Jacques Marie ?mile Lacan (1901-81) trained as a medical doctor at the Facult? de M?decine de Paris and worked extensively with patients suffering from what psychiatrists called "automatism" or d?lires ? deux. This condition led people to believe that their speech or writing was governed by an unseen but omnipotent force beyond their control. Often coupled with severe personality disorders and a history of familial conflict, the symptoms of automatism resembled certain aspects of the cases then being studied by the nascent psychoanalytic movement in France. Lacan pursued this connection between psychiatric medicine and psychoanalysis in his thesis for the doctorat d'?tat in psychiatry, De la psychose parano?aque dans ses rapports avec la personnalit? (1932). Over the next 50 years, this combination of extensive clinical practice with speculative theoretical argument continued to distinguish what Lacan described as his "return to Freud." Through extended close readings of Freud's texts and his own clinical practice, Lacan expanded the field of psychoanalysis to include insights from philosophy, linguistics, literature, and, finally, mathematics. Although he sometimes explicitly discussed literature, his work on literary theory and criticism can be seen in his general speculations on language, the subject, and sexuality. By the time of his death, Lacan was one of the most prominent and most controversial intellectual figures in the world, and his work had influenced the academic study of literature and film as well as the theoretical discourse and clinical practice of psychoanalysis.