Psychoanalytic sociology is the research field that analyzes

society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...

using the same methods that

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

applied to analyze an individual. 'Psychoanalytic sociology embraces work from divergent sociological traditions and political perspectives': its common 'emphasis on unconscious mental processes and behavior renders psychoanalytic sociology a controversial subfield within the broader sociological discipline' (as with psychoanalysis in academic

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

). Similarly,

sociatry Psychoanalytic sociology is the research field that analyzes society using the same methods that psychoanalysis applied to analyze an individual. 'Psychoanalytic sociology embraces work from divergent sociological traditions and political perspecti ...

applies

psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry. Initial psych ...

to society itself.

History

Freud

'The desire to establish a link between psychoanalysis and sociology appears very early on in

Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...

's work. The articles "Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices" (1907b) and " 'Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness" (1908d) are evidence of this'. Though the latter article was 'the earliest of Freud's full-length discussions of the antagonism between civilization and instinctual life, his convictions on the subject went back much further': however the 'sociological aspects of that antagonism form the main subject' in 1908. The same mode of approach was also employed by Freud in his book ''

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic iden ...

'' (1921), where he argued that 'crowd psychology, and with it all social psychology, is parasitic on individual psychology'. ''Civilization and Its Discontents'' in 1930 formed however his fullest sociological study, wherein he 'anchored his analysis of social and political life in a theory of human nature very much his own'. Indeed, in 'works, from Totem and Taboo (1912-1913a) to Moses and Monotheism (1939a), Freud analyzed the events that presided over the foundation and modification of social links, the advent of civilization, and the rise of its current discontents';Enriquez
/ref> while

James Strachey James Beaumont Strachey (; 26 September 1887, London25 April 1967, High Wycombe) was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English. He is perhaps best known as the general editor of ''The Standard ...

described ''The Future of an Illusion'' (1927) as 'the first of a number of sociological works to which Freud devoted most of his remaining years'.

Freudians

'Many of the early analysts were

Marxists Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectic ...

... Reich,

Paul Federn Paul Federn (October 13, 1871 – May 4, 1950) was an Austrian-American psychologist who was a native of Vienna. Federn is largely remembered for his theories involving ego psychology and therapeutic treatment of psychosis. Life and career Feder ...

and

Otto Fenichel Otto Fenichel (2 December 1897 in Vienna – 22 January 1946 in Los Angeles) was a psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation". Education and psychoanalytic affiliations Otto Fenichel started studying medicine in 1915 in Vienna. Already ...

the most notable among them', and were fully prepared, in

Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the U ...

's words, to at least '"try to explain psychic structure as determined by social structure"'. Theodor Adorno's essays on psychoanalysis, reappropriated Freud's work and applied it to social phenomena, and in particular in his ''Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda'' (1951), he outlined a theory of

social psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...

. In 1946, Fenichel considered that '"Comparative sociology of education" is a new scientific field of the greatest practical importance', as well as concluding in general that it is 'experience, that is, the cultural conditions, that transforms potentialities into realities, that shapes the real mental structure of man by forcing his instinctual demands into certain directions'. From a different angle, the early

Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and ...

argued that 'any "concrete psychology" must be augmented by a reference to ethnology, history and law'; and later drew on ' Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology... orwhat will be termed the Symbolic'. Post-Lacanians would continue to explore such sociological areas as 'the

superego The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical const ...

as the moment of common cultural binding', or the way 'the social bond, the Law binding us, is...a bond of the impossibility of obedience ''or'' disobedience'.

1960s and the Left

The 1960s saw a radical sociopsychoanalysis exert wide popular influence under the guidance of a number of different thinkers. David Cooper attempted to explore 'in terms of Freud's discovery...the social function of the family as an ideological conditioning device'. R. D. Laing 'has adapted Sartre's existential psychoanalysis.. s heanalyzes the concept of alienation': looking at the 'analysis of alienation in sociological and clinical senses', Laing concluded grandly that 'Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings'.

Norman O. Brown Norman Oliver Brown (September 25, 1913 – October 2, 2002) was an American scholar, writer, and social philosopher. Beginning as a classical scholar, his later work branched into wide-ranging, erudite, and intellectually sophisticated cons ...

examined a 'politics made out of delinquency...even as the crime, so also conscience is collective'.

Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...

explored how in late modernity "

repressive desublimation Repressive desublimation is a term, first coined by Frankfurt School philosopher and sociologist Herbert Marcuse in his 1964 work '' One-Dimensional Man'', that refers to the way in which, in advanced industrial society (capitalism), "the progress ...

is indeed operative in the sexual sphere...as the by-product of the social controls of technological reality, which extend liberty while intensifying domination".

Lacanians

Duane Rousselle Duane Rousselle (born April 28, 1982) is a Canadian sociological theorist, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and professor of sociology. He works in several academic fields including Social Movement Studies, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Cultural Sociology, ...

has developed an interventionist approach to sociological theory by highlighting the centrality of the claim made by the French psychoanalyst

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...

that "discourse is what constitutes a social bond."

Feminist contributions

Nancy Chodorow's work has been of significance within feminist understandings, in particular ''The Reproduction of Mothering and The Power of Feelings''. 'Although Chodorow uses a psychoanalytic approach, she rejects the instinctual determinism of the classic Freudian account in favor of a more nuanced, social psychological approach that incorporates recent developments in

object relations theory Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between ...

Jessica Benjamin Jessica Benjamin is a psychoanalyst known for her contributions to psychoanalysis and social thought. She is currently a practicing psychoanalyst in New York City where she is on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Psychology Prog ...

has also been influential in this project of linking social theory to psychoanalysis, as with ''The Shadow of the Other''.

Juliet Mitchell Juliet Mitchell, Lady Goody (born 4 October 1940) is a British psychoanalyst, socialist feminist, research professor and author. Early life and education Mitchell was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1940, and then moved to England in 19 ...

however has criticised the way 'Benjamin's injunction is made within a psychosocial, not a psychoanalytical framework'.

Criticism

Freud early warned of any 'attempt of this kind to carry psychoanalysis over to the cultural community...that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to tear them from the sphere in which they have originated and been evolved'.Freud, ''Civilization'' p. 338 Others have since observed that 'efforts to link sociology and psychoanalysis have yielded varied results.... ome intoxicated by the success of analysis, have indiscriminately applied psychoanalytic concepts to social reality and have succeeded only in bastardizing psychoanalysis (making it a management tool) and disfiguring social processes'.