Sports—Applied Psychoanalysis Par Excellence

Abstract

Understanding the ubiquitous human phenomena associated with sports requires a “depth” psychology like psychoanalysis, among other theoretical tools. Sports exemplify basic Freudian concepts, such as unconscious motivation, unconscious conflict and compromise, and the centrality of sexual, aggressive, narcissistic, and attachment themes throughout the human life cycle. Sports also provide powerful illustrations of some of the important recent developments in psychoanalytic theory, including Lacan's work on the Imaginary and Symbolic registers; Kohut's psychology of the self and the role of selfobjects in development; Butler's feminist-psychoanalytic theories on performativity, gender binaries, and the unmourned losses at the root of gender; Laplanche's “general theory of seduction”; and the work of the psychoanalytically influenced sociologist Rene Girard. Finally, sports have a natural kinship with psychoanalysis because both involve the interrelationships among the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social realms.