The tenets of psychoanalysis have been nowadays expanded sufficiently to be ap-plied in the fields of identity as well as otherness. Lacanian psychoanalytical and psy-cholinguistic theories provide an approach through which one may investigate notions such as subjectivity, identity, mother tongue, homeland, and otherness — which pertain to humans’ psychic realm. The present thesis investigates identity and otherness in Irish and Kurdish cases through Seamus Heaney's Opened Ground and Sherko Bekas’ Butter-fly Valley. Firstly, the representation of identity and the Other in the collections are traced and analyzed. The Other, which is the domain language, culture, and identity, is depicted through the poets’ reflections on their national identities and cultures. Second-ly, the depiction of otherness and hegemonic forces are scrutinized. The Other is divid-ed into two types: internal and external. In this study the internal Other refers to the ideological features of Irish and Kurdish identities and the external Other refers to the hegemonic forces of the dominant discourse with which the Irish and Kurdish people struggle. Thirdly, the two collections are comparatively examined from the perspective of identity, homeland, and otherness. Throughout these investigations, the present re-search applies the psychoanalytical and psycho-linguistic theories of Jacques Lacan, notably his concepts of the symbolic, the Other, and otherness. This study has demon-strated the representation of Other in the two collections, specifically through the poets’ contemplations about their identity and culture. It has also compared the two works based on their similarities and differences from a Lacanian perspective; for instance, both of them represent identity and otherness. This research has provided a contributive reading of the two collections to investigate the Irish and Kurdish identities as well as contributing to Lacanian studies in the fields of hegemony, identity crisis, and language assimilation.
