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KMID : 0385320000110020289
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Journal of Korean Psychoanalytic Society
2000 Volume.11 No. 2 p.289 ~ p.299
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Psychoanalytic Cultural Studies: Its Methodological Issues
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Lee Man-Woo
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Abstract
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This article deals with how psychoanalytic thinking can add to the understanding of cultural forms and is an methodological contribution to current debates on the nature of psychoanalytic studies. I consider some of the issues involved in the use of psychoanalytic theory as an instrument of cultural studies and try to clarify what kind of activity we are engaged in when we use psychoanalytic concepts to assist us in the exploration and study of cultural processes. Firstly, I utilize my Mr. P case which seems to describe splitted mental state, captured by pornographic images and secondly define the concept of culture and restrict the objective of cultural studies by means of deploying the psychoanalytic school of object relations favored by Melanie Klein. Culture is not a well-confirmed human achievement against primitive instincts but consists in conflicting elements between instinctual drives and social constraints. The matrix of culture is no other than splitting implicated in reciprocal power operation among human subjects. We can formulate self-identity and create social institutions or material objects thru this operation. As Klein pointed out early, culture is “reparation” qua a defence against splitting related to the Other. In other words Culture is not only a code of “repression” but also of “facilitation” to enable us to communicate each other. At the same time a limitation of the objective of psychoanalytic cultural studies can be offered. Cultural studies, due to its being a locus of possible direct manifestations of unconscious determinants and due to the always meaningful alongside and irrespective of conscious meanings associated with it. The objective of cultural studies can therefore be considered as having a effectivity and specificity distinct from that of discourse, ideas, and cultural forms while always retaining unconscious signification in both individual and social level(the investigation of “cultural unconsciousness”). In chapter one it is provided for various problems of research method at two dimensions, firstly in the sampling of clinical data and secondly in the analysis. Psychoanalytic writings of culture does not contain work that could be named “scientific research” in the conventional sense of the terminology. It is very important to note that psychoanalytic methods include not only statistical researches of the kind represented in some well-known traditions of sociology, nor just the model of experimental research which has dominated psychology for much of its histories. The array of psychoanalytically informed research methods now widely regarded as mainstream in the social and human sciences is much wider than is sometimes assumed. There could be many qualitative methods of some depth and subtlety, based on the analysis of various kinds of textual material, observational data and interview transcripts. Some of these methods have concerns in common with psychotherapeutic work, for example, there is a long histories of using biographical and autobiographical materials. And so the investigation of an unconscious signification allows certain inferences to be drawn regarding the mode of social knowledge. The unconscious signification underlying cultural forms but never directly accessible or undimensional in its manifestations, implies the impossibility of any full, final or objective knowledge of culture in toto and introduces the necessity - and theoretical foundation - for a radical hermeneutic approach. In chapter two I explain the nature of case studies in psychoanalysis. A solution of methodological deadlock might be to interpret cases of pathological symptom as so-called “case histories”, which gives a very wide freedom to engage with what we want to. Much of the interest in psychoanalytic cultural studies has been set in this mode. But case histories too has to be systematic. There are tendencies that have been intended to the preference of theoretical debate rather than systematic empirical study. This might be all right for a while, but of course in the longer run it has to connect with something empirical if it is to command much respect. Therefore case histories must be interlocking between data presentation and theorizing of cultural forms in case histories. It has a function of mediating between references and concepts for empirical cultural studies. In chapter three I trace a unbearable problem to legitimate psychoanalytic work by the standards of research. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to take as our model not social science but psychoanalysis itself in its original clinical pattern, and to see psychoanalytic cultural studies as an analogous form of clinical practice. Freud after all saw therapy as research, and while the equivalence does not hold if we invert it, we may still be able best to conceptualize the nature of our research in the term of clinical practice. It is necessary to be defined “clinical analogies” as a describing technique. Actually, clinical practice and cultural studies seem to share a number of features. Both are concerned with exploring the unconscious signification of everyday life, and indeed analytic work going on daily in sessions all over the world may be constantly generating insights into everyday culture which are not captured in intellectual work, unless either analyst or analysand writes them up publication. And the style of psychoanalytic studies which will be described is grounded partly on the use of experience, in the form of reflection on our individual feelings about and responses to particular phenomena. At times it will appear to be dealing with an individual associations, that is to thoughts which freely enter the mind in connection with the phenomenon in question. This kind of working over and conceptualizing of experience and associations is also a key component of the therapeutic process. Overall, then, Whatever parallels there may sometimes be between clinical practice and psychoanalytic cultural studies, we have to find an independent status of the latter, or to link it with some other more appropriate practice. As another possibility we can turn to the fairly well-established modes of cultural criticism. Here the problem of the choice of material, to which the researcher responds with systematicity, is resolved by the identification of cultural forms and discursive genres and by the choice of specific phenomena or texts, and analysis is guided by some psychoanalytic principles. In conclusion research method and describing technique are linked by the elusive status of psychoanalytic cultural studies, i. e. cultural criticism in the realms of everyday life. The notion of cultural criticism may be of some use as a provisional characterization of what is being attempted in psychoanalytic cultural studies. It indicates the rationale for the method, namely that it should be understand as the application of a certain kind of sensibility or creativity. This is characterized by a preoccupation with certain kinds of feelings and with their non-obviousness in everyday life, by an interpretive method based on associations, and by an awareness of the social contexts - historical, political, economic, and so on - which lie outside its interpretive scope.
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KEYWORD
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Unconscious signification, Case histories, Clinical analogies, Cultural criticism
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