Psychoanalysis outside the clinic: Interventions in pychosocial studies

What happens when psychoanalytic knowledge leaves the clinic? What is to be gained from these interventions, and can psychoanalysis itself benefit from an application outside the context in which it originated? Those are the questions Stephen Frosh raises and attempts to answer in his nuanced and accessible new book. Writing from the relatively young discipline of psychosocial studies, he provides support to academics who still feel the need to justify their use of psychoanalytic concepts. Through a detailed exposition of existing scholarly endeavours, the book illustrates how these concepts can be applied to issues of a transindividual nature. At the same time, the book tries to rein in those enthusiasts who believe that psychoanalytic knowledge, with its emphasis on affect and the unconscious, holds the missing elements to a Grand Theory of the Social. While the question of whether or not psychoanalytic knowledge can be fruitfully applied to nonclinical settings perhaps remains justified, one is led to think, however, that dismissing the contributions of the likes of Adorno, Marcuse, or, more recently, Žižek would mean an impoverishment of the academic field. One way of reading Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic is therefore as a review of previous efforts to transcend the original analyst– analysand dyad. Each chapter looks at a different area and subdiscipline that has experienced an influx of psychoanalytic ideas, including literary studies, social psychology and ethics. Frosh makes no secret of his predilection for the Lacanian school but avoids giving a skewed portrayal by beginning each chapter with a reference to the discipline’s founding father, as well as giving space to a discussion of the contributions by followers of the British school of object relations and, notably, by Laplanche. The last chapter is dedicated to a survey of the role and impact of psychoanalytic thought on Frosh’s own field of psychosocial studies, with a detailed account of the methodological and theoretical challenges it poses, in addition to a description of its critical potential. The author always remains critical of the dogmatic tendencies of psychoanalytic thinking, which at times appears to want to install its mode of viewing the social world as a new ‘Master Discourse’ (Parker, 2008). Like Parker, he is also wary of the increasing infiltration of psychoanalytic discourse into everyday thinking. This development effects a domestication of its ideas, a ‘blunting of the subversive edge of psychoanalysis’ (p. 185). Instead, its major strength lies in its ability to disrupt and question what overly commonsensical theories seem to have clarified already. This belief in psychoanalysis’ capacity to unsettle and to unravel meaning has its origin in a Lacanian mindset, according to which meaning is always contingent.