Abstract

Does the unconscious exist? Cultural critic Antony Easthope answers with a witty, lucid, informed "yes" and draws out its implications for the way we live, how we enjoy art, and how we think about people in society and history. Drawing on the writings of Freud and Lacan, he argues that the study of the unconscious is a way of analyzing meanings across culture as an effect of desire. Easthope tests for unconscious significance in an amazing variety of examples, including jokes, Tampax advertisements, Hamlet , Hitchcock's Psycho , the life and death of Princess Di, Terminator 2 , Bob Geldof's autobiography, and the film Titanic.