Ian Parker (psychologist) - Psychoanalytic Theory

Psychoanalytic Theory

Psychoanalysis is discussed at length in Psychoanalytic Culture: Psychoanalytic Discourse in Western Society (1997), and traditions of theory from British, German and French psychoanalysis are examined critically. The book is a curious mixture of explication and analysis; Parker oscillates between a description of a psychoanalytic theory and a critical account of how it has come to seem to be true to people in Western culture. The most important conceptual contribution in the book is that of the ‘discursive complex’ to explicate how psychoanalysis operates as a social construction and in lived experience. He trained as a Lacanian psychoanalyst with the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research in London toward the end of the 1990s, and has written on psychoanalytic social theory, in his book Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction (2004).

Parker’s discussion of psychoanalysis sometimes appears to be situated within a discursive or Marxist theoretical framework, but he then seems to use psychoanalytic theory as a framework to understand pathology in contemporary society. His argument is that psychoanalysis and a form of ‘psychoanalytic subjectivity’ has developed under capitalism, and so it is necessary to take it seriously in order to change society and enable individuals to change. It is not clear how this use of psychoanalysis fits with his radical work on mental health, which is contained in his co-authored book Deconstructing Psychopathology (1995) and in his edited book Deconstructing Psychotherapy (1999). (Those books draw heavily on the works of the postmodern philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida rather than the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.)

Mainstream psychologists argue that Parker is not doing proper psychological research at all, and that his work is merely destructive (rather than, as he claims ‘deconstructive’). These psychologists are at any rate unsympathetic to discursive approaches and to Marxism and psychoanalysis. Some psychologists who would like to use discursive or Marxist or psychoanalytic ideas have also attacked Parker, and from each direction the argument is that he distorts those ideas. His response always seems to be that these ‘critical’ psychologists want to be accepted by the discipline, and this has sometimes led to bitter public disputes.

Ian Parker’s work on psychoanalysis in relation to discourse theory has been discussed in cultural psychology forums (e.g., Hurme, 1995) and in psychoanalytic journals (e.g., Blackwell, 1996; Hinshelwood, 1996).

The three strands are sometimes referred to by Parker and other writers as part of 'critical psychology'. It seems clear though, that Parker does not want to build a ‘critical psychology’ as an alternative to mainstream psychology, for he believes that this would simply reinforce the power of psychologists. Instead of improving psychology, he still wants (as the subtitle of his first book indicates) ‘to end it’.