Psychoanalysis in Social Research: Shifting theories and reframing concepts

Psychoanalysis in Social Research reconceptualizes the relationship between psychoanalysis and social research. Through a forensic analysis of psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalytically informed empirical studies, Claudia Lapping re-thinks important aspects of the interpretive process and offers an alternative to traditionalist assumptions about the nature of social science research practice.The book explores the complicated relations between ideas articulated in psychoanalytic theory, social theory and case studies of psychoanalytically informed social research drawn from a range of disciplinary fields (politics, sociology, organization studies, education studies and gender studies). Each chapter develops a critical account of one central concept or cluster of concepts used within both psychoanalytic and social analysis:discourse and overdetermination psychic defenses and social defenses resistance, subjectivity and reflexivity libidinal economies melancholia.By tracing connections and disjunctions in contrasting articulations of these concepts, Lapping demonstrates how psychoanalytically informed research constitutes methodological transformations that produce new perspectives on social processes.This book will be invaluable for postgraduate students and researchers interested in psychoanalytic ideas, social theory and processes of interpretive analysis in empirical research.