I am a psychoanalyst with a deep interest in interdisciplinary dialogue. Recently, my work has focused on understanding the complex relationship between individuals and collectives. Address: San Francisco, United States
The conception of the unconscious as social or a social unconscious emerged at the very beginning... more The conception of the unconscious as social or a social unconscious emerged at the very beginning of our field (Trotter, 1908, 1909, 1919; Burrow, 1927). Freud resisted considering the impact of anti-Semitism and poverty on his person, family, and community, preferring to constrain his theories to instincts and oedipal conflicts (Holmes, 2016). His resistances were codified into our institutions, cultures, and curricula. For over 100 years, we marginalized scholarship on culture and the social, attacked its authors, and insisted on remaining 'pure' by expunging analytic scholarship on the social from our journals and curricula. Our quest for 'professional purity' has eroded our relevance and degraded our effectiveness. Fortunately, this deadly and deadening trend is changing. In the past 10-15 years, contributions on the links between the social/cultural/collective and the unconscious are proliferating in our journals and entering our curricula. Colleagues who, in my view, are unconsciously reproducing Freud's sociocultural resistances about the sociocultural often say: "Psychoanalysis is about freedom from the group; the uniqueness of the individual. Culture, groups, and society are not part of the dynamic unconscious and therefore not really about psychoanalysis." Individuals develop in family and community. They live in groups and inculcate the cultures of the groups they identify with.
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, May 20, 2022
This article is adapted from a panel presentation given at the International Psychoanalytical Ass... more This article is adapted from a panel presentation given at the International Psychoanalytical Association Congress in the summer of 2020. It argues for the centrality of cultural determinants in infant development and the centrality of infantile modes of consciousness in our cultural practices. It suggests that the inculcation of shared systems of meaning‐making, referring to cultures or ideologies, are antecedent to any sort of meaningful infant development. Culture is a medium, a common ground that is both external and mental. It provides the necessary tools for infants to develop the capacity to re‐present experience along lines that are prescribed and recognized by the large group or collective in which the dyad (mother–infant) and triad (oedipal family) are embedded. The analysis of the individual's lived experiences in the context of dependence on their parents/family is necessary to understand the composition and function of our patients' unconscious. We propose extending our lens to include the analysis of social and cultural derivatives, the impact of the systems that suffuse us, on our unconscious and lived experience. Doing so will extend our relevance and shine a beacon in previously neglected regions of the human unconscious that are ‘fundamentally social’.
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2017
The cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a conception of culture or habitus that can... more The cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a conception of culture or habitus that can greatly expand our understanding of how the collective and trans-individual contributes to structuring the mind, conditioning the body and shaping experience from moment to moment. A synthesis of Pierre Bourdieu's conception of culture or hab-itus with Freud's conception of the ego clearly demonstrates that culture structures the ego's nucleus. Cultural propositions are inculcated into the ego in the form of dispositions that determine how things are perceived and understood within a large-group. Mental structures derived from culture are located within the unconscious but not repressed ego in a "third" type of unconscious that Freud discovered but did not elaborate. Deepening our understanding of how culture connects the individual with the collective can help us reach previously overlooked areas of experience in our patients and, perhaps, develop methods for addressing pathogenic cultural attitudes.
In “Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual,” Dr. González (this issue... more In “Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual,” Dr. González (this issue) argues for the centrality of dynamic and shifting group identifications in shaping our subjectivity and our inter-subjective linking from moment to moment. My commentary about this paper is organized around the themes of cultural dislocation and cultural displacement, experiences related to large-group identifications and identity. These constructs, cultural dislocation and displacement, can deepen our understanding of how inter/intra-group tensions (historic and current) can play a determinative role in shaping individual subjectivity and inter-subjective linking. They complement and amplify claims regarding the centrality of our group identifications on ego functions. They also point toward the determinative impact of context and clashing cultural systems on our object relations and unconscious fantasies. Studying the links between individuals, collectives, and the cultural systems t...
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2017
The cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a conception of culture or habitus that can... more The cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a conception of culture or habitus that can greatly expand our understanding of how the collective and trans-individual contributes to structuring the mind, conditioning the body and shaping experience from moment to moment. A synthesis of Pierre Bourdieu's conception of culture or hab-itus with Freud's conception of the ego clearly demonstrates that culture structures the ego's nucleus. Cultural propositions are inculcated into the ego in the form of dispositions that determine how things are perceived and understood within a large-group. Mental structures derived from culture are located within the unconscious but not repressed ego in a "third" type of unconscious that Freud discovered but did not elaborate. Deepening our understanding of how culture connects the individual with the collective can help us reach previously overlooked areas of experience in our patients and, perhaps, develop methods for addressing pathogenic cultural attitudes.
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2018
Cultural dislocation-the removal of a person from a location organized by a particular set of cul... more Cultural dislocation-the removal of a person from a location organized by a particular set of cultural practices and placing them in another location organized by a substantially different set of cultural practices-can shock and alter the ego. I utilize the cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu's definition of culture or habitus as "a set of durable transposable dispositions" inculcated from a collective in which an individual is embedded to describe the impact of cultural dislocation. Finally, I suggest that difficulty in mourning the loss of a "country" and "set of ideals" that can no longer adequately mediate the immigrant's new world leads to melancholic symptoms, particularly anhedonia (loss of feeling in the body) and a type of self-loathing that emanates from deeply unconscious sources.
The conception of the unconscious as social or a social unconscious emerged at the very beginning... more The conception of the unconscious as social or a social unconscious emerged at the very beginning of our field (Trotter, 1908, 1909, 1919; Burrow, 1927). Freud resisted considering the impact of anti-Semitism and poverty on his person, family, and community, preferring to constrain his theories to instincts and oedipal conflicts (Holmes, 2016). His resistances were codified into our institutions, cultures, and curricula. For over 100 years, we marginalized scholarship on culture and the social, attacked its authors, and insisted on remaining 'pure' by expunging analytic scholarship on the social from our journals and curricula. Our quest for 'professional purity' has eroded our relevance and degraded our effectiveness. Fortunately, this deadly and deadening trend is changing. In the past 10-15 years, contributions on the links between the social/cultural/collective and the unconscious are proliferating in our journals and entering our curricula. Colleagues who, in my view, are unconsciously reproducing Freud's sociocultural resistances about the sociocultural often say: "Psychoanalysis is about freedom from the group; the uniqueness of the individual. Culture, groups, and society are not part of the dynamic unconscious and therefore not really about psychoanalysis." Individuals develop in family and community. They live in groups and inculcate the cultures of the groups they identify with.
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, May 20, 2022
This article is adapted from a panel presentation given at the International Psychoanalytical Ass... more This article is adapted from a panel presentation given at the International Psychoanalytical Association Congress in the summer of 2020. It argues for the centrality of cultural determinants in infant development and the centrality of infantile modes of consciousness in our cultural practices. It suggests that the inculcation of shared systems of meaning‐making, referring to cultures or ideologies, are antecedent to any sort of meaningful infant development. Culture is a medium, a common ground that is both external and mental. It provides the necessary tools for infants to develop the capacity to re‐present experience along lines that are prescribed and recognized by the large group or collective in which the dyad (mother–infant) and triad (oedipal family) are embedded. The analysis of the individual's lived experiences in the context of dependence on their parents/family is necessary to understand the composition and function of our patients' unconscious. We propose extending our lens to include the analysis of social and cultural derivatives, the impact of the systems that suffuse us, on our unconscious and lived experience. Doing so will extend our relevance and shine a beacon in previously neglected regions of the human unconscious that are ‘fundamentally social’.
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2017
The cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a conception of culture or habitus that can... more The cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a conception of culture or habitus that can greatly expand our understanding of how the collective and trans-individual contributes to structuring the mind, conditioning the body and shaping experience from moment to moment. A synthesis of Pierre Bourdieu's conception of culture or hab-itus with Freud's conception of the ego clearly demonstrates that culture structures the ego's nucleus. Cultural propositions are inculcated into the ego in the form of dispositions that determine how things are perceived and understood within a large-group. Mental structures derived from culture are located within the unconscious but not repressed ego in a "third" type of unconscious that Freud discovered but did not elaborate. Deepening our understanding of how culture connects the individual with the collective can help us reach previously overlooked areas of experience in our patients and, perhaps, develop methods for addressing pathogenic cultural attitudes.
In “Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual,” Dr. González (this issue... more In “Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual,” Dr. González (this issue) argues for the centrality of dynamic and shifting group identifications in shaping our subjectivity and our inter-subjective linking from moment to moment. My commentary about this paper is organized around the themes of cultural dislocation and cultural displacement, experiences related to large-group identifications and identity. These constructs, cultural dislocation and displacement, can deepen our understanding of how inter/intra-group tensions (historic and current) can play a determinative role in shaping individual subjectivity and inter-subjective linking. They complement and amplify claims regarding the centrality of our group identifications on ego functions. They also point toward the determinative impact of context and clashing cultural systems on our object relations and unconscious fantasies. Studying the links between individuals, collectives, and the cultural systems t...
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2017
The cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a conception of culture or habitus that can... more The cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a conception of culture or habitus that can greatly expand our understanding of how the collective and trans-individual contributes to structuring the mind, conditioning the body and shaping experience from moment to moment. A synthesis of Pierre Bourdieu's conception of culture or hab-itus with Freud's conception of the ego clearly demonstrates that culture structures the ego's nucleus. Cultural propositions are inculcated into the ego in the form of dispositions that determine how things are perceived and understood within a large-group. Mental structures derived from culture are located within the unconscious but not repressed ego in a "third" type of unconscious that Freud discovered but did not elaborate. Deepening our understanding of how culture connects the individual with the collective can help us reach previously overlooked areas of experience in our patients and, perhaps, develop methods for addressing pathogenic cultural attitudes.
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2018
Cultural dislocation-the removal of a person from a location organized by a particular set of cul... more Cultural dislocation-the removal of a person from a location organized by a particular set of cultural practices and placing them in another location organized by a substantially different set of cultural practices-can shock and alter the ego. I utilize the cultural anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu's definition of culture or habitus as "a set of durable transposable dispositions" inculcated from a collective in which an individual is embedded to describe the impact of cultural dislocation. Finally, I suggest that difficulty in mourning the loss of a "country" and "set of ideals" that can no longer adequately mediate the immigrant's new world leads to melancholic symptoms, particularly anhedonia (loss of feeling in the body) and a type of self-loathing that emanates from deeply unconscious sources.
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