Lacanian psychoanalysis: Revolutions in subjectivity. In the series: 'Advancing theory in therapy'.

Ian Parker. (2011). Series editor: Keith Tudor

Abstract

The sub-title of this book suggests a focus on the dynamic nature of the relation between Lacanian psychoanalysis and the socio-political, historical conditions within which subjectivity is constructed and situated. But more than that, there is a radical and subversive connotation to the concept of 'revolutions', pointing to a concern with contradiction, resistance, change and transformation at the level of the individual as well as the social. Ian Parker, Lacanian psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, is a leading figure in the endeavours of contemporary social, theoretical analysis to navigate the unsettling, if not turbulent, points of juncture and disjuncture that sustain the relations between the various discourses of the 'psy complex' and the social conditions that sustain them. Parker's book pushes this agenda to the forefront, examining the way Lacanian psychoanalysis is both a product of the same socio- political milieu as psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy, including the classification systems of the late nineteenth century, and yet at the same time tears against every aspect of these traditions, breaking with them definitively. To a large extent, Parker's book establishes the 'scene' within which the points of convergence and divergence across these fields are enacted theoretically and clinically, in both historical and ideological terms.