Psychoanalysis in the Public Sphere: A Call for Taking Analytic Thinking, Writing and Action into the Broader World

Abstract

Starting from the premise that psychoanalytic writing is a core feature of the profession of psychoanalysis, the author considers what and how analysts write about psychoanalysis as inseparable from the state of affairs of the field. What is psychoanalytic writing and what is its purpose? For whom do psychoanalysts write—and can or should this ambit be widened? Does the way we currently and traditionally present psychoanalytic thought and work clarify or obscure what psychoanalysts know and do? These and other questions critically probe differences between what psychoanalysis can do in the consultation room (therapeutic action) and how psychoanalysis can impact our broader world (psychoanalysis “in action”). Using the writer’s own experience as a psychoanalyst who works as an advisor and consultant to corporate leaders and organizations and who writes for a diverse business readership as a point of entry, an argument is made for psychoanalysts to use writing differently to more effectively communicate to the world what psychoanalysts do, what psychoanalysis is capable of, and to be more inventive in engaging in contemporary society.

Keywords:

• action
• applied psychoanalysis
• business
• consulting
• lay analysis
• society
• writing

Notes

¹ A simple key-word search in PEP (Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing) yields over 100 separate articles classified as or which topically refer to applied psychoanalysis. Interested readers should look to that literature for more information which is beyond my focus here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Stein

Alexander Stein, PhD serves as a confidential advisor to CEOs, senior management teams, and boards. He advises business leaders in issues involving leadership, culture, ethical governance, risk, and other aspects of organizational life with complex psychological underpinnings. He is a Principal in the Boswell Group, a psychodynamic management consulting group, and Founder of Dolus Advisors, a consultancy that helps organizations detect, mitigate and resolve problems of human misbehavior, such as fraud, corruption, executive misconduct, insider threats, and human vulnerabilities in cybersecurity, and develop more psychologically accurate and sophisticated human-technology systems. Alexander is widely published and cited in the business press. He is a former monthly columnist for FORTUNE Small Business Magazine and currently a contributor to Forbes writing on the psychology of leadership and misbehavior in business. He is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at conferences internationally. Alexander is a graduate and member of The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in NY and has published extensively in many of the preeminent psychoanalytic journals.