Editor's Introduction

Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society. The very name makes people uncomfortable, anxious. It is disturbing first of all because its meaning is not immediately clear: we know what psychoanalyzing an individual involves, but what would it mean to psychoanalyze a culture or society? Does the name imply unleashing hordes (primal ones, perhaps) of pseudo-analysts to impose psychoanalysis on the unsuspecting masses? Or is the name merely the result of a category mistake, the faulty assumption that a mode of therapy designed to produce individual change could be applied to entire societies to produce social change? Why, people have asked, isn't the publication called “Journal for the Psychoanalytic Study of Culture & Society,” or simply “Journal for Psychoanalysis, Culture, & Society”?

The answer is that this journal's name, like its existence, aims to disrupt the traditional (and still current) mode of “applying” psychoanalysis, which involves producing psychoanalytic “studies” of cultural artifacts (works of literature, art, music, etc.) with little or no concern for whether such academic studies provide any benefits beyond advancing their authors' careers. JPCS and its parent organization, the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society (APCS), are committed to an applied psychoanalysis that produces not just academic interpretations but social benefits. APCS and JPCS aim to bring psychoanalysis as both a theory and a practice to bear on social and cultural phenomena in ways that promote beneficial social change. More specifically, the association and journal are dedicated to using psychoanalysis to formulate social and cultural practices that can alter the psychological roots of socially destructive attitudes and behavior, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and various other forms of interpersonal, intergroup, and structural violence.

The psychoanalysis in the journal's title, then, is meant to be of