Daniel Lagache (1903-1972) played a role of prime importance in the development of psychoanalysis in France He was first a professor of philosophy, then qualified in medicine and in psychiatry, but he never actually practised psychiatry outside the field of psychoanalysis and went back to his original vocation: the academic teaching of psychopathology. In 1946, he submitted his doctoral thesis, “Amorous Jealousy Descriptive Psychology and Psychoanalysis,” and shortly thereafter was appointed professor at the Sorbonne, first to the chair of general psychology, then of psychopathology This gave him the opportunity to be the first academic in France to teach ex cathedra the theory of psychoanalysis. Before World War II, he was already a member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society

Although associated with Lacan in the split that in 1952 gave birth to the French Psychoanalytic Society (Société Française de psychanalyse [SFP]),