Jacques Lacan: An Outline of a Life and History of a System of Thought

Elisabeth Roudinesco gives us a life Balzacian in its sweep: the story of a young man from the provinces determined to leave his family fortune and its old-fashioned values behind; the young doctor in Paris who set out to reinvent clinical psychotherapy and ended up transforming fundamental notions of the self, sexuality and the culture that shapes it all.

Roudinesco follows the development of Lacan's career from his early clinical practice and conflicts with the establishment, as he constantly pushed the boundaries of psychoanalysis from its roots in biology and neurology to a powerful critical tool that resonated in fields ranging from literary theory to feminist politics.