Why Freud Matters: Psychoanalysis and IR Revisited

Abstract

I take scholars of international relations to task for eschewing the discipline of psychoanalysis . The renewed and fierce attacks on Freud and his fractious followers over the last generation evidently discouraged political scientists from exploring the considerable usefulness of psychoanalytic methods both in case studies and in wider methodological terms. This chapter demonstrates under what kinds of circumstances psychoanalysis can prove to be a valid and enlightening interpretive approach. What indeed is the significance in human behavior of the unconscious , that is, of motives and forces of which we are commonly unaware? The argument I make is that in most, if not all, cases, psychoanalytically attuned approaches will yield important insights that expose ‘masks of reason’ and illuminate motives for the way power is wielded in specific cases.