Psychoanalysis, Democracy, and Dialogism

Abstract

Psychoanalysis (theory and practice) is alive and well in some parts of the world like France, Brazil, and Argentina, but in countries like Canada and the United States it struggles to survive as it competes with other kinds of therapies. Psychoanalysts in these latter countries have been seeking to understand why psychoanalysis is "under siege" and to invent new, more relevant clinical and theoretical approaches. "What kind of psychoanalysis contributes best to the creation of a democratic mind?" is a (political) question asked by some contemporary relational psychoanalysts. The objective of my article is to suggest some answers to this kind of question by exploring the lessons we might learn from the work of a few key thinkers: the members of the Bakhtin Circle, Freud, Derrida, and some relational psychoanalysts of today. Two underlying assumptions of my article are: 1) an agreement with Stephen Mitchell that the practice and theory of psychoanalysis should provide a better understanding of "the relational matrix that makes our individual consciousness possible"; 2) that the dialogic principle (as developed by Bakhtin, Tzvetan Todorov, and others) can help achieve this goal.