Cultural Analysis Now! – Alfred Lorenzer and the In-Depth Hermeneutics of Culture and Society (Rothe, Krüger, Rosengart, eds.), 2022
The ego is not the master in its own house." And: "Where It was shall I be." Those two of Freud's... more The ego is not the master in its own house." And: "Where It was shall I be." Those two of Freud's best-known epigrams define the forcefield not only of Freud's thinking, as Joel Whitebook states, but, as I argue in this article, that of Alfred Lorenzer, the most important theorist of the psychosocial in late 20 th-century Germany too. In Lorenzer's case, this forcefield can be found in the ways his works develop two contrasting conceptions of the unconscious, one pertaining to the individual, and one to the sociocultural level of analysis, which in turn suggest two distinct methodological approaches, a psychoanalytic and cultural-analytic one, to trace them with. While, in his metatheoretical works of the 1970s, Lorenzer conceives of the aim of clinical psychoanalysis to bring unconscious and repressed meanings back "into agreement with common sense", this idea of reconstruction and reparation becomes difficult to uphold in the cultural analytic works of the 1980s. In this phase, Lorenzer develops a conception of the unconscious in language that comes close to poststructuralist positions. This conception holds that there are parts of the ego that, albeit culturally formative, cannot ever be brought into agreement with existing notions of common sense. In this chapter I first trace the theoretical foundations of the two versions of Lorenzer's method of scenic understanding so as to then demonstrate how his cultural analytic practice tends to fall back onto the reparative position that his later theorizing rules out. I address the resulting contradiction by developing a 'third' methodological position that holds on to both the reparative and poststructuralist orientations in Lorenzer's oeuvre. Borrowing from Simon Critchley's writings on ethics and the comic, I propose a practice of Arrested Hermeneutics, in which "we identify with that which refuses identification" and, at the same time, experience ourselves as comically inadequate to this task.
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Papers by Steffen Kruger
identified with his polemics against Ernst Kris (1900–1957),
a Viennese-born analyst of the ego-psychological tradition,
who from 1940 until his death practiced in the United States.
It was particularly Kris’s 1951 Psychoanalytic Quarterly article,
“Ego Psychology and Interpretation in Psychoanalytic Theory”
(1951/1975) that kept irritating—and fascinating—Lacan. In
that article, Lacan (1901–1981) came to find a paradigmatic
example of ego-psychological treatment, an example instrumental
in making his case against this most influential direction in
psychoanalysis after the Second World War.
identified with his polemics against Ernst Kris (1900–1957),
a Viennese-born analyst of the ego-psychological tradition,
who from 1940 until his death practiced in the United States.
It was particularly Kris’s 1951 Psychoanalytic Quarterly article,
“Ego Psychology and Interpretation in Psychoanalytic Theory”
(1951/1975) that kept irritating—and fascinating—Lacan. In
that article, Lacan (1901–1981) came to find a paradigmatic
example of ego-psychological treatment, an example instrumental
in making his case against this most influential direction in
psychoanalysis after the Second World War.
The contributing authors seek to reassess and reinvigorate psychoanalytic thinking in media and communication studies. They undertake this reassessment with a particular focus on the question of what psychoanalytic concepts, theories and modes of inquiry can contribute to the study of contemporary digital media.
The collection features a broad range of psychoanalytic approaches - from Freudian, via Kleinian and relational, to Lacanian and Jungian - and covers a wide range of issues - from the uses (and abuses) of the mobile phone and other digital devices, the circulation of traumatising images and anxiety-inducing tracking apps, via hysteric feminist discourses, digital fetishes and the exploitation of YouTube celebrities, to the meaning of the gangbang in a priapistic media culture and this culture's emptying-out of meaning towards its climax in a cosmic spasm...
Jacob Johanssen and Steffen Kruger show how media function beyond the rational. What does it mean to speak of narcissism in relation to social media? How have the internet and online platforms shaped work? How do apps like Tinder and online pornography shape our experience of love and sexuality? What are the potentials and pitfalls in our relationships with AI and robots? These questions, and many others, are discussed and answered in this book.
Aimed at students, academics and clinicians, this book introduces readers to key media and the ways they have been approached psychoanalytically, and presents major concepts and debates led by scholars since the 1970s.
Dieser Artikel vertieft meine Analysen männlicher Online-Subkulturen im Lichte eines erweiterten empirischen Fundaments und Theorieapparats. Zuerst stelle ich meine zentrale These – die anale psychosexuelle Orientierung männlicher Subkulturen im Internet – auf breiter empirischer Grundlage dar. Daraufhin adressiere ich weiterführende Fragen: (a) zur Legitimität, psychoanalytische Konzepte auf soziokulturelle Phänomene anzuwenden; (b) hierbei besonders zur Anwendbarkeit des Narzissmusbegriffs auf Männergruppen im Netz; (c) zur Funktion von Komik und Humor in den Internetforen; (d) zum verblüffenden Offenliegen des Primärprozesshaften in virtuellen Räumen; sowie (e) danach, warum diese Subkulturen ‚Männern‘ vorbehalten sind.
Abstract englisch:
This article deepens my analyses of male online subcultures through an extended empirical foundation and theoretical apparatus. First I put my central thesis – the anal psychosexual orientation of male subcultures online – on a broad empirical basis. Then I address additional questions referring to: (a) the legitimacy of applying psychoanalytic concepts to sociocultural phenomena; (b) the applicability of the concept of narcissism to male online groups in particular; (c) the function of humor and the comic in internet forums; (d) the striking openness of displays of the primary process in virtual spaces; and (e) the question why these subcultures are reserved for men.