Kyoto School See JAPANESE PHILOSOPHY. Labriola, Antonio (1843–1904), Italian Marxist philosopher who studied Hegel and corresponded with Engels for several years (Lettere a Engels, 1949). His essays on Marxism appeared first in French in the collection Essais sur la conception matérialiste de l’histoire (‘Essays on the Materialist Conception of History,’ 1897). Another influential work, Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosofia (‘Talks about Socialism and Philosophy,’ 1897), collects ten letters to Georges Sorel on Marxism. Labriola did not intend to develop an original Marxist theory but only to give an accurate exposition of Marx’s thought. He believed that socialism would inevitably ensue from the inner contradictions of capitalist society and defended Marx’s views as objective scientific truths. He criticized revisionism and defended the need to maintain the orthodoxy of Marxist thought. His views and works were publicized by two of his students, Sorel in France and Croce in Italy. In the 1950s Antonio Gramsci brought new attention to Labriola as an example of pure and independent Marxism. See also MARXISM , SORE. P.Gar. Lacan, Jacques (1901–81), French practitioner and theorist of psychoanalysis. Lacan developed and transformed Freudian theory and practice on the basis of the structuralist linguistics originated by Saussure. According to Lacan, the unconscious is not a congeries of biological instincts and drives, but rather a system of linguistic signifiers. He construes, e.g., the fundamental Freudian processes of condensation and displacement as instances of metaphor and metonymy. Lacan proposed a Freudianism in which any traces of the substantial Cartesian self are replaced by a system of symbolic functions. Contrary to standard views, the ego is an imaginary projection, not our access to the real (which, for Lacan, is the unattainable and inexpressible limit of language). In accord with his theoretical position, Lacan developed a new form of psychoanalytic practice that tried to avoid rather than achieve the ‘transference’ whereby the analysand identifies with the mature ego of the analyst. Lacan’s writings (e.g., Écrits and the numerous volumes of his Séminaires) are of legendary difficulty, offering idiosyncratic networks of allusion, word play, and paradox, which some find rich and stimulating and others irresponsibly obscure. Beyond psychoanalysis, Lacan has been particularly influential on literary theorists and on poststructuralist philosophers such as Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze. See also FOUCAULT, FREU. G.G.