Lacan on Personality from the 1930s to the 1950s

In taking up the topic of personality in Lacan’s early work, I will begin with a highly schematic account of his comments on personality in his doctoral dissertation originally published in 1932. In his dissertation, Lacan (1980, pp. 36–37) argues against a metaphysical conception of personality, including soul, form, and/or substance, as well as against a psychological conception of personality, including “synthesis of our inner experience,” “intentional reality,” and “personal [i.e., ethical] responsibility” (pp. 32–33). He proposes instead a notion of personality based on the dialectical “development of the person” (p. 37). By “dialectical,” I assume he simply means here that the person’s development does not proceed in a fixed direction, but at times hesitates or vacillates between alternatives, changes tack, and so on. “We thus find here a law of evolution [of the person] instead of a psychological synthesis” (p. 38), “a regular and comprehensible development” (p. 39). ¹