Jacques Lacan was a Parisian psychoanalyst who has influenced literary criticism and feminism. He began work in the 1950s, in the Freudian society there. It was a time when those official ties meant something—when one could be expelled for deviation, as if from the Communist party. Written by a leading Lacanian analyst, this book will guide you through his innovations, including his work on paranoia, his addition of structural linguistics to Freudianism and his ideas on the infant 'mirror phase'. It also traces Lacan's influence in postmodern critical thinking on art, literature, philosophy and feminism. This is the ideal introduction for anyone intrigued by Lacan's ideas but discouraged by the complexity of his writings.