Vol 3 No 1 (2022): Special Issue: Critical Psychology & Psychoanalysis
Special Issue: Critical Psychology & Psychoanalysis

This special issue considers the value psychoanalytic theory has for the field of critical psychology by demonstrating how the field is already inherently critical of mainstream psychology. Critical psychology has become a growing discipline in recent years as many start to question the implicit values and assumptions latent in psychology, not to mention its standing within the scientific tradition. The replication crisis undermined the field’s scientific standing and the APA’s complicity in the torture of persons in the Abu Ghraib prison incited speculation about the use and purpose of certain psychological theories and tactics. Even prior to this, critical scholars, many of whom have been published in an earlier issue of Awry, have demonstrated the need to rethink the ways in which psychology conceptualizes the human subject, as well as decouple itself from neoliberal capitalist demands. Many of the contributors in this special issue argue that psychology’s largest offense is the reduction of the subject to neurochemical and cognitive behavioral contingencies. In doing so, contemporary psychology obfuscates or ignores many of the contextual and interpersonal circumstances that constitute the subject. The effect of this reductionism is a leveling of fundamental difference, and most importantly to those interested in psychoanalytic theory, a disavowal of the unconscious. The articles that make up this volume are diverse in their scope but posit the following assertions: psychology and its many tenets inherently support the status quo of neoliberal capitalism; psychoanalytic theory and its concepts implicitly undermine the ego reification projects central to mainstream psychology; and that psychoanalytic theory contains within it underutilized tools for theorizing about the political and social.

Articles

Bethany Morris
1-5
Strange Bedfellows: Psychoanalytic Theory’s Place in Critical Psychology
PDF
John Roberts
6-26
Critical Psychology, the Unconscious, & Traumatic Ethics
PDF
Stephanie Swales
27-41
A Lacanian Critique of the Empathy Cure: Jouissance, Extimacy, and Hating thy Neighbor
PDF
Daniel Bristow, Jaice Sara Titus
42-61
Towards a Political Psychology: From Lacan to Reich
PDF
Claudia Di Gianfrancesco, Sofia Scacco
62-76
Embracing paradoxes: A psychoanalytic and philosophical reading of Plandemic
PDF
Robert Beshara
77-94
A Liberation Psychoanalytic Account of Racism
PDF
Iris Aleida Pinzón Arteaga, Arturo Bandinelli
95-111
Knowledge and Truth in Contemporary Society: A Psychoanalytic Investigation of the “Post-Truth Era”
PDF
Cecelia Opatken-Ringdal
112-121
Ideology Between Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: A History of the Borderline Group of Patients
PDF
Vitor Bicudo Oliva, Marie-Lou Lery-Lachaume, Pedro Misailidis Antonini
122-134
Enlightenment and Psychoanalysis: Will we still call "Logos" our god?
PDF
Brendan Moore
135-160
Against the Bedrock: Gender-Affirming Therapies, Transgender Psychoanalysis, and a Case for Confusing the Sexes
PDF
Benjamin Ramey, Rivers Fleming
161-173
A Response to Humanistic Psychology
PDF
Eric Vogan
174-187
A Hermeneutic Reading of Psychoanalysis as a Response to Psychological Reductionism
PDF
Jacob Glazier
188-198
Clean, Death, Revolt: Sensual Politics during Quarantine
PDF
Chris Bell
199-214
Lacanian Psychoanalysis in Japan: An Interview with Dr. Luke S. Ogasawara
PDF