Hegel, Freud, and Lacan : the subject and ... the Other

G.W.F. Hegel and Sigmund Freud both developed models of the human mind, identity and behavior. Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst, employed and revamped the Freudian model of human behavior. Tracing the genesis of the Freudian model of the unconscious in Hegel's version of the dialectic provides a clear avenue for showing the implications that Freud drew from Hegel to offer a new model for the diagnosis of human behavior, particularly of abnormal human consciousness. After outlining how Freud's core model derives from Hegel, I will turn, in the final sections of this discussion, to how Lacan employed and extended the Freudian system in order to develop his own theory of human behavior. Using this approach I will be able to show how Lacan's extension of the [Freudian] model revealed the possibility of phenomenologically-grounded intersubjectivity in analyzing human behavior.