After World War II French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) became a cult hero, a formidable intellectual superstar whose "structural psychoanalysis," first in France and later at American elite universities, dominated much of intellectual life.

Jacques Lacan was born in Paris on April 13, 1901, the eldest child of Emilie and Alfred Lacan, a representant de commerce dealing in soap and oils. The family belonged to the prosperous middle bourgeoisie, and Lacan went to the Collège Stanislas, a well-known Jesuit establishment. Too thin to be accepted into military service, he went straight to the study of medicine and then to psychiatry. He took his clinical training at Sainte-Anne, the major psychiatric hospital in central Paris.

In 1931 he received his license as a forensic psychiatrist, and in 1932 was awarded his Doctorat d'état for his thesis, De la Psychose paranoiaque dans les rapports avec la personnalité. While this...