Lacanian Discourse Theory: An Overview (original) (raw)
Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 7, 187-204., 2009
There are two aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis that may be particularly appealing to those on the critical margins of social psychology. First, like discourse analysis and critical psychology, Lacanian psychoanalysis incorporates a focus on language (Branney, 2008) and therefore the concerns of some critical psychologists and discourse analysts, such as with critiquing the social order or bringing the social within psychology, may be easily assimilated. Second, Lacanian psychoanalysis would seem to be incompatible with psychology (Parker, 2003) and therefore provides an alternative perspective from which to consider, and perhaps undermine, the assumptions of psychology. Attempts to utilise Lacanian psychoanalysis that could be brought together under a rubric of critical psychology and discourse analysis include analyses of the production of girls’ desire in comics (Walkerdine, 1987), of views of the self in long-term psychotherapy (Georgaca, 2001; 2003), and of understandings of domestic violence in government policy (Branney, 2006). We shall use ‘critical psychology’ (or ‘critical psychologist’) and ‘discourse analysis’ (or ‘discourse analyst’) as separate terms because, while many aspects of critical psychology do draw upon discourse analysis, a discourse analytic approach may be neither necessary nor sufficient to be critical of psychology. Hollway’s (1989) consideration of heterosexual subjectivity is perhaps the one most obviously aligned with attempts, from the margins, to use discourse analysis to be critical of psychology. Along with Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation, and Subjectivity (Henriques et al., 1984), Hollway’s Subjectivity and Method in Psychology: Gender, Meaning, and Science (1989) can be understood as an attempt to change the subject of psychology and the theory of subjectivity that psychology relied upon. Hollway (ibid.) drew upon a mixture of discourse analysis, and Kleinian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to examine material from interviews and her journal. But, as Hook so aptly puts it: the lack of engagement of critical social psychology with Lacanian psychoanalysis is an ‘oddity’ that is “striking inasmuch as Lacanian theory offers important insights into many of what we might consider the constituting problematics of social psychology” (Hook, 2008, p. 2), such as racism, ideology, and social identity. If we are to combine Hook’s work (ibid.) with Georgaca (2005) and Parker (2003; 2005), we have what can be understood as a small body of work on the margins of psychology that elucidates Lacanian psychoanalysis for critical psychologists and discourse analysts. Our focus is on Hook, Georgaca, and Parker, because they, whether explicitly or implicitly, explicate what Lacanian psychoanalysis would be if it were used in critical psychology and discourse analysis. This small body of work is steadily growing and includes, for example, Frosh and Baraitser’s (in press) examination of psychoanalysis in psychosocial studies, a special issue of the journal Subjectivities and other work in this volume. In this paper, our first aim is to turn to this body of work to put a bit more flesh on what Lacanian psychoanalysis offers those critical of psychology...