Interventions in ‘Psychosocial’ Studies

Abstract

This chapter explores recent developments in discursive psychology which have drawn on psychoanalytic theory to produce a new subfield of research known as ‘psychosocial’ studies. I show how the Lacanian tradition of psychoanalysis offers a fruitful way forward for this emerging tradition, addressing questions of ‘indeterminacy’ of discourse, reflexivity and subjectivity. The terms ‘Lacan’, ‘discourse’, ‘event’ name three aspects of a research programme described in this chapter which is concerned not only with the connection between theoretical traditions—Lacanian psychoanalysis and discourse analysis—but also with the connection between different levels of analysis which are usually configured in academic work and popular culture as the ‘psychological’ and the ‘social’. Some traditions of psychoanalysis are concerned with the level of the psychological, as is the discipline of psychology. A range of different disciplines—sociology, political theory and cultural studies, for example—aim to address the ‘social’. This chapter intervenes in psychosocial studies and situates subjectivity at the interface of politics and qualitative discourse-analytic research to steer psychosocial studies toward critical discursive psychology.