Jacques Lacan is one of the most challenging and controversial of contemporary thinkers, as well as the most influential psychoanalyst since Freud. Lacanian theory has reached far beyond the consulting room to engage with such diverse disciplines as literature, film, gender and social theory. This book covers the full extent of Lacan's career and provides an accessible guide to Lacanian concepts and his writing on: *the imaginary and the symbolic *the Oedipus Complex and the meaning of the phallus *the subject and the unconscious *the real *sexual difference. Locating Lacan's work in the context of contemporary French thought and the history of psychoanalysis, Sean Homer's Jacques Lacan is the ideal introduction to this influential theorist.