Outside the Psy-Complex

Abstract

OUTSIDE THE PSY-COMPLEX Ian Parker, Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Revolutions in Subjectivity, London and New York, Routledge, 201 1; 248pp, £20.99 paperback I'm likely not the only one recently to have felt the need for a new kind of book about Lacan. Slavoj ?iiek has continued to produce work worth reading, and his swing to the left over a decade ago has only made him more relevant. Indeed, his writing continues to yield surprising and subversive insights about pressing contemporary issues and wields powerful and essential weapons with which to wage war against dominant thinking's complacent neoliberal hypocrisies. Yet one doubts that Zizek spends much time (re-)reading Lacan anymore: the same points are barely recontextualized; the same lessons, however valuable and worth repeating, taught anew. Clinical writing for its part has fared surprisingly well, immensely productive in regions where Lacanian approaches are firmly entrenched in therapeutic settings, and finding a new and curious readership within groups with a long track record of scepticism about Lacan. Clinically, the obstacle is largely socioeconomic in nature. From what I can tell from outside the discipline, Lacan's presence in Anglo-American psychology departments has yet to become even marginal. To a significant extent, however, the struggle to be waged on the clinical front is not against an indifferent or hostile public, but rather against the underfunded and badly managed public health care apparatuses, the cynical managerialism of private insurance companies, as well as the long and formidable tentacles of the insidious international pharmaceutical lobby. With precious few exceptions in the world of English-language publishing, we find on the one hand the Lacan of cultural theory, heavily mediated, to effects both good and ill, by Ziiek's massive influence and, on the other, the specialized clinical writings, either addressed to the Lacanian clinical audience itself or to potential allies in the wider analytic and therapeutic communities, the massive American one in particular. It's been quite a long while indeed since there has been a major new Lacanian voice, one that brings to bear an aspect of Lacan's work yet to be considered (many of the seminars await 'official' publication) or makes use of Lacan to intervene in arenas of thought yet to have encountered an authentic or radical version of Freudian psychoanalysis. There are so many possible avenues left for exploration and, as ever, the academic career prospects of anyone who dares to walk the path, especially in the wilderness of North America, remain discouragingly dim. This considerable challenge notwithstanding, the field is open for a new Lacan, one that remains faithful to the Lacanian project while charting invigoratingly fresh terrain. The bad news, I suppose, is that Ian Parker's new book makes only steps in this direction. The good news, then, is that there are indeed steps, and significant ones at that. Lacanian Psychoanalysis makes a major contribution to the long-overdue articulation of the clinical Lacan with radical politics. Through a distinctly politicized lens, the book effects a wide-ranging contextualization of Lacanian clinical work against its hegemonic competitors, carefully negotiating the difficult nexus between the micro-level work of the clinic and the wider ideological forces against which analysis since its inception has found itself pitted. The main strength of Parker's book is its careful extrication of the Lacanian clinic (and to a lesser extent, Lacanian theory) from its rivals, which Parker helpfully locates in what he calls the 'psy complex' (pi 5), a useful and powerful phrase designed to group together the medical specialism of psychiatry since its inception, psychological social science (presumably because it doesn't feature a clinical element, neuroscience isn't addressed), and the more recent and putatively politicized practice of psychotherapy. …