ABSTRACT
As is true of all the humanities, psychoanalysis has been much influenced by postmodernism. Classical psychoanalytic theory focused almost entirely on the ways in which the person is determined by internal psychological forces. In contrast, postmodernists have very usefully elucidated how the person is influenced and determined by such forces as language and society, which exist outside of awareness. Postmodern theories have served as a useful corrective to a purely internal focus as a means of understanding the person. Rather than take self-experience as self-evident, postmodern theorists have helped us see how socially constructed concepts shape our experience. Rather than take our identity as simple and consistent, they have helped us look at the multiplicity of our experience, raising questions about simple unitary models of identity.
