Psychology After the Unconscious: From Freud to Lacan

What is the role of 'representation' in Freud's concept of the unconscious? What are the implications for our understanding of language in the clinic? How does Lacan radicalise this 'unconscious' in relation to cultural research? Psychoanalysis discovers and describes a domain of mental activity that disturbs the coordinates of mainstream psychological research and is represented in psychology textbooks in a particularly misleading manner. This book traces Freudian and Lacanian accounts of the unconscious in two major review essays, through accounts of key early Freudian clinical case studies and through three of Lacan's seminars. It shows how psychoanalysis in its Freudian and Lacanian variant questions underlying assumptions made about the human subject in the discipline. Unlike much rather esoteric Lacanian writing, this book is written from the psychology perspective, and the accounts of different aspects of Freud's and 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for the first time a series of papers first published in scattered publications for different audiences along with unpublished papers and reworks them into a systematic argument.