Psychoanalysis outside the clinic: Interventions in psychosocial studies

Stephen Frosh Palgrave, London, 2010, 256pp., £22.99, ISBN: 0230210325; ISBN: 978-0230210325

Stephen Frosh has over the years almost single-handedly rescued a psychoanalytic vision of subjectivity from psychology, from inside psychology itself. He has enabled a new generation of radical psychologists to appreciate that authentic psychoanalysis is not only radically different from psychiatry, but also that we need not buy into the standard disciplinary image of a ‘psychoanalytic psychology’ that replicates reductive and essentialising models of individuals. He has emphasised that the arguments of a range of psychoanalytic theorists must be engaged with if we are to find a way of connecting alternative accounts of subjectivity with politics. The reference points here range from feminism and Marxism to post-colonial and queer theory. Frosh (2010)has always offered an inclusive open approach to psychoanalytic debate, even if, as he admits in his most recent book, he has a ‘predilection...