Antoine Vergote

[4] After receiving his graduate degrees from the University of Louvain in 1954, he continued his education in Paris where he studied with Levi-Strauss, attended the lectures of Merleau-Ponty, and completed his analytic training under the direction of Jacques Lacan.

[4] Vergote was a former student of the French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and played an important role introducing psychoanalysis to the University of Leuven.

[5][6] He has attempted to refute those who view religion as a neurosis by showing that the tools of psychoanalysis can be used to elicit an experience of compassion and sensitivity capable of revealing truth and of giving meaning to human history as reflected in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

[10]: 216 One of Vergote's best known studies, Guilt and Desire (Dette et désir), is concerned with the two main neuroses, hysteria and obsessional neurosis in relation to religion, and analysed from a Freudian-Lacanian perspective.

[10]: 246  Vergote's "marvellous and classic"[3]: 8  study includes an in-depth treatise of several catholic mystics such as Teresa of Ávila.

[2] In the view of Professor Jacob Belzen (University of Amsterdam), Vergote is "a key figure" in European intellectual movements during the 20th century.