This volume discusses the ideas of psychoanalytical theorist Jacques Lavan. The book guides the reader through Lacan's early study of paranoia to his subsequent analyitical innovations - his addition of structural linguistics to Freudianism and his ideas on the infant mirror phase, the maturation of identity and the dynamics of the psyche. It shows how Lacan's influence has been crucial in many interdisciplinary areas which have become labelled postmodern in the critical theories of literature, art, philosophy, feminism as well as psychoanalysis itself.