Discourse analysis and psychoanalysis

Abstract

Discourse analysis presents a challenge to mainstream psychology, but it risks either neglecting individual experience by employing a quasi‐behaviourist notion of ‘blank subjectivity’ or folding back into simple humanism through an appeal to ‘uncomplicated subjectivity’. This paper argues that productive links can be made with psychoanalysis to elaborate an alternative notion of ‘complex subjectivity’ which would provide a better theory of the subject, and so circumvent these problems. Eight aspects of transformative theotetical work that would need to be applied to psychoanalytic writing—a move to a human science frame, a turn to collective phenomena, a shift away from always intentional authorial responsibility, a reading of texts as reconstructions of the past, an attention to researcher subjectivity, an understanding of the text as ‘other’, an emphasis on language in reframing accounts, and a sensitivity to the cultural specificity of analytic vocabularies—are described, and some reflections on method, including a description of the ‘discursive complex’ as an appropriate analytic device, are outlined.