About the Book
Ian Parker has been a leading light in the fields of critical and discursive psychology for over 25 years. The Psychology After Critique series brings together for the first time his most important papers. Each volume in the series has been prepared by Ian Parker and presents a newly written introduction and focused overview of a key topic area.
Psychology After Lacan is the sixth volume in the series and addresses three central questions:
Why is Lacanian psychoanalysis re-emerging in mainstream contemporary psychology?
What is original in this account of the human subject?
What implications does Lacanian psychoanalysis have for psychology?
This book introduces Lacan’s influential ideas about clinical psychoanalysis and contemporary global culture to a new generation of psychologists. The chapters cover a number of key themes including conceptions of the human subject within psychology, the uses of psychoanalysis in qualitative research, different conceptions of ethics within psychology, and the impact of cyberspace on human subjectivity. The book also explores key debates currently occurring in Lacanian psychoanalysis, with discussion of culture, discourse, identification, sexuality and the challenge to mainstream notions of normality and abnormality.
Psychology After Lacan is essential reading for students and researchers in psychology, psycho-social studies, sociology, social anthropology and cultural studies, and to psychoanalysts of different traditions engaged in academic research. It will also introduce key ideas and debates within critical psychology to undergraduates and postgraduate students across the social sciences.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Psychology after Lacan 1. Jacques Lacan: Barred Psychologist 2. Lacan, Psychology and the Discourse of the University 3. Everyday Behaviour(ism) and Therapeutic Discourse: Deconstructing the Ego as Verbal Nucleus in Skinner and Lacan 4. Socio-Critical Methods of Investigation: Four Strategies for Avoiding Psychoanalysis 5. Lacanian Ethics in Psychology: Seven Paradigms 6. Psychoanalytic Cyberspace, Beyond Psychology
About the Author :
Ian Parker was Co-Founder and is Co-Director (with Erica Burman) of the Discourse Unit. He is a member of the Asylum: Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry collective, and a practising psychoanalyst in Manchester. His research and writing intersects with psychoanalysis and critical theory. He is currently editing a book series Lines of the Symbolic (on Lacanian psychoanalysis in different cultural contexts) for Karnac Books. He edited the 2011 four-volume Routledge major work Critical Psychology, and is editing the series Concepts for Critical Psychology: Disciplinary Boundaries Re-Thought. His books on critical perspectives in psychology began with The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology, and How to End It (Routledge, 1989), and continued with Discourse Dynamics: Critical Analysis for Social and Individual Psychology (Routledge, 1992). His recent books include Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research (Open University Press, 2005) and Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation (Pluto Press, 2007).
Review :
'This series is the comprehensive resource we have been waiting for to enable new generations of budding psychologists, and all those who concern themselves with how we might live, to find their way to a just appreciation of what it might be to understand the myriad ways a human being can be a person among persons.' – Rom Harré, Linacre College, University of Oxford, UK, and the Psychology Department, Georgetown University, USA
‘Over a period of nearly three decades, Ian Parker's writings have been an extraordinarily important resource for critical psychology and psychosocial studies. Psychology After Lacan shows why this is so. It draws together a series of ground-breaking articles in which Parker uses Lacanian psychoanalysis to critique psychology, offering a clear, passionate and unequivocal set of new ideas for revolutionising psychological discourse.’ – Stephen Frosh, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
‘Ian Parker's book roves from provocative opinion to insightful synthesis. Combining exposition and forging new links, the volume looks towards psychology, critical psychology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and maintains a crisp political sensibility. I will use this book in my graduate classes as a primer and a call to wake up and look around.’ – Kareen Ror Malone, Department of Psychology, University of West Georgia, USA
'This series is the comprehensive resource we have been waiting for to enable new generations of budding psychologists, and all those who concern themselves with how we might live, to find their way to a just appreciation of what it might be to understand the myriad ways a human being can be a person among persons.' – Rom Harré, Linacre College, University of Oxford, UK, and the Psychology Department, Georgetown University, USA
‘Over a period of nearly three decades, Ian Parker's writings have been an extraordinarily important resource for critical psychology and psychosocial studies. Psychology After Lacan shows why this is so. It draws together a series of ground-breaking articles in which Parker uses Lacanian psychoanalysis to critique psychology, offering a clear, passionate and unequivocal set of new ideas for revolutionising psychological discourse.’ – Stephen Frosh, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
‘Ian Parker's book roves from provocative opinion to insightful synthesis. Combining exposition and forging new links, the volume looks towards psychology, critical psychology, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and maintains a crisp political sensibility. I will use this book in my graduate classes as a primer and a call to wake up and look around.’ – Kareen Ror Malone, Department of Psychology, University of West Georgia, USA
'I found this book to be really interesting and thought-provoking as it raises key questions that we should be considering, whether we position ourselves as psychologists, critical psychologists, psychoanalysts or with respect to any other disciplinary affiliations or commitments to various groups and collectives. This book would also be recommended to second- and final-year undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars in psychology, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology and psychosocial studies.' – Dr Alexander John Bridger, The Psychologist
