Sigmund Freud
Freud or Freudian appear in the title of a number of Lacan's published articles, including at least three of his most famous works. And of those, one is actually titled "The Freudian Thing." Lacan is one of a select few people whose name can also be used this way: there is Freudian psychology and there is Lacanian psychology, among a few others. Freud is, of course, the Father of Psychoanalysis and is granted that status by the author even as he argues against his theories.
Michael Balint
Michael Balint was a Hungarian psychoanalyst whom Lacan singles out as a friend and holds in high esteem. Of special interest is Balint's development upon John Rickman's original conception of a "two-body psychology." This would eventually formulate into Balint's Basic Fault Theory.
The Wolf Man
The person referred throughout Lacan's writings as the Wolf Man was actually a Russian named Sergei Pankejeff who was actually a patient of Sigmund Freud. In order to protect his identity, Freud referred to him only as the Wolf Man in his published case studies. Lacan includes this case history alongside The Interpretation of Dreams and Beyond the Pleasure Principle to be essential material for study of Freud's singular place in the development of psychoanalysis.
Ferdinand de Saussure
Saussure may seem at first to be an unlikely character of such great interest to Lacan within his field of psychology. Saussure is widely recognized as a towering figure in the discipline of linguistics. It is Saussure's central presence in the relatively new linguistic subdivide of semiotics which intrigued Lacan. Saussure's development of a deeper understanding of the link between a word and what it actually signifies that contributed profoundly to complex significance of symbolism in Lacan's innovative contributions to psychology.
