Psychoanalysis in social research : shifting theories and refreaming concepts / Claudia Lapping

Introduction: Reframing Psychoanalytic Concepts, or Bricolage Decomposed -- 1. Melancholia: Lost Objects of National, Ethnic, Classed, Gendered and Sexual Identities -- 2. Overdetermination: The Conceptualization of Dreams and Discourse -- 3. Textures of Resistance: 'Discourse' and 'Psyche' and 'The Compulsion to Repeat' -- 4. Signifying Chains in Academic Practice: The Appearance and Disappearance of Affect, Politics and Methodology -- 5. From Psychic Defenses to Social Defenses: Recontextualising Strategies and Klein's Theory of Ego Development Conclusion: Troubling Attachments.

The use of psychoanalytic ideas to explore social and political questions is not new. Freud began this work himself and social research has consistently drawn on his ideas. This makes perfect sense. Social and political theory must find ways to conceptualise the relation between human subjects and our social environment; and the distinctive and intense observation of individual psychical structuring afforded within clinical psychoanalysis has given rise to rich theoretical and methodological resources for doing just this. However, psychoanalytic concepts do not remain the same when they are rearticulated in the context of research. This book traces the reiteration and transformation of concepts in the psychoanalytic theory of Freud, Klein and Lacan, the social theory of Butler, Derrida, Foucault, Laclau and Zizek, and case studies of empirical research ranging from the classic Tavistock Institute studies to contemporary work in politics, gender studies, cultural studies and education.