Questioning Authority

These selected essays from over a period of nearly 30 years, while published separately, all undertake the study of psychoanalysis as a work of criticism. Three of them contain expositions of the earlier, largely linguistic writings of Jacques Lacan, as they relate to theory and practice, but all the essays are concerned with the development and primacy of the self. Their approach is humanistic and personalistic, two of them calling on the experience of great writers, John Keats and Alain-Fournier, by way of intensive illustration. Some traditional concepts of psychoanalysis come into serious questioning, especially that of narcissism. Just as the man or woman in psychoanalytic treatment makes an honest attempt at disclosing the inner constraints on his or her life so far, so the author tries to show the restrictions, often unavowed, that any system of psychology may impose on our grasp of the life lived. In particular, this is worked out with regard to male homosexuality, in a study that helped to redefine present-day attitudes, both professional and public. Religion, in the essay that gives the book its title, comes into question in its relations with traditional authority on the one hand, and personal experience on the other. In brief, the book calls for the "examined life" to which Socrates alluded.