Abstract
Reflecting on the numerous abuses it has been embroiled in since its inception and the inherent conservativism of certain of its clinical practices, this chapter questions whether it is right to include psychoanalysis in a collection on critical social psychology. Returning to Freud’s original insight on the notion of the unconscious and its intrinsic connection to the sexual body, the author unpacks and highlights a fundamentally radical project in psychoanalysis, where conflict and uncertainty generate a theoretical frame and clinical practice that is ever restless and necessarily responsive to new patients and socio-political contexts. Alongside reactionary strands in thinking and associated institutions, therefore, Freud’s particular “discovery” and development of key psychoanalytic concepts means that their resistance to fixed meaning and the possibility of full articulation offers fertile grounds for critical social and psychological inquiry. Exploring continental strands of psychoanalysis in the works of Jean Laplanche, André Green and others, this chapter poses questions for the construction of reflective and emancipatory clinical practice and ends with a consideration of radical psychoanalytic ideas in social psychological research.
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Goodwin, T. (2017). The Radical Implications of Psychoanalysis for a Critical Social Psychology. In: Gough, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51018-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51018-1_5
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