The Ethics and Politics of Psychoanalysis as a Dynamic System

ABSTRACT

This article examines the political and ethical consequences of a specifically dynamic systems view of psychoanalysis and selfhood, arguing that a dynamic systems view entails an ethos, or a way of looking at the world. The article postulates the “thin” normativity, or the minimalist set of commitments involved in a dynamic systems account of selfhood. These minimal commitments provide a framework for exploring two ways in which politics and psychoanalysis intersect: first, how political context surfaces in psychoanalysis (as it is thematized concretely in treatment); and second, the politics of psychoanalysis (as a political or cultural force). The commitments can be summarized under the headings of an ethos of changeability; disruption; experimentation; particularization; and exposure.

KEYWORDS:

• Dynamic systems theory
• ethics
• politics
• psychoanalysis
• the political

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gabriel Trop

Gabriel Trop, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He has written articles on psychoanalysis and dynamic systems theory in collaboration with Jeffrey Trop and Melanie Burke. His primary research interests as a professor of literature tend to focus on the relationship between literature, philosophy, and science, with a special emphasis on poetics and aesthetics. He has written a book entitled Poetry as a Way of Life (Northwestern University Press, 2015) as well as articles about Hölderlin, Hegel, Goethe, Novalis, Schelling, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Else Lasker-Schüler, among others.