Re-Centering Psychoanalysis: Toward a Socio-Centric Psychoanalysis

Contemporary psychoanalysis is living through a precarious moral moment. It is a moment of converging global crises: social, political, and environmental. We are witnessing the resurgence of racism and misogyny, the emergence of existential threats to our democratic institutions and aspirations, and desperate denial of our climate emergency. We must, with full awareness, recognize the defensive ascendancy of a narcissistic and sociopathic worldview rationalized by the conscious and unconscious idealization of invulnerability and denial of the predatory and destructive logos of capitalism, colonialism, and classism—historically and in its contemporary manifestation, Neo-liberalism; we must confront these profoundly anti-democratic, fascistic developments with all the psychological and sotcio-political power we can muster. This article proposes that an emergent socio-centric psychoanalysis can contribute both to a diagnosis of the “socio-political unconscious,” analogous to Freud’s “dynamic unconscious,” and to a “communal talking cure” that can help reduce or eliminate our collective regressive defenses. The article also proposes that movement toward a truly socio-centric psychoanalysis requires a transformation in psychoanalytic training—a transformation that incorporates a “fourth pillar”—adding to the traditional three pillars of psychoanalytic training: supervision, learning of psychoanalytic theory, and training analysis.