Many don’t know it, but New York Public Library has a substantial collection of books by influential French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, as well as his multitudinous acolytes. 

Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and was a major presence among French intellectuals for the remainder of the twentieth century. Lacan greatly influenced the contagion of psychoanalytic practice in Europe and Latin America; today in the United States his ideas are most visible in literary and film theory throughout academia.

Here are some of Lacan's most well-known works:

• My teaching
• Écrits
• The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
• The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis

Notorious for his gratuitous histrionics, myriad textual referencing, puns and obscurantism, most experts agree the best place to begin is his Seminars. After reading the Seminars, you might attempt to tackle the Écrits.

Lacan described his intellectual project as a "return to Freud;" while Lacanian psychoanalytic practice has never been mainstream in the world of psychotherapists, his thought has had a profound effect on contemporary continental philosophy.

After you've delved into the theories of Lacan, try investigating his philosophical descendants: Alain Badiou, Louis Althusser, Slavoj Žižek, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Ernesto Laclau.