ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the various descriptions of ‘discourse’ in Lacan’s work and the potential contribution of Lacanian theory to the analysis of discourse in psychology. It should be noted, before we go any further, that Lacan was not a psychologist and his development of psychoanalytic clinical practice and theoretically-guided readings of Freud are antithetical to notions of the subject and social relationships that underpin research in Anglo-American psychology (Malone & Friedlander, 2000). Lacan’s hostility to psychology is often underplayed in critical writing in the discipline, which often wants to use his ideas to amend or improve the way we do things (e.g. Burkitt, 1991; Parker, 1997a). While this has made him more attractive to some writers, it also serves to distract us from what is most radical in his work. So, an assumption that governs this chapter and runs as a thread through it is that a Lacanian approach demands a quite different conception of what human beings are. It is one of the most critical strands within ‘critical psychology’ precisely because it is not psychology at all (Parker, 2003).
