Response to Burston and Nelson

Sentence First

Abstract

I agree that Critical Social Justice Theory and psychoanalysis are incompatible at their hearts. They speak to opposing modes of thinking: traditional psychoanalysis focuses on our agency, importantly including our unconscious wishes and choices, as well how we deal with what is done to us and what we do to others. Psychoanalysis at its best questions everything, including itself. It tries to take nothing for granted and inquires into any underlying assumptions. Relevant approaches focus on subjectivity, negative capability, unknowing, scepticism, experience, questioning, searching, and open-ended investigation. Questioning is at the heart of psychoanalysis in challenging certainties in oneself and others. In contrast, CRJT embodies closed system thinking with a ‘sentence first—verdict afterwards’ mentality.