Social constructionist psychoanalysis and the real

Ian Parker

pp. 41-49

in: Stam, Leendert Mos, Warren Thorngate, Bernie Kaplan (eds), Recent trends in theoretical psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

Psychoanalysis can be developed as a resource for critical social psychology. Taking as a starting point the interpretations of psychoanalysis as a human science, I draw on social constructionist theory to describe how that science constitutes its objects through discourses of the subject. The experiential bedrock of psychoanalytic work, the subject, is both imaginary and "real". This paper traces the redefinition of psychoanalysis as a component of social constructionist theory (and so as no longer True) and then the consequences of a realist position which locates psychoanalysis as a form of knowledge given subjective power by cultural dynamics (and which theorizes the proper nature of psychoanalytic truth). The birth of psychoanalysis entailed the systematic reduction of cultural dynamics to psycho-dynamics, but psychoanalytic description contains within it a critique of subjectivity in present society.