Damousi, Joy and Mariano Ben Plotkin, eds. The Transnational Unconscious: Essays in Psychoanalysis and Transnationalism. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
I was thrilled to see that this book existed, since I had been wondering exactly how and why psychoanalysis had become such a ubiquitous transdisciplinary form of analysis. I had observed that:
- very few scholars who utilize psychoanalysis in their work are trained in psychology or psychiatry;
- the personality of Freud is often inexplicably incorporated into analyses that are, at least seemingly, unrelated to it;
- often scholars selectively choose - or perhaps I should say, cherry-pick - elements of psychoanalytic theory to support their arguments; and
- this is all done on a cross-disciplinary and transnational (international) level in the academy.
It didn't (doesn't) make sense. I am quite interested in theory, and in how we use it. Yet, to speak in vaguely Foucauldian terms, the academy seems to be working under a Freudian epistemic umbrella. Why? How did this happen? And is it legitimate? Or perhaps I should say, can this be justified and legitimated?
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