Psychoanalysis is often thought of as an individual affair, independent of our relations to others. 'Continental Psychoanalysis: Society' corrects this vulgar assumption and argues that psychoanalysis is first and foremost an approach to the contradiction of human nature that produces social links within and between people: feudalism, capitalism, hysteria, and communism. Although we’ll focus on Freud’s ‘meta-psychological’ writings and Jacques Lacan’s ‘theory of four discourses’ (Seminar XVII), we’ll also read secondary literature on Freud and Lacan, including Clemens, Grigg, et. al.’s Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis, Aaron Schuster’s The Trouble with Pleasure, and Samo Tomšič’s The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan.