1 :: GENERAL INTRODUCTION
IDENTITY AFTER PSYCHOANALYSIS
It is no longer possible, and has not been for many decades, to speak of ‘identity’
without acknowledging the immense transmutation of the term as a result of the
Freudian revolution. For Freudianism has changed our culture’s understanding of the
very emotional coordinates of identity, twinning sexuality and repression at the very
heart of the human subject. This rewriting of identity is complex and more technical
than is often recognized in appropriations of Freudian psychoanalysis in popular
culture, but nonetheless that such a rewriting of the whole terrain of identity has
occurred is largely to Freud’s credit. The theory of psychoanalysis Freud developed
views the mind as racked with conflicting desires and painful repressions; it is a
model in which the self, or ego, wrestles with the sexual drives of the unconscious on
the one hand, and the demands for restraint and denial arising from the superego on
the other. Freud’s account of the complex ways in which individual identity is
tormented by hidden sources of mental conflict provided a source of inspiration for
the undoing of sexual repression in both personal and social life. In our therapeutic
culture, constraints on, and denials of, individual identity have been (and, for many,
still are) regarded as emotionally and socially harmful. The Freudian insight that
personal identity is forged out of the psyche’s encounter with particular experiences,
especially those forgotten experiences of childhood, has in turn led to an increasing
interest in repressions and repetitions of the self (see Elliott 1998).
Many psychoanalytic critics working in the humanities and social sciences have sought
to preserve the radical and critical edge of Freud’s doctrines for analyzing the discourse
of identity (see Elliott 1999, 2004). For these theorists, psychoanalysis enjoys a highly
privileged position in respect to social critique because of its focus on fantasy and
desire, on the ‘inner nature’ or representational aspects of human subjectivity –
aspects not reducible to social, political and economic forces. Indeed, social theorists
have been drawn to psychoanalytic theory to address a very broad range of issues,
ranging from destructiveness (Erich Fromm) to desire (Jean-François Lyotard),
communication distortions (Jürgen Habermas) to the rise of narcissistic culture
(Christopher Lasch). It is perhaps in terms of the analysis of identity, however, that
Freud and psychoanalysis have most obviously contributed to (and some would also say
hampered) social theory and cultural studies. Psychoanalysis has certainly been
important as a theoretical resource for comprehending the centrality of specific
configurations of desire and power at the level of ‘identity politics’, ranging from
feminist and post-feminist identities to gay and lesbian politics. It is possible to identify
three key approaches through which psychoanalytic thought has been connected to the
study of sexuality in social theory: (1) as a form of social critique, providing the