Staying the Course

We have lost our grip on any shared sense of reality. Post-Truth philosophers provide cold comfort, telling us we haven't really lost anything; we have, in fact, gained understanding that reality has never been there to grip. And the deconstructivists tell us that the credibility of any source (and we can include the post-truth philosophers here) is up for grabs. Any way you turn it, truth is subjective and personal. Truth is what we agree upon. Truth is tribal. ROOM 10.19 weaves together a few psychoanalytic truths. We do not hold these truths to be self-evident. Psychoanalytic truths are hard won.

“Psychoanalysis exists at the nexus of social and personal emancipation… and…through the study of the unconscious, it enables us to scientifically locate meaning in individual feelings and behaviors that other approaches can only see as irrational,” writes Scott Graybow in Neoliberal Gaslighting, and he cannot be clearer about what is at stake. There are two “myths,” Graybow tells us, that are eating away at psychoanalysis's power to address our most pressing social problems. The first myth claims that psychoanalytic theory and practice have nothing to say about the formative conditions of culture and race (and I think we might add gender to this), and the second is that psychoanalysis lacks scientific research that speaks to its clinical effectiveness.

The thing is, writes Charles Rizzuto in Toxic Drip, “When ideas and opinions are repeated forcefully over and over again, especially by persons in authority, their power to influence increases proportionately. When opposing voices are simultaneously denigrated, stifled, or demonized, that power can increase exponentially; ambient messages seep in to varying extents, on various levels, both conscious and unconscious.” Those myths about the breadth of psychoanalysis's reach and its effectiveness have seeped into our universities and corroded our health care policies.

And while Graybow attends to the undermining effect of neoli