Arguing With Lacan: Ego Psychology and Language

by Joseph H. Smith

The writings of Jacques Lacan have been seminal in the ongoing debate on the place of language in the construction of reality and the self. In this book, psychoanalyst Joseph H. Smith summarizes portions of his own and Lacan's readings of Freud on the unconscious and shows that the differences between Lacan's theories and American ego psychology are far less absolute than Lacan would have us believe. Lacan's claim that the unconscious is structured like a language, Smith asserts, is supported both by Freud's writings and by ego psychology.

Smith's book is especially important because, like Lacan, he brings his experience as a practicing psychoanalyst to bear on this and other issues. He also considers from both Lacanian and ego psychological perspectives the concepts of the mirror stage, desire, the law, transference, affect, the father of individual prehistory, and the kind of unity achieved by the ego. The final chapter, about Eve, draws on Kristeva's multitextual play on Lacanian phallocentrism. It is aimed at students of psychoanalysis and of literary theory.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1991