My interdisciplinary research seeks to critique the Freudian overreliance on the Oedipus complex and marries this with the growing interest in animal studies. In doing so, it seeks to reveal a hitherto undertheorized psychoanalytic figure: the Oedipal-Animal. Through a critical analysis of Freud’s case histories and relevant theoretical material, it becomes evident that Freud significantly anthropomorphizes the animal in order to fit it within the oedipal triangle. The result is a domesticated, familial and rational image of the animal – a humanist legacy that has weaved its way into contemporary theory and criticism, leaving the once multidimensional, transformable power of the animal to be snuffed out under the legacy of Freud’s Oedipal anthropocentrism.      My PhD aims to present an alternative way of psychoanalytically ‘seeing’ the animal through Lacanian psychoanalysis. Put differently, the image of the animal is the projection of an unconscious non-human element within the human psyche, and through an analysis that engages with Lacan’s psychoanalytic realms, I argue that there are openings for the animal to resist symbolisation.    Furthermore, my research also explores the figure of the non-Oedipal animal via investigations of two cultural/literary movements, Surrealism and Modernism, and more precisely within the works of Salvador Dali and James Joyce as representative of these movements, where ‘real’ animal images surface amongst atypical creative processes.