Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

140 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
with others in dialogue, we interpret our unconscious desires and then claim those interpretations.
Once we claim those interpretations, they are embedded in our self-understanding; they become
an integral part of what we identify as “I.” For Lacan, this interpretive act is a psychoanalytic act,
one which assumes that there is an analyst out there who can interpret the “truth” of symptoms
or hidden desires. Equally important, Lacan claims that the emergence of our hidden desires into
the spoken world/language is an attempt to integrate them into the social order. Once we integrate
them in a way that corresponds to how we understand the world, they become part of our identity.
Integrating our hidden desires into a conscious identity does not mean that we have constructed
a new self; rather, it means that we can now reinterpret ourselves.
Finally, with regard to language, Lacan speaks to the importance of “master signifiers” and the
construction of identity. Basically, these are the major categories we use to identify ourselves and
give meaning to the world. When we claim a national, racial, or gender identity, we are using
a master signifier. What makes these signifiers so important is our unwillingness to challenge
their meaning. We are often afraid to do so because, if we did, we would have to completely
reconstruct our identities. Master signifiers come laced with values and beliefs that ground our
understanding of our selves and the world. The way we privilege some master signifiers over
others also determines how we order the world. For example, if you were to identify as a Chicana
woman, your life would center on this particular interpretation and all other signifiers will have
meaning in relation to the primary one with which you identify.
Lacan believes that the psychoanalytic process enables subjects to question and rethink their
master signifiers. In doing so, they reinterpret fundamental beliefs and perceptions of the self.
If a person’s master signifiers are leading to some type of neurosis or inability to function in
the world, psychoanalysis can help the person reorder their master signifiers and reidentify in
different ways. She or he can then engage with the world in ways that do not result in traumatic
experiences. It is important to reemphasize that this reordering does not lead to a new identity.
Instead, it brings to the forefront different master signifiers that allow the individual to navigate
the world with different primary beliefs and/or values.
With his emphasis on language and identity, Lacan’s theories are particularly relevant to
any continued studies in educational psychology. His critics have challenged many nuances of
his theory—the Oedipal complex and the symbolic phallus in particular—but the crux of his
arguments pushes us to reconsider how each of us becomes a subject capable of daily existence
within the dominant social order. Through his mirror image and language theories, Lacan stresses
the subject as decentered and in relationship. In a basic sense, we develop our self-perceptions
in relation to others and we use language to give meaning to experience. Lacan’s theories serve
as a starting point, one from which we can pose questions that will help us reconceptualize the
importance of educational psychology today.
Some of these questions are as follows: How is a blind child’s development of self different (if
at all) from a seeing child? How do children learn the language of the dominant social order and
then refute that language? Is it even possible for children to reconceive/rework/reenact language?
Or are their base language patterns (even in the use of slang) always dependent on the language
of the dominant group? How do children learn to enact different selves? And how are these selves
protected, nurtured, subsumed, or contested by the dominant social order? Are we to assume that
since language is so critical to the development of self, children who do not ever master language
have no cohesive sense of self? And, finally, can we ever really reorder our master signifiers or are
the ones we claim all held together by similar value systems? If so, are we not simply changing
what we call our primary identity and maintaining the same key beliefs?
These questions are just a beginning, but they illuminate the continued relevance of Lacan
to educational psychology. Any theory that generates more questions than answers gives a base
from which to reconceptualize. If the theory failed to generate questions and, instead, provided
all of the answers, how could it possibly help us rethink and re-create? Theoretically, Lacan’s