Summary, Questions, & Quotes

Hollander (2017) primarily used Gramsci’s work to integrate hegemony in psychoanalytic theories and practice. Ultimately, Hollander contended that psychoanalysis needed to show how power and sociopolitical conditions altered the psychological state of people (as both analysand and analyst). People’s psychological conditions were tied to their sociopolitical status. This was crucial to better developing psychoanalytic theories and treatment. Below I have included some useful quotes for understanding Hollander:  635 - “This appeal to disavow the link between social forces and personal life reflects not only a defense against psychic overwhelm but the ethic of individualism as well that is at the heart of our social surround. How might this divorce between the personal and the political be played out in the psychoanalytic encounter? Do we reflect with our patients about the impact of our disordered social reality upon our psyches? If so, how? If not, why?” 636 - “My aim in this paper is to challenge the tendency within psychoanalysis to separate the social and the individual, the public and the private, the clinical and the political. The collectively shared malaise of contemporary society permeates the psychoanalytic frame, whether we choose to recognize it or not.” 648 - “I believe that we are all sufferers in these times of social malaise. Our challenge is to uproot ourselves from the bystander position produced when we turn our backs on the seriousness of contemporary social crises.” Questions: In challenging binaristic societal categories, does Hollander reinforce these categories? Does she successfully blur these categories or simply reinforce them? Why has psychoanalysis taken such a strong focus on the individual, without focusing on collective conditions of trauma/oppression etc.? What has been lost and what is lost with current categories in psychoanalytic theory? Who is the true historic bloc/oppressor, when there are so many layers to power and subject position?