Psychoanalysis and Politics

Post-Freud psychoanalysis, as manifested in Lacan’s teachings, has had a deep influence on the contemporary theoretical criticism, feminism, film theories, post-structuralism, and Marxism. As a matter of fact this branch of psychoanalysis is a post-modern separation from Sigmund Freud’s teachings. This theory is also to some extent based on the structural and linguistic humanistic discoveries. One of Lacan’s most fundamental beliefs, as the most prominent figure of this school, is that the unconscious has a concealed and hidden structure; quite similar to the structure of language. The recognition of the world, others and self is determined through language. An individual’s precondition for gaining knowledge about himself- as a distinct entity- is language. Lacan also offers a three-angled pattern of the social-psychological world; including the imaginative aspect, the symbolic aspect and the real aspect; which has a vast and serious influence on the domain of the new political realm; post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-Marxism, and feminism.