The Cultural Underpinnings of Subjectivity and Inter-Subjectivity: A Discussion of “Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual”

Abstract

In “Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual,” Dr. González (this issue) argues for the centrality of dynamic and shifting group identifications in shaping our subjectivity and our inter-subjective linking from moment to moment. My commentary about this paper is organized around the themes of cultural dislocation and cultural displacement, experiences related to large-group identifications and identity. These constructs, cultural dislocation and displacement, can deepen our understanding of how inter/intra-group tensions (historic and current) can play a determinative role in shaping individual subjectivity and inter-subjective linking. They complement and amplify claims regarding the centrality of our group identifications on ego functions. They also point toward the determinative impact of context and clashing cultural systems on our object relations and unconscious fantasies. Studying the links between individuals, collectives, and the cultural systems that structure them will deepen our theories and extend our relevance.

This article refers to:

Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual

View responses to this article:

With Fellow Travelers to Nodal Places: Reply to Dajani, Doñas, and Peltz

Notes

¹ Ironically, Pichon-Riviere was marginalized and eventually left institutional psychoanalysis because of the group’s “resistances” to his emerging perspective. His ideas about internal structures being in dialectical relationship with external structures, groups, habitat, circumstances (I would add cultural systems here) placed “too much emphasis” on the constitutive impact of the social on the individual including the suggestion that the unconscious is social in nature. This part of his history reveals a few uncomfortable truth. First, anything that challenges a group’s orthodoxy is usually met with violent resistances. Second, the set of ideas a group identifies with are emotionally charged and thus emanate from and are organized by unconscious processes. Third, the tendency in psychoanalysis to expunge ideas that challenge our orthodoxy with the thinkers that produce them has contributed greatly to our marginalization and the retardation of our continued and pertinent and development.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karim Dajani

Karim Dajani, Psy.D., is on the faculty at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. He has published on the topics of psychological resilience and the role cultural systems play in shaping unconscious thought/fantasy. His publications include The Ego’s Habitus; Cultural Dislocation and Ego Functions; and Cultural Determinants in Winnicott’s Theories.