Critical Theory and Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Critical theory and contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives share many compatibilities in offering a constructive critique of society. Psychoanalysis teaches us that whatever values and ideals societies adopt, they are always mediated through unconscious psychic processes that condition the collective in both positive and negative ways and in terms of relations of recognition and patterns of social justice. Contemporary critical theory may benefit from engaging postclassical and current trends in psychoanalytic thought that have direct bearing on the ways we conceive of and observe how individuals operate within social collectives. In particular, Axel Honneth relies on psychoanalytic sources that are dated. Critical theory would profit from engaging Jungian psychology, post-object relations schools such as self psychology, psychoanalytic intersubjectivity theory, relationality, and contemporary attachment theory, which are more nuanced yet can supplement Honneth’s preference for Winnicottian perspectives. Implications for contemporary theory need to reflect upon how the psychosocial matrix of self and society both facilitate and hinder optimal social arrangements and fabrics of justice as it takes up the question of normativity. It is within this context that the author hopes to introduce contemporary psychoanalytic paradigms that move beyond classical models yet complement redirecting shifts in emphasis that both psychoanalysis and critical theory attempt to accomplish. Mills suggests that an applied psychoanalytic explication on social phenomenology can expand the interpretive depth and breadth of human relations and open up a permissible space for interdisciplinary discourse. Here, new vistas emerge for a proposed synthesis between the two schools of thought.