ABSTRACT
Luce Irigaray was born in 1930 and has French nationality. Growing up in
Belgium to parents with Belgian, Italian and French ancestry, Irigaray’s
academic training began in Louvain, Belgium, where she studied for a degree
and then completed a doctorate in French and Philosophy in 1955. After
teaching in secondary education for a number of years she took a second
degree in psychology and a Diploma in psychopathology at the Sorbonne
in Paris. Also during this period she trained as a psychoanalyst and
attended Jacques Lacan’s seminars on psychoanalysis. Then, from 1964, she
worked as a researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research, later
becoming a research director at the Centre in 1986. Between 1970 and 1974
she taught at the University of Vincennes, and was a member of the Ecole
Freudienne de Paris. In 1973 she submitted two further doctorates, one on
poetics and psychopathologies, and Speculum de l’autre femme, which was
rejected by the University and resulted in her leaving her teaching position.
