Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Scott Sprenger (The American University of Rome)
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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. Lacan’s basic idea is that the radical opposition…

1810 words

Citation: Sprenger, Scott. "Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 September 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1728, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1728 Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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