Daniel Lagache And French Psychoanalysis

Daniel Lagache was a member of what was called “the second psychoanalytic generation” in France. His performance was remarkable in that country, since it marked important milestones such as the separation between psychology and philosophy, delimiting a border of autonomy between both disciplines.

It was also Daniel Lagache who brought psychoanalysis to the university. In the same way, he worked to establish stable communication bridges between medicine and psychoanalysis and between the latter and psychology. His work generated fruitful epistemological debates, which had an echo in psychoanalytic practice as a whole.

Lagache was also one of the pioneers of what was called Laienanalyse or “profane analysis.” This position promoted the idea that to be a psychoanalyst it was not necessary to study medicine previously. Daniel Lagache, in contrast to Jacques Lacan, was betting that this field was outside the domain of psychologists.

Who was Daniel Lagache?

Daniel Lagache was born in Paris on December 3, 1903. He came from a family with good economic resources, for which he had a first-rate education. His father was a prestigious lawyer, who died when Lagache was only 13 years old. Since then the family has been in the care of the mother.

What ensued then was a tense family situation, since Daniel’s mother had a clear preference for his brother. This situation led him to incubate very deep jealousy . In fact, a good part of his work is dedicated to the theme of jealousy, in the different contexts of human relationships.

In 1924, Daniel Lagache entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Some of his classmates were Jean Paul Sartre , Paul Nizan, Raymond Aron, and Georges Canguilhem. Friendships with these great thinkers had a notable influence on his training, which soon turned to philosophy.

The encounter with psychoanalysis

At that time philosophy and psychology were part of the same area. It was common for the normalistas to attend the presentation of cases of mental patients. Lagache had access to classes taught in this regard by Georges Dumas. This encouraged him to orient his studies towards medicine and psychology.

Lagache served first as a philosophy attaché and later interned in various psychiatric hospitals. Later, he became the head of the clinic. During his training he was taught by Gaétan Gatian de Cléarambault , a famous psychiatrist and ethnologist.

In 1934, he presented a paper on verbal hallucinations, which became his graduate thesis in psychiatry. At first, he was mainly interested in passionate psychoses and paranoia.

The influence of the philosopher Karl Jaspers on his thinking was remarkable. However, he did a psychoanalysis with Rudolph Loewenstein and thus came into contact with the ideas of Sigmund Freud.

The French Society of Psychoanalysis

Daniel Lagache became a university professor, with the title of “lecturer in psychology”, at the Strasbourg faculty. In 1938, he personally met Sigmund Freud. Starting in 1947, he became the director of the psychology major at the Sorbonne University.

Lagache was a convinced Freudian and also a brilliantly debated scholar. By 1963, he was expelled from the Paris Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA), along with Jacques Lacan. Both had argued that the ideas and practices of these institutions did not adhere to the essential principles of psychoanalysis.

Along with Lacan and Dolto, Lagache was one of the founders of the French Society of Psychoanalysis. This was intended to promote a return to Freudian principles. All of them thought that the official spokesmen were excessively influenced by other currents of psychology, such as behaviorism.

Ruptures and legacies

One of the first tasks of the French Society of Psychoanalysis was to develop a Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. The objective was to collect and specify the basic terms and concepts of this discipline. Lagache collaborated in it.

Later, Daniel Lagache distanced himself from Lacan. The latter was in favor of establishing a very definite boundary between psychology and psychoanalysis, and Lagache disagreed. Likewise, they did not agree on their theory about personality.

Such a difference precipitated a rift and in 1963 he founded the French Psychoanalytic Association. He was accompanied by several prestigious “third generation” psychoanalysts. Daniel Lagache died in Paris on his 69th birthday.