Why is Lacanian psychoanalysis now appearing in psychology? What innovative account does it offer of the human subject? What are the implications for psychology as a separate discipline? This volujme reviews the significance of Jacques Lacan’s work for a new generation of psychologists, and shows how psychoanalysis in its Lacanian variant questions underlying assumptions made about the human subject in the discipline. Unlike much rather esoteric Lacanian writing, this book is written from a psychology perspective and the accounts of different aspects of Lacan’s work are designed to be accessible to those in the discipline looking for new ideas. The book brings together for the first time a series of papers first published in scattered publications for different audiences and reworks them into a systematic argument. An introduction traces the re-emergence of psychoanalytic ideas in general, and the emergence of Lacanian ideas in particular inside psychology. The scope of the introduction, and of the book as a whole, is international, locating Lacan’s work in the context of new debates taking place in the English-speaking world, and showing how these debates draw upon different conceptual investigations of subjectivity in other cultures. Contents: Lacanian Theory, Clinical Practice and Psychoanalysis. Jacques Lacan. Lacan, Psychology and the Discourse of the University. Everyday behavior[ism) and therapeutic discourse. Socio-Critical Methods of Investigation: Four Strategies for Avoiding Psychoanalysis. Lacanian Ethics in Psychology. Psychoanalytic Cyberspace, Beyond Psychology. Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Revolutionary Marxism.
About the Author: Ian Parker was co-founder and is co-director (with Erica Burman) of the Discourse Unit. He is a member of the Asylum: Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry collective, and a practising psychoanalyst in Manchester. His research and writing intersects with psychoanalysis and critical theory. He edited the 2011 4-Volume Routledge Major Work Critical Psychology, and is editing the series ‘Concepts for Critical Psychology: Disciplinary Boundaries Re-Thought’. His books on critical perspectives in psychology began with The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology, and how to end it (1989), and continued with Discourse Dynamics: Critical Analysis for Social and Individual Psychology. His recent books include Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research (2005) and Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation (2007).
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