Premium
Towards a Psychoanalytic Concept of Community (I): Consideration of Current Concepts
Author(s) -
Koh Eugen,
Twemlow Stuart W.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international journal of applied psychoanalytic studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.314
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1556-9187
pISSN - 1742-3341
DOI - 10.1002/aps.1424
Subject(s) - psychoanalytic theory , psychodynamics , sociology , perspective (graphical) , promotion (chess) , unconscious mind , politics , subject (documents) , government (linguistics) , epistemology , psychology , psychoanalysis , political science , law , linguistics , philosophy , artificial intelligence , library science , computer science
“Community” is a word that is used frequently in everyday exchanges and, increasingly, in public policies and government funding strategies. Mental health promotion campaigns strongly promote “community‐focused” initiatives. The predominant discourse on the topic of “community” has been from socio‐political perspectives. Very little has been written specifically about the nature of communities, or their psychodynamics, from a psychoanalytic perspective. This paper, the first of three, considers three major conceptualizations of communities – philosophical, sociological and ecological – from a psychoanalytic perspective. Within this paradigm, a community, unless arbitrarily defined, is as much a subjective notion as it is an objective entity. Psychoanalysis has much to add to the current thinking on this subject by adding a description of its dynamic qualities, and highlighting the subjective experience (both individual and collective, conscious and unconscious) of communities. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.