Pub Date : 2023-03-23DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16762840846289
Jenny Huberman
This article explores how boredom emerged as a central threat to Americans’ sense of well-being in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon media coverage from a range of sources, I ask: What do responses to the COVID-19 pandemic reveal more generally about the way boredom has emerged as one of the central dis-eases of modern life? Why has free time become something that increasingly generates intolerable anxiety? In what ways can studying responses to the COVID-19 lockdown help us trace larger transformations in the social construction and subjective experience of time? The article argues that while many Americans experienced boredom as a form of social death engendered by the deroutinising aspects of lockdown life, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic also reveal the way boredom has emerged as a form of psychic alienation permeating the very core of American society. Drawing upon insights from psychoanalytic theory, I will ultimately propose that our dis-ease with free time may be linked to a growing incapacity to fantasise as more and more of our mental lives are colonised by the digital infrastructures and extractive imperatives of our 24/7 society (Crary, 2014).
{"title":"Boredom in the age of COVID-19: the unsettling dis-ease of late modern life","authors":"Jenny Huberman","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16762840846289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16762840846289","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how boredom emerged as a central threat to Americans’ sense of well-being in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon media coverage from a range of sources, I ask: What do responses to the COVID-19 pandemic reveal more generally about the way boredom has emerged as one of the central dis-eases of modern life? Why has free time become something that increasingly generates intolerable anxiety? In what ways can studying responses to the COVID-19 lockdown help us trace larger transformations in the social construction and subjective experience of time? The article argues that while many Americans experienced boredom as a form of social death engendered by the deroutinising aspects of lockdown life, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic also reveal the way boredom has emerged as a form of psychic alienation permeating the very core of American society. Drawing upon insights from psychoanalytic theory, I will ultimately propose that our dis-ease with free time may be linked to a growing incapacity to fantasise as more and more of our mental lives are colonised by the digital infrastructures and extractive imperatives of our 24/7 society (Crary, 2014).","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84403028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-20DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16763228347967
J. Dudley, Mike Caton
The authors, whose trainings include as group analytic psychotherapists, use the theoretical framework of group analysis to facilitate experiential small and median groups for students on trainings in individual psychodynamic psychotherapy. Even though in group analytic practice it would usually be a definite no, the authors found themselves debating whether members who revealed they were a couple in the past could in fact be together in a group. This discussion prompted the authors to reflect closely on their co-facilitator relationship, causing them to consider what they understood by ‘couple’. It offered up an opportunity (previously unconscious) to explore the binary fixing of conductors as male/female and heterosexual, and whether such fixing may be a defence by the group, including the group conductors, against allowing and exploring a more fluid, nuanced exploration of gender and sexuality. The authors propose that instead of small experiential groups, co-conducted median groups may offer a richer opportunity for such exploration.
{"title":"Looking beyond ‘couple’: exploring the relationship between co-conductors facilitating experiential groups for psychodynamic psychotherapy students","authors":"J. Dudley, Mike Caton","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16763228347967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16763228347967","url":null,"abstract":"The authors, whose trainings include as group analytic psychotherapists, use the theoretical framework of group analysis to facilitate experiential small and median groups for students on trainings in individual psychodynamic psychotherapy. Even though in group analytic practice it would usually be a definite no, the authors found themselves debating whether members who revealed they were a couple in the past could in fact be together in a group. This discussion prompted the authors to reflect closely on their co-facilitator relationship, causing them to consider what they understood by ‘couple’.\u0000It offered up an opportunity (previously unconscious) to explore the binary fixing of conductors as male/female and heterosexual, and whether such fixing may be a defence by the group, including the group conductors, against allowing and exploring a more fluid, nuanced exploration of gender and sexuality. The authors propose that instead of small experiential groups, co-conducted median groups may offer a richer opportunity for such exploration.","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81571519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16667112824629
Elena Cherepanov
{"title":"Do dictators have borderline personality? And does it matter?","authors":"Elena Cherepanov","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16667112824629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16667112824629","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80584443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-16DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16655147641339
Amy Tatum, S. Thompson, Candida Yates
Women in political leadership have been the topic of much discussion since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a number of women in executive office being praised for their empathic approach. The pandemic has raised questions about the role of women in political leadership at a time of crisis and the drivers behind the feelings they evoke. Drawing on online reflective focus groups with participants mainly from the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 national lockdowns, this article explores the feelings and affective responses evoked from seeing women in political leadership roles at a time of crisis. The focus groups highlighted the conflict that participants felt at seeing women political leaders navigating crisis situations, with expected displays of empathy at the forefront of discussions. The findings also suggest that, in order to be trusted, women political leaders must still overcome gendered expectations about their authority and warmth. The participants felt conflicted when evaluating the leadership styles of women in politics and grappled with notions of trust and authenticity. The article provides new psychosocial insights into the way we think and feel about women political leaders and highlights the complex gendered terrain that women in political leadership have to navigate.
{"title":"Perceptions of women as political leaders at a time of crisis – a psychosocial study","authors":"Amy Tatum, S. Thompson, Candida Yates","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16655147641339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16655147641339","url":null,"abstract":"Women in political leadership have been the topic of much discussion since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a number of women in executive office being praised for their empathic approach. The pandemic has raised questions about the role of women in political leadership at a time of crisis and the drivers behind the feelings they evoke. Drawing on online reflective focus groups with participants mainly from the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 national lockdowns, this article explores the feelings and affective responses evoked from seeing women in political leadership roles at a time of crisis. The focus groups highlighted the conflict that participants felt at seeing women political leaders navigating crisis situations, with expected displays of empathy at the forefront of discussions. The findings also suggest that, in order to be trusted, women political leaders must still overcome gendered expectations about their authority and warmth. The participants felt conflicted when evaluating the leadership styles of women in politics and grappled with notions of trust and authenticity. The article provides new psychosocial insights into the way we think and feel about women political leaders and highlights the complex gendered terrain that women in political leadership have to navigate.","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85863048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-07DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16637572377737
Alena Wolflink
This article tackles the problem of how to transcend affinities for hierarchy and in their place generate desires for equality. Drawing from Jacques Rancière’s (1991) paradoxical treatment of equality in his The Ignorant Schoolmaster as something that is verified by unequal subjects, I show that Rancière treats equality as something only possible in the context of a false authority, the teacher, encircling students in a political boundary out of which they must break. Turning to Adam Phillips’ (2002) writing on the relationship between democracy, equality and psychoanalysis in his book Equals, I argue that uncovering internal desires for dominance and hierarchy is a prerequisite for cultivating different desires. As Phillips shows, we must become equal with ourselves in order to cultivate appetites for democracy, and to do the work that democracy requires. Taken together, these two texts demonstrate the necessity of two interrelated steps for transcending dominant structures: cultivating desires and exercising capacities for democratic equality.
{"title":"Practising democratic equality: overcoming hierarchy alongside Rancière’s schoolmaster and Phillips’ psychoanalyst","authors":"Alena Wolflink","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16637572377737","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16637572377737","url":null,"abstract":"This article tackles the problem of how to transcend affinities for hierarchy and in their place generate desires for equality. Drawing from Jacques Rancière’s (1991) paradoxical treatment of equality in his The Ignorant Schoolmaster as something that is verified by unequal subjects, I show that Rancière treats equality as something only possible in the context of a false authority, the teacher, encircling students in a political boundary out of which they must break. Turning to Adam Phillips’ (2002) writing on the relationship between democracy, equality and psychoanalysis in his book Equals, I argue that uncovering internal desires for dominance and hierarchy is a prerequisite for cultivating different desires. As Phillips shows, we must become equal with ourselves in order to cultivate appetites for democracy, and to do the work that democracy requires. Taken together, these two texts demonstrate the necessity of two interrelated steps for transcending dominant structures: cultivating desires and exercising capacities for democratic equality.","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91218942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-07DOI: 10.1332/147867322x16652365213235
Samantha J. Stephen
{"title":"‘The Backrooms’: exploring the unconscious together through collective meaning making","authors":"Samantha J. Stephen","doi":"10.1332/147867322x16652365213235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867322x16652365213235","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77549648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-21DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16637552954314
Luiz Valle Junior
Queer theory, despite its reliance on psychoanalysis, has had remarkably little to say about Lacan. One reason for this is that Lacan’s name came to the fore in queer theory already associated with Judith Butler’s critique of The Signification of the Phallus in Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. This article revisits this critique and argues that Butler’s objections to Lacan do not hold up to scrutiny, because they disregard the goal of Lacan’s intervention, fail to account for the progression of Lacan’s thinking in the corresponding Seminars and misconstrue Lacan’s theory of desire more generally. It then briefly scrutinises the immediately subsequent Seminars VI and VII and argues that psychoanalysis’ ethical concerns do not map easily onto gender and sexuality as queer theorists understand them; the desire presumed to awaken in the analytic itinerary is not subject to extrinsic, normative regulation, but comes into being as its own law.
{"title":"Desire and its rule: Gender Trouble, the phallus and the ethics of psychoanalysis","authors":"Luiz Valle Junior","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16637552954314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16637552954314","url":null,"abstract":"Queer theory, despite its reliance on psychoanalysis, has had remarkably little to say about Lacan. One reason for this is that Lacan’s name came to the fore in queer theory already associated with Judith Butler’s critique of The Signification of the Phallus in Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. This article revisits this critique and argues that Butler’s objections to Lacan do not hold up to scrutiny, because they disregard the goal of Lacan’s intervention, fail to account for the progression of Lacan’s thinking in the corresponding Seminars and misconstrue Lacan’s theory of desire more generally. It then briefly scrutinises the immediately subsequent Seminars VI and VII and argues that psychoanalysis’ ethical concerns do not map easily onto gender and sexuality as queer theorists understand them; the desire presumed to awaken in the analytic itinerary is not subject to extrinsic, normative regulation, but comes into being as its own law.","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90583744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16575215381863
Anne-Marie Cummins
This piece is a personal response to the articles in this special issue of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies. It identifies three themes that seem to unite the articles: children’s emotional labour; repair and generativity; and après-coup or Nachträglichkeit. It is also suggested that there is an absence – the shadow of envy, competition and rivalry, which also tends to run through the matrix of so many mother–daughter and supervisor–supervisee relations. Further, it is suggested that any future iterations of these relationships would be enriched by integrating contributions on the ways in which not only collusion, competition and oedipal struggles, but also hierarchy and asymmetry are especially problematic sources of psychic pain when women supervise women.
{"title":"Voyages around mothers – departures and returns","authors":"Anne-Marie Cummins","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16575215381863","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16575215381863","url":null,"abstract":"This piece is a personal response to the articles in this special issue of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies. It identifies three themes that seem to unite the articles: children’s emotional labour; repair and generativity; and après-coup or Nachträglichkeit. It is also suggested that there is an absence – the shadow of envy, competition and rivalry, which also tends to run through the matrix of so many mother–daughter and supervisor–supervisee relations. Further, it is suggested that any future iterations of these relationships would be enriched by integrating contributions on the ways in which not only collusion, competition and oedipal struggles, but also hierarchy and asymmetry are especially problematic sources of psychic pain when women supervise women.","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76300233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16575526838203
S. Savage
This article begins by providing a personal narrative of the intensive nature of the care between myself and my mother in the context of living through childhood liver disease, transplantation and cancer, often in hospital far from home. Psychosocial studies is argued to offer reflexive ways of working to process complexity and trauma, particularly autoethnography. The strength of working with an educator who has a relational approach to teaching, demonstrating transparency in approaches to writing and learning and sharing rich personal narratives, is explored. Crociani-Windland’s approach to practising an intimate pedagogy is found to be personally transformational and echoes through my current practice as an early-career academic.
{"title":"Intensive care, autoethnography and solidarity","authors":"S. Savage","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16575526838203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16575526838203","url":null,"abstract":"This article begins by providing a personal narrative of the intensive nature of the care between myself and my mother in the context of living through childhood liver disease, transplantation and cancer, often in hospital far from home. Psychosocial studies is argued to offer reflexive ways of working to process complexity and trauma, particularly autoethnography. The strength of working with an educator who has a relational approach to teaching, demonstrating transparency in approaches to writing and learning and sharing rich personal narratives, is explored. Crociani-Windland’s approach to practising an intimate pedagogy is found to be personally transformational and echoes through my current practice as an early-career academic.","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79224533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-29DOI: 10.1332/147867321x16572042649285
Erica D. Galioto
This special edition of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies is based on 2019 Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS) conference presentations on the theme of displacement. Having listened to the presentations, I offer this paper as my own response to similar issues of mother–daughter displacement. Inspired by the panel’s analysis of the maternal in interpersonal relations and professional affinities, I begin by exploring my intersectional adult identities of daughter, mother and teacher to expose my ambivalence towards my career in literature and psychoanalysis. I continue by applying psychoanalytic theory to the pedagogical transference in my classroom space and uncover my own misguided attempt at maternal separation. Drawing correlations with Maggie Nelson’s (2015) The Argonauts, I conclude by contemplating autotheory as a space of self-writing that is particularly suitable for explorations of the maternal in both form and content. Autotheory, I argue, as exemplified in the panel and my response, extends the impossibility of mother–daughter separation into a meaningful shared plurality.
{"title":"Autotheory and the maternal: my impossible mother–daughter separation","authors":"Erica D. Galioto","doi":"10.1332/147867321x16572042649285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/147867321x16572042649285","url":null,"abstract":"This special edition of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies is based on 2019 Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS) conference presentations on the theme of displacement. Having listened to the presentations, I offer this paper as my own response to similar issues of mother–daughter displacement. Inspired by the panel’s analysis of the maternal in interpersonal relations and professional affinities, I begin by exploring my intersectional adult identities of daughter, mother and teacher to expose my ambivalence towards my career in literature and psychoanalysis. I continue by applying psychoanalytic theory to the pedagogical transference in my classroom space and uncover my own misguided attempt at maternal separation. Drawing correlations with Maggie Nelson’s (2015) The Argonauts, I conclude by contemplating autotheory as a space of self-writing that is particularly suitable for explorations of the maternal in both form and content. Autotheory, I argue, as exemplified in the panel and my response, extends the impossibility of mother–daughter separation into a meaningful shared plurality.","PeriodicalId":29710,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Psychosocial Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88735328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：