Guest Column: Institutionalizing the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society: Psycho-Social Studies at the University of the West of England

The Psycho-Social Studies Group at the University of the West of England, Bristol, encompasses a wide range of research interests and theoretical positions that share in common a commitment to psychoanalytic and other nonrationalist understandings of the human subject. We are also concerned with the application of such perspectives to organizational, social, and political issues and with the mutual influencing of psychoanalysis and contemporary social and political theory. Finally, some of the group are interested in the history of psychoanalysis and allied disciplines, such as Group Relations, and with the development of the therapeutic culture.

As we see it, psycho-social studies bridge the gap between theory and practice—several of the group are experienced Group Relations consultants, one is in training as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and some have been involved practically in politics. We are not interested in theorizing for the sake of it, losing sight of the human phenomena that we were studying. This may seem an obvious point, but often sociologists and political scientists get embroiled in their theoretical positions, whether Marxist, Weberian, or Durkheimian, and the social phenomena about which they are writing seem to take second place or are even forgotten about altogether.

A psycho-social approach links society, structure, and affect in a way that sociology, psychology, and social psychology have been largely unable to do. Structure and affect, the social and the psyche, are inseparable in terms of the explanation of social phenomena. This calls for a huge change in the way we think about research methods—how we know and how we can come to know about the world. There is thus an emphasis on the psychodynamic, the way in which the internal and external worlds are mediated by the group and individual and connect in ways that enable us to make sense of, think about, and exist in the world.

A psycho-social perspective, therefore, insists on th