Toward a social psychoanalysis

a conversation with Lynne Layton

Lynne Layton

pp. 245-278

in: Heather Macdonald, David Goodman, Brian Becker (eds), Dialogues at the edge of American psychological discourse, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Lynne Layton, in her interview, discusses the various structures of relational psychoanalysis and places them in conversation with larger social, political, and cultural processes to demonstrate that psychoanalysis often reproduces the very conditions that create the ills we wish to treat. Through her scholarship, Layton exposes the hidden moral and political discourses that live behind the technologies of the DSM-5 and evidenced-based treatments and examines the impact of mass consumerism, neoliberal culture, and social media on the therapeutic relationship. She also examines the ubiquitous presence of power and politics in the context of psychological processes that shape the very connections between the psychic and the social. She invokes political and psychological questions alongside one another by utilizing the revolutionary edge of psychoanalytic discourse.

Cited authors

Layton Lynne