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In this paper I shall offer some critical reflections on the state of the self in its unconscious relational world. The principal issue I shall be concerned with is that of connecting a conception of the human subject as self-representing, self-symbolizing and self-reflective with socio-symbolic, intersubjective explanation in psychoanalysis. The forging of such a connection, I argue, involves attention to the following: the question of unconscious representation; the nature of intersubjectivity; and their mutual imbrication with the structuring properties of modern institutions and culture.
In the first section, the paper unpacks a variety of psychoanalytical assumptions or understandings concerning the developmental genesis of unconscious representation. I suggest that there are a number of important problems with traditional psychoanalytic accounts of the representational psychic space of the human subject. I also suggest that we need to probe further in order to understand the crucial links between the unconscious and creativity, representation and the human imagination. Throughout, it will be one of my objectives to trace the rapprochements and realignments between Anglo-American and Continental traditions of psychoanalysis that now appear to be taking place.
In the second section, I examine the structuration of representation with reference to primary repression and identification. I argue that primary repression is not merely a preparatory step for the negotiation of Oedipal identity, but is rather essential to the establishment of an elementary form of subjectivity itself. In this connection, the recent psychoanalytical