Theoretical development in the field of public administration is impaired by its implicit, unacknowledged commitment to the incompatible ontology of economics. This ontological commitment restricts the possibility for defining the role of the public bureaucrat to that of being no more than a technically proficient of services, a definition that the field has long sought to escape. A psychoanalytic perspective, especially the one formulated by the French theorist Jacques Lacan, can help this problem. The aspects of Lacan's psychoanalytic model relevant to this issue are explicated. It is then argued that the model holds major implications for public administration, among which are (a) a radical change in its epistemology, (b) a complete reassessment of the function of the human ego in social life, (c) an ontological rationale for moving beyond the instrumental goal attainment schema for administrative action, and (d) a venue for public administration to move past its anachronistic modernist conceptual framework and into a more appropriate postmodern manner of thinking about its identity.
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