Kareen Ror Malone

Subjectivity and the Address to the Other A Lacanian View of Some Impasses in Theory and Psychology

This paper remarks upon some enduring debates that both mark the field of psychology in general (the individual vs the social) and have taken new forms within emerging theoretical positions in the discipline. Most certainly, the question of subjectivity as a place of agency, an effect of discourse, as politically installed, and as the ethical source of action has preoccupied a number of contributors to Theory & Psychology. Authors attempt to bridge certain constructionist and historicist insights with a concern for other registrations of subjective functioning, for example the body, the self, a sense of the moral, or political priorities. While retaining a focus on the discursive constitution of subjectivity, this paper explicates the issues that psychoanalysis brings to this difficult conceptual terrain.

In the World of Language but not of It Lacanian Inquiry into the Subject of Discourse Psychology

This paper examines the possibility of facilitating and maintaining the tension of dialogue between Lacanian psychoanalysis and discourse psychology. In the context of contemporary debates surrounding the discursive position of the speaking subject, Lacanian psychoanalysis and discourse psychology both attend to a project congruent with the analysis of socially articulated ways of producing knowledge, the ethical situation of the subject in context of the demands of interested others, and the configuration of subject position with reference to socially discrete linguistic acts. Despite these similarities, the understanding of the constituting nature of speech differs dramatically under these accounts. As we seek to clarify the similarities and differences between Lacanian discourse analysis and discourse psychology, we aim at illuminating the possibility of how an encounter with Lacan may further discourse psychology’s theorization of the human subject as the subject of speech.

Psychoanalysis Formalization and Logic and the Question of Speaking and Affect

This paper examines the decision within Lacanian psychoanalysis to formalize the theory of psychoanalytic praxis. The intrinsic problematics of analysis, the place of authority, unconscious knowledge, the roles of embodiment and representation, and singularity are addressed as challenges that psychoanalytic theory must address. It is argued that psychoanalysis cannot locate its autonomy from or complicity with hegemonic cultural discourses without a clear sense of the specificity of its practice. This is addressed in detail. Part of Lacans formulation of the four discourses was in fact to situate just such an interface founded in the structure of speaking and its remains and located between a separation from and enmeshment in social and cultural representations and arrangements. In light of this effort, I question the rather chilly reception of Lacans formalization by North American and anglophone analysts in terms of the role of affect, the place of norms and knowledge, and issues about theory.

The impasses of encounter: Psychoanalysis and feminism: A response to Mandy Morgan

This paper is a response to Mandy Morgan’s “Sado-Masochism and Feminist Desire: The Other Measure of True Love Bleeds.” It attempts to take her ambiguities in authorial voice and interrogation of sado-masochism in narrativity and within subjectivity as serious impasses for the understanding of a feminist transformative desire. Although far from touching on all dimensions of the text, the response essay indicates how the dilemma of violence itself erupts in the text and lays out the problematic with which Morgan struggles in all of its complexity. I discuss Morgan’s dialogue with the Lacanian Žižek in relation to his allusion to sexual violence and love. I also discuss some notions of love and trauma as it is framed within a Lacanian perspective.This paper is a response to Mandy Morgan’s “Sado-Masochism and Feminist Desire: The Other Measure of True Love Bleeds.” It attempts to take her ambiguities in authorial voice and interrogation of sado-masochism in narrativity and within subjectivity as serious impasses for the understanding of a feminist transformative desire. Although far from touching on all dimensions of the text, the response essay indicates how the dilemma of violence itself erupts in the text and lays out the problematic with which Morgan struggles in all of its complexity. I discuss Morgan’s dialogue with the Lacanian Žižek in relation to his allusion to sexual violence and love. I also discuss some notions of love and trauma as it is framed within a Lacanian perspective.

The Subject as Drop-Out Cultural Accountability and the Ethics of Psychoanalysis and Humanistic Psychology

In this paper, psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology are treated as exemplars that demonstrate the salience of social factors in the constitution of the discipline of psychology. There have been a number of efforts that have addressed this impertinent social factor that compromises psychologys claim to being a sort of natural science. Within the current climate of alternative positions in the discipline, it is often assumed that psychology can be absorbed into historical formations, as in social constructionist critique, science studies and the endorsement of indigenous psychologies. Within contemporary mainstream psychology, other disciplines (such as biology) seem to give warrant to psychologys cherished claim to objectivity. Drawing on theories in which psychologists addressed subjectivity, the paper examines psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology to see how each attempts to articulate its disciplinary basis. In this paper, I attempt to understand how the respective theories attempt to account for and finesse the inherent sociality of the psychological dimension. In the case of psychoanalysis, the basic reference point is Lacanian psychoanalysis. In the case of humanistic psychology, the concepts of potential and experience are interrogated to better understand their ethical and ontological function within a humanistic understanding of subjectivity. It is asserted that humanistic psychology may need to extend its basic precepts beyond its current appropriation of phenomenology in order to more fully understand the question of the subjective dimension in its relationship to its social foundations.

Regulation and standards for psychoanalysis: The place of the Other in psychoanalysis and its teaching

In numerous Western countries, psychotherapies have come under increasing governmental regulation. A more recent development is the increasing scrutiny given to psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom, in France, and in the United States. This paper examines a particular document that was created by four professional psychoanalytic organizations that are based in the United States. The document called Standards of Psychoanalytic Education aims to develop criteria that would guide accreditation and the organization of psychoanalytic institutes. The document is part of a set of concerns and actions related to the state regulation of psychoanalytic practice, its professional status, and the protection of those who seek its services. The essay examines the putative theoretical neutrality of this document by unfolding its tenets in terms of Lacanian psychoanalysis, a school of psychoanalysis that would take exception to many of the ideas suggested in the documents template for psychoanalytic education. The paper follows one line of argumentation throughout: what is the place of the Social Field, the Symbolic Other, within psychoanalytic process and as a recourse for professional legitimization that stands outside of psychoanalysis? As a practice of particularity, what relation does the discipline bear to other mental health fields and to the norms and knowledge systems of the mental health professions? Using a Lacanian orientation, two senses of the Other are discussed, and the specificity of psychoanalysis is asserted. This specificity is contrasted with some of the goals and constraints that are introduced by current approaches to regulation.

The place of the other: A Lacanian challenge to humanistic psychology

Abstract This essay proposes a more intense exchange between humanistic psychology and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Certainly, the two fields are aware of one another but an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and superficial knowledge characterize their relationship. If we examine some of the suppositions governing each approach, there are points of similarity. Both see “psychology” in its truest meaning as defined by ethics. Both countenance the importance of the social and the unique individual (the particular for Lacan). There are also glaring differences on key questions. With respect to these differences, the author reads humanistic psychology through a Lacanian lens to indicate how Lacanian concepts can answer some of the recognized impasses of humanistic psychology (such as the question of evil) where humanistic psychology is other to itself.

Reactions to re-reading Juliet Mitchell’s psychoanalysis and feminism

This reaction/response paper searched through many directions before examining the “internal” issues at work, the question of the family in terms of the transmission of sexual difference, where Mitchell’s careful reading receives praise and some scrutiny. The paper turns as well to her assessment of two revolutionary ideologies, those of Wilhelm Reich and Ronald D. Laing. Their continued influence is briefly addressed.

Beyond Objectivity to Extimité: Feminist Epistemology and Psychoanalysis

How one conceives of particularity and universality is a question with important social and methodological implications, in addition to being an arbiter of numerous disputes that still exercise academics over historicism, relativism and so forth; such issues have impacted critical psychology, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, political discourse and, as we discuss, modern (Western) science itself (Copjec, 1994; Martin, 1998). Certainly psychoanalysis is rightly included in this conversation by drawing upon its practice and forms of knowledge transmission; psychoanalysis is a matter of the very conceptualization of that interface of particularity with what may be ‘transpersonal’ or universal.

Special Session - Valuing Diversity As It Happens: Exploring Laboratory Interactions Where More Is Going on Than Science

In this session we address the issue of diversity in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by focusing on everyday interactions in research and educational settings where unconscious prejudices about race and gender can work to exclude and make invisible underrepresented minorities. The session goals are: 1) to increase awareness of racial and gender stereotypes that subvert educational practices 2) encourage dialogue about how race and gender enter into learning settings in critical ways and 3) increase awareness of the (an)other in majority schools where the perspective and position of minority students are often forgotten and channels of communication that would foster more awareness are clogged by a legacy of racism or gender biases. The emphasis in this session is on everyday practices that are both social and cognitive and their unanticipated effects and non conscious subtexts