Having A Life

Introduction

IN THIS BOOK I FOCUS ON A LACANIAN QUESTION: HOW DOES A PERSON support his or her separate existence as a subject? How, that is, does he or she sustain a vital presence as a speaking being against all the many forces that fragment, negate, and depersonalize? Although Lacan deserves credit for directing attention to this crucial issue of the subject in analytic work, numerous other theorists using the vocabularies, variously, of ego integrity, identity, and self have also touched on the problem, which has recaptured contemporary interest through the perhaps overused concept of intersubjectivity. The fragile or vulnerable self of Kohutian analysis that is so much the focus of clinical attention today (and with good reason) is a familiar ...