ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Jacques Lacan's reconceptualization of Freudian psychoanalysis, and to reflect critically upon some of the theoretical assumptions upon which it is based. Rejecting the scientism and essentialism of Freud's doctrines concerning the monadic psychic organism, Lacan puts a new emphasis on intersubjectivity as the vehicle for the movement of desire. In acquiring language, the individual subject is inserted into a symbolic order which organizes unconscious desire within the systemic pressures of that structure. Lacan's repeated stress on unconscious desire, and appreciation of the intricacies of human recognition, always prevented him from participating in the structuralist attempt to bracket the subject from social analysis. In treating language as coterminous with the unconscious, Lacan offers a set of impersonal rules which govern the field of human passion. The entwinement of desire and social power is crucial to whether individuals accept or resist the symbolic codes with which they are confronted.
