These little essays on what it is to be a human subject in a culture permeated by psychoanalytic sign systems were first published between 1994 and 2008. The first of these predate the publication of my academic studies of the social construction of contemporary psychoanalysis, and most were written before and during my training as a psychoanalyst. These are occasional pieces, and so they address quite diverse cultural phenomena in order to make sense of how they hook their audiences, us.

Many of the essays were published in the organs of psychological, psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic bodies. This is because an argument needs to be made against those who too easily assume that only their particular concepts capture and describe fantasy and reality. I have tried, often in vain, to disturb the strongly held belief of those in thrall to psychoanalysis that it is universally true. What I describe in the essays is how psychoanalysis functions as something that is only locally true. The argument applies to each of different varieties of psychoanalysis I find at work in the phenomena I explore, and it is important to recognise the different functions that different ideas in psychoanalysis serve, as their proponents battle against each other and pretend that they alone have the keys to unlock our secrets.