Social Psychoanalysis
and the Unconscious of Power
SC 533
Stephen Pfohl
Boston College: Office Hours: Tuesday 2-3:30 PM and by appointment
Fall 2012
Course Description
This seminar explores social psychic repetitions at the heart of everyday life and how
unconscious cultural forces typically (or archetypically) affect the ritual organization of
power in history. Inviting a dialogue between sociology and psychoanalysis, the course
encourages a ‘power-reflexive” examination of suggestive social phantasms and fears,
compulsive fascinations and desires, selective memories and forgetting. Intended as an
advanced introduction to the theories and methods of social psychoanalysis, the seminar
pays particular attention to the unconscious haunts of gendered, racialized, erotic, and
class-based forms of power in a global historical context.
This course is also concerned with the reproduction and possible social change of
energetically binding unconscious transferences between our selves and others. Such
transferences move us from the "here and now” of our embodied lives in history, leading
us to identify with who and what we're not. Transferences of this sort call upon us to
embrace certain “idealized” social personas and ways of life to the exclusion of others.
This involves sacrifice and the substitution of imaginary and symbolic relations for the
complexity of what is real.
How do unconscious aspects of social power manifest themselves in and between us?
And how might power's symptomatic repetitions be reflexively interpreted and changed?
What, moreover, are the implications of social psychoanalysis for the practice of critical
sociological inquiry and for activism aimed at healing the sickening effects of social
injustice? Such questions (of power and knowledge) give provisional form to the desires
shaping this course. Whose desires are these? What do you—as students and participants
in this seminar—want?
Course Requirements
1. This is an advanced seminar. All participants are expected to prepare for each session by engaging in a
minimum of six hours of reading and to actively engage in class discussion. Participants are also asked to
take turns in assuming responsibility for leading weekly discussions on assigned readings. Working in
teams of two or three, leaders are expected to meet together to prepare for seminar discussions. (10%)
2. All participants are expected to construct a semester-long "analytic journal." Written at the "powerreflexive" intersection of one's own biography and socio-historical positioning, journals should include (but
are not limited to) the construction of short critical responses to questions, readings, in-class discussion,
and other concerns arising in the course of the seminar. Journals are to be framed in relation to 8 specific
"weekly" seminar themes and to be submitted for review on October 25th and again by December 17th, 5:00
PM. (60%)
3. Participants are expected to produce one 15 page social psychoanalytic paper (due by December 17th,
5:00 PM). All papers are to make explicit use of course themes and assigned materials. Working drafts of
papers OR one completed analytic journal entry are to be presented to the seminar. (30%)
Seminar Readings
Week 1, September 6th
Introduction
Week 2, September 13th
Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads of Social Criticism
Required Readings
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Robyn Ferrell, Passion in Theory: Conceptions of Freud and Lacan, New York: Routledge, 1996,
pp. 1-6.
Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 3-28.
Anthony Elliot, "Introduction," in Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition,
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 1-8.
Elizabeth Grosz, "Introduction" in Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, New York:
Routledge, 1990, pp. 1-5.
PaulSmith,“TheUnconscious,”inDiscerningtheSubject.*Minneapolis:Universityof
MinnesotaPress,1988,pp.70‐82.*
Substitute/Supplementary Readings
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Jacqueline Rose, "Introduction: Feminism and the Psychic," in Sexuality and the Field of Vision,
New York: Verso, 1986, pp. 1-23.
Russell Jacoby, The Repression of Psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the Political Freudians,
New York: Basic Books, 1983, pp. 3-75.
Drucilla Cornell, "Introduction: Writing the Manifesta: The Dilemma of Postmodern Feminism,"
in Beyond Accommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Law, New York:
Routledge, 1991, pp. 1-20.
StephenPfohl,“TheRealityofSocialConstruction,”inJamesHolsteinandJayGubrium,
HandbookofConstructionistResearch,2008,pp.645‐668.*
Week 3, September 20th
Hysterical Beginnings: The Analytic Ear and the Talking Cure
Required Readings
1.
2.
3.
4.
Robyn Ferrell, "Body" in Passion in Theory, New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 7-18.
Elaine Showalter, "Feminism and Hysteria," in The Female Malady: Women, Madness and
English Culture, 1830-1980, New York: Pantheon, 1985, pp. 145-164.*
Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, excerpts from Case Studies on Hysteria, in Peter Gay, ed., The
Freud Reader, New York: W.W. Norton, 1995, pp. 60-86.*
Robert Romanyshyn, "The Abandoned Body and Its Shadows," in Technology as Symptom and
Dream, New York: Routledge, 1989, pp. 133-175.*
5.
Stephen Pfohl, “Individualizing Social Problems” and “Ignoring the Politics of Deviance” in
Images of Deviance and Social Control: a Sociological History,” Waveland Press, 2006 (1994),
pp. 157-159** (This text will be distributed in class).
Substitute/Supplementary Readings


Catherine Clement and Helene Cixous, "Sorceress and Hysteric, " in The Newly Born Woman,
trans. Betsy Wing, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, pp. 3-39.
Lucy Freeman, The Story of Anna O., New York: Walker and Co., pp. 1-57.
Week 4, September 27th
The Totemic Function, Sacrifice, Sex/Death, and the Unconscious
Required Readings
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality, trans. Mary Dalwood, San Francisco: City
Lights Books, 1986 (1962), pp. 11-39; 63-70.*
Stephen Pfohl, "The Double or No-Thing: Social Structuring Rituals and Sacrificial Power," in
Death at the Parasite Cafe: Social Science (Fictions) and the Postmodern, New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1992, pp. 106-133.*
John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, New
York; Vintage Books, 1993, pp. 296-325; 363-372.*
Avery Gordon, "Distractions" in Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp.31-60.
Michele Richman, "Eroticism in the Patriarchal Order," in Paul Buck, ed., Violent Silence:
Celebrating Georges Bataille, London: The Georges Bataille Event, 1984, pp. 91-102.*
Substitute/Supplementary Readings
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Georges Bataille, "Attraction and Repulsion I: Tropisms, Sexuality, Laughter and Tears," and
"Attraction and Repulsion II: Social Structure," in Denis Hollier, ed., The College of Sociology,
1937-39, trans. Betsy Wing, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988, pp. 103-124.
Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the Double-Bind, Bloomington, Indiana University
Press, 1993, pp. 1-47.
Claude Levi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss, trans. Felicity Baker, London:
Routledge, 1987.
Karen Fields, "Translator's Introduction" to Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious
Life, New York, The Free Press, 1995 (1912).
Stephen Pfohl, "Sacrificial Doublings and the Gift of Excess: Durkheim, Mauss, Bataille and the
'Origins' of Poststructuralist Thought," Epoche: a Journal of Religion, Vol XXII (Fal 1998), pp.
15-29.*
Week 5, October 4th
Beginning Again: Repressions, Dreams, and Symbols
Required Readings
1.
2.
3.
Carl G. Jung, Man and His Symbols, New York: Vintage, 1964, pp 1-40.*
Anthony Elliot, Chapter 1, "The Making of the Self: Divergences in Psychoanalytic Theory," in
Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition, Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2002, pp. 9-39.
MarshallBerman,“Chapter5:ProlegomenatoAnyFutureMetaphysics,”pp.133‐152inThe
ReenchantmentoftheWorld,Ithaca,NewYork:CornellUniversityPress,1981,pp.153‐189.*
4.
5.
SigmundFreud,“ThePsychicalApparatusandtheTheoryofInstincts,”“Dream‐Workand
Interpretation,”“Remembering,Repeating,andWorkingThrough,”“TheReturnofthe
RepressedinSocialLife,”“CivilizationandtheIndividual,”asexcerptedinLemert,ed.,Social
Theory:TheMulticulturalandClassicReadings,Boulder,CO:WestviewPress,2010,pp.129‐
133;133‐137;141‐145;145‐149;149‐152.*
Robyn Ferrell, "Dreams" and "Life" in Passion in Theory, New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 8-37.
Substitute/Supplementary Readings



Carl G. Jung, "General Aspects of Dream Psychology," and "The Practical Use of Dream
Analysis," in Dreams, trans. R.F. C. Hull, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974, pp.
23-66; 87-109.
Hal Foster, "Compulsive Beauty," in Compulsive Beauty, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993,
pp. 20-54.
Margaret Cohen, "Gothic Marxism," in Margaret Cohen, Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin
and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 1-15.*
Week 6, October 11th
Appearance and Disappearance: Surplus and Lack
Required Readings
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Avery Gordon, "the other door. it's flood of tears with consolation enclosed" in Ghostly Matters:
Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997,
pp. 63-135.
Anthony Elliot, Chapter 2, "Modern Culture and Its Repressed," in Psychoanalytic Theory: An
Introduction, Second Edition, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 40-67.
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: a Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, New York; Vintage
Books, 1955, pp. 3-49.*
Patricia Williams, "The Pain of Word Bondage," in The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a
Law Professor, Cambridge, MA, 1991, pp. 146-165.*
MarshallBerman,“Chapter6:ErosRegained,”inTheReenchantmentoftheWorld,Ithaca,
NewYork:CornellUniversityPress,1981,pp.153‐189.*
Substitute/Supplementary Readings

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Kelly Oliver, "Revolutionary Language: Rendered Speechless," in Reading Kristeva: Unraveling
the Double-Bind, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 91-113.
Wilhelm Reich, "Ideology as a Material Force," from The Mass Psychology of Fascism, trans.
Vincent R. Carfango, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1970, pp. 3-33.
Trinh T. Minh-ha, "Commitment from the Mirror Writing Box," in Woman, Native, Other:
Writing, Postcoloniality and Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, pp. 7-44.
Week 7, October 18th
Repressing, Repeating and Engendering Psychic Matters
Required Readings
1.
2.
Anthony Elliot, Chapter 3, "Object Relations, Kleinian Theory, Self-Psychology," in
Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition, Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2002, pp. 68-98.
Robyn Ferrell, "Sex" and "Love" in Passion in Theory, New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 38-54.
3.
4.
5.
Elizabeth Grosz, "Psychoanalysis and Scandal," in Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, New
York: Routledge, 1990, pp. 6-23.
Luce Irigaray, "Questions," in This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter, Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1985, pp. 119-169.*
Teresa Brennan, History After Lacan, New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 3-25.
Substitute/Supplementary Readings



Jane Gallop, "Of Phallic Proportions: Lacanian Conceit," in The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism
and Psychoanalysis, Ithaca, N.Y., pp. 15-32.
Catherine Clement, The Lives and Legends of Jacques Lacan, trans. Arthur Godhammer, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983, pp. 5-51.
Louis Althusser, "Freud and Lacan," in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben
Brewster, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971, pp. 195-219.
Week 8, October 25th
(Re)politicalizing the Unconscious
Required Readings
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Elizabeth Grosz, "The Ego and the Imaginary," in Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, New
York: Routledge, 1990, pp. 24-49.
Robyn Ferrell, "Language" and "Knowledge" in Passion in Theory, New York: Routledge, 1996,
pp. 55-76.
Paul A. Robinson, “Wilhelm Reich,” in The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert
Marcuse, New York: Harper and Row, 1969, pp. 9-73.*
Teresa Brennan, "The Ego's Era," in History After Lacan, New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 26-75.
Stephen Pfohl, "Totems and Taboo: Hyper-narcissism, Death and the Uncanny," in Death at the
Parasite Cafe: Social Science (Fictions) and the Postmodern, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992,
pp. 155-207.*
Substitute/Supplementary Readings
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Robert Gooding-Williams, "Look, a Negro!" in Robert Gooding-Williams, ed., Reading Rodney
King Reading Urban Uprising, New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 157-177.
C. Fred Alford, Melanie Klien and Critical Social Theory, New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989, pp. 1-56.
Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller, New York: Columbia
University Press, 1984, pp. 13-89.
Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, New York: Routledge, 1993,
pp. 1-23.*
Week 9, November 1st
Color Coded Cultural Psyches
Required Readings
1.
2.
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, New York: Grove Press, 1967, pp. 17-40; 141-209.*
Homi K. Bhabha, "Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche, and the Colonial Condition," in Barbara
Kruger and Phil Mariani, eds., Remaking History, Port Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1989,
pp. 131-148.*
3.
4.
5.
Judith Butler, "Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia," in Robert
Gooding-Williams, ed., Reading Rodney King: Reading Urban Uprising, New York: Routledge,
1993, pp. 15-22.*
Elizabeth Abel, "Race, Class, and Psychoanalysis? Opening Questions," in Marianne Hirsch and
Evelyn Fox Keller, eds., Conflicts in Feminism, New York: Routledge, 1990: 184-204.*
Anthony Paul Farley, The Black Body as Fetish Object," Oregon Law Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Fall
1997), pp. 557-535.*
Substitute/Supplementary Readings
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
Hortense Spillers, "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book," Diacritics
(Summer 1987), pp. 65-81.*
Michael Awkward, "A Black Man's Place in Feminist Criticism," in Negotiating Difference: Race,
Gender, and the Politics of Positionality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 42-57.
Michael Ventura, "Hear That Long Snake Moan," in Shadow Dancing in the USA, Los Angeles:
Jeremy P. Tarcher. Inc., 1985, pp. 103-162.
Week 10, November 8th
At the Fleshy Borders of the Socially Mirrored Ego
Required Readings
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience," in Ecrits: a Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: W.W. Norton, 1977, pp. 17.*
Elizabeth Grosz, "Sexuality and the Symbolic Order," in Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction,
New York: Routledge, 1990, pp. 50-81.
Robyn Ferrell, "Being" in Passion in Theory, New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 77-84.
Teresa Brennan, "The Foundational Fantasy," in History After Lacan, New York: Routlege, 1993,
pp. 79-117.
Anthony Elliot, Chapter 4, "Poststructuralist Anxiety: Subjects of Desire," in Psychoanalytic
Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 99-124.
Substitute/Supplementary Readings

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
Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny," in The Standardized Edition of The Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XVII, trans., James Strachey, London: The Hogarth Press, 1961, pp.
219-252.*
Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement, "Exchange," in The Newly Born Woman, trans. Betsy
Wing, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, pp. 135-160.
Jane Gallop, "Prefatory Material", in Reading Lacan, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 1330.
Week 11, November 15th
Haunted Fantasies of Foundation (and Subversion)
Required Readings
1.
Avery Gordon, "not only the footprints but the water too and what is down there," in Ghostly
Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1997, pp. 137-190.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Stephen Pfohl, “Infantile Recurrence and Overdevelopment: Scenes from World War III,” in
Death at the Parasite Café, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992, 211-235.*
Teresa Brennan, "From the Reserve Army of Labor" in History After Lacan, New York:
Routledge, 1993, pp. 118-165.
Elizabeth Grosz, "Language and the Unconscious," in Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction,
New York: Routledge, 1990, pp. 82-114.
Anthony Elliot, Chapter 5, "Psychoanalytic Feminism: From Chodorow to Butler," in
Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition, Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2002, pp. 125-155.
Substitute/Supplementary Readings


Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, in Peter Gay, ed., The Freud Reader, New York: W.W.
Norton, 1989, pp. 481-515.*
Rosi Braidiotti, "Introduction: By Way of Nomadism," and "Discontinuous Becomings: Deleuze
on the Becoming-Woman of Philosophy," in Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual
Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 139, 112-135.
Week 12, November 29th
Shadows of the Modern/Colonial Psyche
Required Readings
1. Carl G. Jung, Man and His Symbols, pp. 41-97.*
2.
3.
4.
5.
Robyn Ferrell, "Desire" in Passion in Theory, New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 85-93.
Judith Butler, “Introduction” to The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford
University Press, 1997, pp. 1-30.*
Elizabeth Grosz, "Sexual Relations," in Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, New York:
Routledge, 1990, pp. 115-146.
Jonathan Dollimore, "Freud's Theory of Sexual Perversion," and "Deconstructing Freud," in
Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud and Foucault, New York: Oxford University Press,
1991, pp. 169-204.*
Substitute/Supplementary Readings
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Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Psychoanalysis in left field and fieldworking: examples to fit the
title," in Sonu Shamdasani and Michael Munchow, eds., Speculations After Freud, New York:
Routledge, 1994, pp. 41-75.
Georges Bataille, "The Origins of Capitalism and the Reformation," and the Bourgoeis World," in
The Cursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, New York: Zone Books, 1988, pp. 115-141.
Anthony Elliot, "The Language of Desire: Lacan and the Specular Self," in Social Theory and
Psychoanalysis in Transition: Self and Society from Freud to Kristeva, Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell, 1992, pp. 123-161.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
Week 13, December 6th;
Power-Reflexive Social Psychoanalysis: terminable and interminable
Required Readings
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Elizabeth Grosz, "Lacan and Feminism," in Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, New York:
Routledge, 1990, pp. 147-192.
Avery Gordon, "there are crossroads," in Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological
Imagination, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp.193-208.
Teresa Brennan, "Conclusion," in History After Lacan, New York: Routlege, 1993, pp. 166-196.
Robyn Ferrell, "Cure" in Passion in Theory, New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 94-101.
Anthony Elliot, Anthony Elliot, Chapter 6, "The Dislocating World of Postmodernism: Identity in
Troubled Times,” and “Conclusion” in Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition,
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 156-174, 175-177.
Substitute/Supplementary Readings
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Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigaray, Philosophy in the Feminine, NewYork: Routledge, 1991, pp. 125.
Stephen Frosh, "Masculine Mastery and Fantasy, or the Meaning of the Phallus," in Sexual
Difference: Masculinity and Psychoanalysis, New York: Routledge, 1994.
Jane Flax, Thinking Fragments, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the
Contemporary West, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp 3-43.
Nancy Chodorow, Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1989.
Hortense J. Spillers, "All the Things You Could Be by Now, If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your
Mother: Psychoanalysis and Race," in Elizabeth Abel, Barbara Christian, Helene Moglen, eds,
Female Subjectivity in Black and White: Race Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997, pp. 135-158.*
Charles Levin, "Baudrillard, Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis," in Canadian Journal of
Political and Social Theory, Vol. XV., No. 1-2,3, (1991), pp. 170-181.*
Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. Ian Hamilton Grant, Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE, 1993, pp. 1-5; 125-194.
Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1994.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, New York:
Viking, 1977.