Lacanianism

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Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud's couch
Concepts Psychosexual development Psychosocial development (Erikson) Unconscious Preconscious Consciousness Psychic apparatus Id, ego and superego Ego defenses Projection Introjection Libido Drive Transference Countertransference Resistance Denial Dreamwork Cathexis
Important figures Abraham Adler Balint Bion Breuer Chodorow Erikson Fairbairn Ferenczi Freud (Anna) Freud (Sigmund) Fromm Guattari Horney Irigaray Jacobson Jones Jung Kohut Klein Kristeva Lacan Laing Laplanche Mahler Rank Reich Spielrein Stekel Strachey Sullivan Winnicott Žižek
Important works The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Psychology of the Unconscious (1912) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) The Ego and the Id (1923) Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964) Anti-Oedipus (1972) The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Schools of thought Adlerian Ego psychology Jungian Lacanian Interpersonal Intersubjective Marxist Object relations Reichian Relational Self psychology
Training Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis British Psychoanalytic Council British Psychoanalytical Society Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research International Psychoanalytical Association World Association of Psychoanalysis List of schools of psychoanalysis
See also Child psychoanalysis Depth psychology Psychodynamics Psychoanalytic theory
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Lacanianism or Lacanian psychoanalysis is a theoretical system that explains the mind, behaviour, and culture through a structuralist and post-structuralist extension of classical psychoanalysis, initiated by the work of Jacques Lacan from the 1950s to the 1980s. Lacanian perspectives contend that the human mind is structured by the world of language, known as the Symbolic. They stress the importance of desire, which is conceived of as perpetual and impossible to satisfy. Contemporary Lacanianism is characterised by a broad range of thought and extensive debate among Lacanians.

Lacanianism has been particularly influential in post-structuralism, literary theory, and feminist theory, as well as in various branches of critical theory, including queer theory. Equally, it has been criticised by the post-structuralists Deleuze and Guattari and by various feminist theorists. Its clinical relevance is limited and outside France it has had no influence on psychiatry. There is a Lacanian strand in left-wing politics, including Saul Newman's and Duane Rousselle's post-anarchism, Louis Althusser's structural Marxism, and the works of Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. Influential figures in Lacanianism include Slavoj Žižek, Julia Kristeva and Serge Leclaire.