ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explains the psychoanalysis which has an enormous amount to contribute to the study of contemporary human consciousness, built out of its own special appreciation of the postmodern orthodoxy that regards the rationalist division between subject and object as only partially sustainable. In particular, it offers powerful concepts for use in theorising intersubjectivity and for appreciating the 'inmixing of subjects' that occurs at a psychological level whenever one person is engaged with others, whether as therapist or researcher. Features of the social world, particularly what is generally referred to as 'ideology' are 'absorbed' by individuals as fantasies; they are also invested in by individuals through the projection of fantasised emotions and aspects of the self. This is why psychoanalysis might have something important to contribute to the new 'identity politics', with its focus on the construction of selfhood through processes of social location.
