Lacan and Althusser on psychology: The political ethos of serving ideals and justifying ideology

Abstract

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan denounced psychology as a procedure of objectification that serves particular ideals in society and fulfils the social functions of ideologisation, adaptation and exploitation. Likewise, almost at the same time and also in France, the Marxist theoretician Louis Althusser stated his disapproval of psychological theories because they justified ideology either by assuming the existence of natural‐individual tendencies as its foundation or by pathologising everything that contradicts it in the individual realm. After reviewing these critical approaches to psychology, this article will defend the idea that any theoretical or practical psychological work is not completely free to determine its guiding values, principles, rules and norms, as it must adhere to the predetermined functions that have been imposed on psychology and are clearly explained by Lacan and Althusser. The social‐ideological functions of psychology logically restrict, orientate and underlie its ethos, which consequently includes the inescapable political imperatives that govern psychological theory and practice. For instance, the basic theoretical dualist operation that constitutes psychology—the one that distinguishes the psyche from the body and the world—is a political gesture that cannot be abstracted from class society, from its division of labour and its classist ideology, as was demonstrated by Marx and Engels.

Editorial

“…I am pleased that this subject is being discussed more in the pages of this journal and that next year a special issue, edited by Deborah Lee, will be devoted to it.In some ways, the second article in this issue could be read as one way of understanding the kind of abuse that is described in the first article. Drawing on the theories of both Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser, David Pavón Cuéllar describes the way in which psychological theories justify ideology (Althusser), and psychology itself objectifies people in a way that serves society (Lacan) and, as David puts it, "fulfils the social functions of ideologisation, adaptation and exploitation" (Pavón Cuéllar, 2019). The article offers a sophisticated and detailed account of the contribution of both Lacan and Althusser to an analysis of ideology, focusing on the ideologisation of psychology itself, as distinct from a critique of its reduction to the individual.…”