[…]
Lacan was aware that behaviorism had not yet died. He begins the first lesson of his 1967-1968 Seminar, L'acte psychanalytique—in a politically eventful year in France when the country "was feeling bored," according to Le Monde's famous editorial—with the analytic act, commenting on Pavlov's observations. In 1973, there is another reference by Lacan to this school of thought, in the chapter of Encore called "The Rat in the Maze." In both cases, "experimental psychology," as it was then known, is brought up to specify the relations between signifier and the body and the status of knowledge with regard to the Real.
We find ourselves nowadays in a situation in which psychoanalysis as such is the object of strong attacks from academia. The "experts" in international research organizations are, like the "cognitivists," the heirs to Watson's behaviorism, as taught in universities in North America.
It is striking how lucidly Lacan had foreseen and announced, at a time when psychoanalysis was regarded as a major discipline, that the University (particularly the Humanities Departments) held Pavlov's enterprise in high regard[…]