scholarship|quote=He was a man who worked tremendously hard. Tremendously intelligent. He was... what is called, well, a domestic tyrant... But he was worth the trouble. I have absolutely no reproaches to make against him. Just the contrary. But it was not possible to be a wife, a mother to my children, and an actress at the same time. ... I could no longer make films because of [Lacan]... He would come onto the set when the light was red [and] would stridde across the set when we were in the midst of a scene.}}</ref>
===Incomprehensibility===
▲In ''[[Fashionable Nonsense]]'' (1997), [[Alan Sokal]] and [[Jean Bricmont]] criticize Lacan's use of terms from [[mathematical]] fields, such as [[topology]], accusing him of "superficial erudition", of abusing scientific concepts that he does not understand, and of producing statements that are [[not even wrong]].{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|r={{cite book | last1=Sokal | first1=Alan |author-link=Alan Sokal |last2=Bricmont |first2=Jean |author2-link=Jean Bricmont | title=[[Fashionable Nonsense|Fashionable nonsense: postmodern intellectuals' abuse of science]] | publisher=Picador USA | publication-place=New York | year=1998 | isbn=0-312-20407-8 | oclc=39605994}}|p=21|q=he mixes them up arbitrarily and without the slightest regard for their meaning. His 'definition' of compactness is not just false: it is gibberish.}} All the same, they note that they do not want to enter into the debate over the purely psychoanalytic part of Lacan's work.{{r|n=Fashionable Nonsense|p=17}}
▲Others have dismissed Lacan's work wholesale. {{ill|François Roustang|fr}} called it an "incoherent system of [[pseudo-scientific]] gibberish", and quoted [[linguist]] [[Noam Chomsky]]'s opinion that Lacan was an "amusing and perfectly self-conscious [[charlatan]]".<ref>Roustang, François, [http://bactra.org/reviews/lacanian-delusion/''The Lacanian Delusion'']</ref> The former Lacanian analyst Dylan Evans (who published a dictionary of Lacanian terms in 1996) eventually dismissed Lacanianism as lacking a sound scientific basis and as harming rather than helping patients. He criticized Lacan's followers for treating Lacan's writings as "holy writ".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Evans |first1=Dylan |chapter=From Lacan to Darwin |title=The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative|url=https://archive.org/details/literaryanimalev00gott_879 |url-access=limited |date=2005|pages=[https://archive.org/details/literaryanimalev00gott_879/page/n64 38]–55|publisher=[[Northwestern University Press]]|location=[[Evanston, Illinois]]|editor1=Jonathan Gottschall|editor2=David Sloan|citeseerx=10.1.1.305.690 }}</ref> [[Richard Webster (British author)|Richard Webster]] decried what he sees as Lacan's obscurity, arrogance, and the resultant "[[Cult]] of Lacan".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020910203351/http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html |url-status=usurped |archive-date=10 September 2002 |title=The Cult of Lacan |publisher=Richardwebster.net |date=14 June 1907 |access-date=18 June 2011}}</ref> Others have been more forceful still, describing him as "The Shrink from Hell"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/en/Shrink_from_Hell.htm|title=Raymond Tallis|website=www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de|access-date=21 May 2019|archive-date=13 June 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160613142302/http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/en/Shrink_from_Hell.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Tallis|first1=Raymond|title=The Shrink from Hell|url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/the-shrink-from-hell/159376.article|website=Times Higher Education Supplement|access-date=27 August 2016|date=31 October 1997}}</ref> and listing the many associates—from lovers and family to colleagues, patients, and editors—who were left damaged in his wake.
▲[[Roger Scruton]] included Lacan in his book ''Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left'', and named him as the only 'fool' included in the book—his other targets merely being misguided or frauds.<ref>{{Cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/10/fools-frauds-and-firebrands-thinkers-of-the-new-left-roger-scuton-review | title=Fools, Frauds and Firebrands by Roger Scruton review – a demolition of socialist intellectuals| newspaper=The Guardian| date=10 December 2015| last1=Poole| first1=Steven}}</ref>
In a 2012 interview on ''Veterans Unplugged'', [[Noam Chomsky]] said: "[Q]uite frankly I thought [Lacan] was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven't the slightest idea. I don't see anything there that should be influential."<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/noam_chomsky_slams_zizek_and_lacan_empty_posturing.html|title= Noam Chomsky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Empty 'Posturing'|last= Springer|first= Mike|date= 28 June 2013|website= Open Culture|access-date= 31 August 2018}}</ref>
In ''Les Freudiens hérétiques'', the 8th tome of his work ''Contre-histoire de la philosophie'' (''Anti-History of Philosophy''),<ref name=anti>{{cite book |last= Onfray |first=Michel|author-link=Michel Onfray |date=2013 |title=Les Freudiens hérétiques : Contre-histoire de la philosophie|language=French|trans-title=The heretic Freudians: Anti-History of Philosophy|volume= 8th |publisher=[[Éditions Grasset]] |isbn=978-2246802686}}</ref> philosopher and author [[Michel Onfray]] describes Lacan's ''[[Écrits]]'' as "illegible".<ref name=anti/>{{rp|49}} According to Onfray, Lacan engages in constant [[word play]], has a taste for the formulaic, and deploys "incantatory [[glossolalia]]" and unnecessary [[neologism]]s.{{efn|In 2002, the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis, ''École lacanienne de psychanalyse'', edited and published a book titled ''789 Neologismes de Jacques Lacan'' (Epel publishers).}} He calls Lacan a "charlatan," and a "dandy figure" who "sinks into [[autism]]," eventually becoming senile.<ref name=anti/>{{rp|49–50}}
==Works==
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