From the Conscious Interior to an Exterior Unconscious
Lacan, Discourse Analysis and Social Psychology
The Lines of the Symbolic in Psychoanalysis Series

This striking Lacanian contribution to discourse analysis is also a critique of contemporary psychological abstraction, as well as a reassessment of the radical opposition between psychology and psychoanalysis. This original introduction to Lacan?s work bridges the gap between discourseanalytical debates in social psychology and the social-theoretical extensions of discourse theory. David Pavón Cuéllar provides a precise definition and a detailed explanation of key Lacanian concepts, and illustrates how they may be put to work on a concrete discourse, in this case a fragment of an interview obtained by the author from the Mexican underground Popular Revolutionary Forces (EPR). Throughout the book, Lacanian concepts are compared to their counterparts in psychology. Such a comparison reveals insuperable incompatibilities between the two series of concepts. The author shows that Lacan?s psychoanalytical terminology can neither be translated nor assimilated to the terms of current psychology. Among the notions in actual or potential competition with Lacanian concepts, the book deals with those proposed by semiology, Marxism, phenomenology, constructionism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. Taking a stand on those theoretical positions, each chapter includes detailed discussion of the contribution of classical approaches to language; including Barthes, Bakhtin, Althusser, Politzer, Wittgenstein, Berger and Luckmann, Derrida, and Ricoeur. There is sustained reference in the body of the text to the arguments of Lacan and Lacanians, of Miller, Milner, Soler, and Žižek. At the same time, in the extensive notes accompanying the text, there is a systematic reappraisal and reinterpretation of debates and pieces of research work in social psychology, especially in a discursive and critical domain that has incorporated elements of psychoanalytic theory.

Preface -- Introduction -- The symbolic and the imaginary -- The signifier and the signified -- Full speech and empty speech -- Enunciation and enunciated -- The subject as a signifier to another signifier -- The unconscious as the discourse of the Other -- The representative of the subject -- The discourse of the master -- The being of speech -- The interpretation of wisdom -- Conclusion

Professional Practice & Development

David Pavon Cuellar is Professor at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico. He has taught philosophy and psychoanalysis at universities in Mexico, Portugal and France. Besides books and papers on political discourse and guerrilla warfare, he has recently published a number of articles on social theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis in 'Lettre Mensuelle' (Ecole de la Cause Freudienne, 2005), 'Letterina' (Association du Champ Freudien, 2006), 'Dilema' (Universidad de Valencia, 2006, 2007), 'Filosofia' (Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 2008) and 'Araucaria' (Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofia, Politica y Humanidades, 2009). He also has forthcoming publications in the 'Annual Review of Critical Psychology' and 'Revista Latinoamericana de Psicologia'. Ian Parker is Professor of Psychology in the Discourse Unit at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is widely published, and his books include 'The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology' (1989), 'Psychoanalytic Culture: Psychoanalytic Discourse in Western Society' (1997), 'Critical Discursive Psychology' (2002), 'Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction' (2004) and 'Psychoanalytic Practice and State Regulation' (2008).