When a Cigar is Just a Cigar: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and 'Reversion Compulsion'

Abstract

Misapplications of psychoanalysis in the past commonly imposed an individualist methodology on social phenomena that are the product of many factors. Conclusions based on either material or psychological factors alone may seem adequate from one disciplinary angle but be judged question-begging from another. The balance seems infernally difficult to strike. What I hope I wryly dub ‘reversion compulsion’ is the unwitting tendency by scholars engaged in multidisciplinary projects to retreat into the imperious methods and biases of their 'primal’ training, which sabotages psycho-historical or psycho-social work.