Providing interpretations and drawing critically from classical and modern social theory, post-structuralism, and psychoanalytic theory, this original study offers an alternative way of thinking about the social and the individual. It offers critical analyses of, among others, Marx, Giddens, Bourdieu, Derrida, Laclau and Mouffe, Castoriadis, Freud and modern psychoanalytic theorists, and considers their roles in advancing our present-day conceptualization of the social and the self. In theorizing that behaviour is both socially determined and autonomous, it avoids the impasses of either individualist or structuralist approaches.