Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Scott Sprenger (The American University of Rome)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.06: French Writing and Culture: Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (Universidad de Antioquia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Psychoanalysis

Dates

Date of occurrence 1935

Places

France (Location)

Jacques Lacan is widely considered to be the most influential psychoanalytic theorist of the latter half of the 20th century (especially for literary study). He is credited with “modernizing” psychoanalysis by bringing it into harmony with the insights of Saussurian differential linguistics, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropology, and Alexander Kojève’s interpretation of the Hegelian master / slave dialectic. Lacan was drawn to Saussure because he believed that his dualistic theory of the linguistic sign (i.e. that the sign is constituted by an arbitrary relation between “signifier” and “signified”) explained from a scientific perspective Freud’s dualistic (e.g. conscious/unconscious) theory of the psyche. L…

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1810 words

Citation: Sprenger, Scott. "Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 September 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1728, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory

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