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Ian Parker's obvious passion is engaging but, if you are unfamiliar with Lacan's ideas, you will probably find this book's style too dense. The series editor (Keith Tudor, ‘Advancing Theory in Therapy’ [Routledge]) warns that the book is aimed at professionals and postgraduates. I was surprised to read on page 7: ‘I do not assume you are Lacanian’: I think he does. I suspect that anyone unfamiliar with Lacan's work would hesitate before reading much of this interesting book.
There are two main appeals: the political dimension and the wide-ranging catalogue of argument, challenges, tensions and contradictions. Sometimes these two streams are entangled. ‘I want you’, he writes, ‘to accept … that the contradictions that characterize psychoanalysis need to be connected with the other revolutionary emancipatory movements’ (p. 13). But these contradictions that ‘characterize’ psychoanalysis are not identified, nor is the reader presented with any persuasive arguments for psychoanalysis joining other supposedly revolutionary emancipatory movements. There is a third important difficulty - working out exactly what counts as revolutionary; that we will return to.
Ian Parker challenges tensions and contradictions between psychoanalysis and psychiatry, and between the theories and the techniques of diverse psychotherapeutic schools, against those of Freud and Lacan. Psychology, humanism, spirituality, Marxism and capitalism also figure. Broadly he is as analytical and critical of the non-Freudian or non-Lacanian therapies, as he is uncritically accepting of Marxism and feminism. Arguments for Marxism and feminism are often absent, and it is unclear which variety of feminism he favours.
Some of the political analyses attempt a synthesis of Marx's work with Freud's or Lacan's. There is a substantial literature in this tradition preceded by Freud's New Introductory Essays on Psychoanalysis where Freud (1933) states his ignorance when it comes to judging the value of Marxism and its d