Misuse of Winnicott: On Axel Honneth's appropriation of psychoanalysis

Whitebook, Joel

doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12582

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Regardless of one's view of child development, Klein's picture better fits the world of populist and fanatical rage and thus is better able to highlight the difficulty of fostering democratic cohabitation. For related discussions of their misreading of Winnicott, see Whitebook (2021). 4 In Lear's (2000) reading, Freud's conceptualization of the death drive lumps together different observations (the function of the mind toward discharge, the repetition compulsion, and human aggression) without explaining their inner connections.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression

Yeung

2022

Constellations

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When John Rawls crowned justice the 'first virtue' of social institutions, stability was its necessary presupposition. For what worth is there of just ideals if the social order they structure will flicker out of existence when under pressure? As Rawls (2005) wrote Political Liberalism, stability became a central concern for his theory of justice, and the "overlapping consensus" is his answer to this problem. The same concern about stability can be found in the works of Habermas, another key theorist of liberal democracy. Habermas (1988Habermas ( , 1998 describes how the only viable source of political legitimacy in the modern world is the socially integrating networks of communication. In his more recent works, he even considers liberal democracy the only viable institutional arrangement that can secure stable political coexistence in our conflict-ridden world.Yet, really existing liberal democracies are far from stable. Followed by decades of neoliberal reform in major liberal democracies, public accountability of governments soon gave way to accountability to private shareholders of multinational capital. Inequalities were staggering, leaving many on the verge of destitution and precarity (Milanović, 2019;Streeck, 2016). Decades after neoliberal reforms have taken root and wreaked havoc, democracies are "undone." The Left is now disoriented, while angry, disenfranchised masses are 're-politicizing' the privatized world with a vengeance, turning to right-wing populisms of hatred, chauvinism, xenophobia, and misogyny (Brown, 2015;Mouffe, 2018).For most ideal theorists, the problem with existing democracies is that liberal democratic ideals are misapplied. 1 They believe that as long as we reattune democracies to their ideals, inequalities will be kept in check, toxic populisms will disappear, and democracies will be stable once again. However, this account seems increasingly untenable: First, politically, the rise of populism in the liberal democratic West shows that politics guided by rationalist ideals are becoming unrealistically "utopian." Second, these populist currents demonstrate how negative affects such as hatred, jealousy, and paranoid anxieties powerfully shape political life, calling into question the negligence of negative (especially antipathic) affects in ideal theories (Mouffe, 2005(Mouffe, , 2009. Thus, if one's theory aims for stable democracies, then one must go beyond ideals, and the 'affective deficit' of rationalist ideal theories must be addressed. Some currents in political thought try to overcome this affective deficit. For instance, Nussbaum (2013Nussbaum ( , 2018 supplements liberal theory with her account of political emotions. She discusses negative emotions such as disgust, anger, and fear, and argues for the need to foster love and forgiveness, redirecting our emotional energies to productive channels. Axel Honneth from the Frankfurt School is also aware of the limitations of pure ideals. His worksThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution...

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression

Yeung

2022

Constellations

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“…Echoing the work of contemporary critical authors, such as Amy Allen (2021), Nöelle McAfee (2019), Joel Whitebook (1995Whitebook ( , 2021, and others, in this work, I argue that psychoanalysis is indispensable for our making sense of current society in a critical perspective, as the first generation believed. However, I suggest that the work of the American psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin has not received the attention it deserves in critical theory circles, offering theoretical resources that can bridge a realistic reading of society and a democratic platform for taking action.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…(Ibid, p. 99). 21 20 Honneth's reading of Winnicott has been criticized mainly by Whitebook (2001Whitebook ( , 2016Whitebook ( , 2021 and McAfee (2019). 21 Later, Honneth would alter the idea of an initial phase of symbiosis, thanks to his dialogue with Whitebook and the consideration of Daniel Stern's intersubjective psychoanalysis.…”

Section: Honneth's Use Of Object-relations Theory and Intersubjective...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…McAfee (2019) andWhitebook (2021) argue, facing ambivalence, identifying omnipotent wishes, and admitting our aggressive capacities are all crucial to understanding and dealing with our current political reality.Concerning this problem,McBride (2013) and McQueen (2015) characterized Honneth's understanding as a "deficit model" of recognition. When one's primary need for recognition is not satisfied, one is bound to struggle to rectify this deficit, which consists of expanding or improving recognition relations.…”

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The connections between psychoanalysis and critical theory: the intersubjective theory of Jessica Benjamin in the analysis of contemporary authoritarianism

César

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One does not need to be an intersubjective theorist to acknowledge that one's work is never the merit of oneself alone. However, especially considering the deep imbrications between the subjects from an intersubjective perspective, these Acknowledgments may have an even stronger meaning while never being enough. Like a Winnicottian child playing, for me, while thinking through, talking about, and writing the following pages, sometimes the boundaries between creativity and discovery seemed agreeably blurred.First of all, I need to thank the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), which financed this project. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior -Brasil (CAPES) -Finance Code 001.I thank my advisor Rúrion Melo for the guidance, solicitude, and freedom to initiate my journey in critical theory and to pursue my ideas. I also thank Britta Weiffen, who was extremely important for the great assistance, friendship, and liberty provided at the very beginning of my academic career.My gratitude also to my colleagues at the Department of Political Science for sharing their friendship, knowledge, doubts, and anxieties so as to create a more welcoming environment of shared vulnerability. I wish to thank also the staff of the Department who was immensely helpful, especially in the navigation of all the bureaucratic requirements of the university, always with good humor and friendly solicitude, besides technical competence. I am also deeply grateful for the friends I met in Atlanta, who provided me rides, bikes, coffee supplies, English lessons, delicious homemade pizza (PB&J), deep conversations, and a friendship of a lifetime. I am especially grateful for my everytime-friends in São Paulo who, throughout the years, were present in all and every situationbars, travels, volleyball matches, carnival trips, rather absurd conversations, home moving, and car robberies (yes, in plural). Thank you for giving me family in the big city. To work and live here would not have been so nice and adventurous without you.To my sister, thank you for the necessary and deep realistic reflections, for the heads-up on many issues of life, for always encouraging me, and for the older-sister love that accompanies me wherever I go.To my parents, no words can thank you enough. In this particular context, thank you for always diving with me into the many adventures that life presents. Mami, thank you for your deepness, for the academic inspiration, and, most of all, for your love that teaches me the insurmountable mystery that is motherhood. Papi, thanks for your light presence as a dad, for being so open to our (frequently feminine) questions, and for caring so much about the world. Thank you both for allowing me to be a subject with you subjects, thus presenting me with the first possibility of truly intersubjective relationships, despite asymmetry.My special thanks go to Lucas for your s...

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Sociality and Psychoanalysis: Conversational Flows

Ragni

2024

The Psychoanalytic Review

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Misuse of Winnicott: On Axel Honneth's appropriation of psychoanalysis

Cited by 3 publications

References 35 publications

Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression

Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression

The connections between psychoanalysis and critical theory: the intersubjective theory of Jessica Benjamin in the analysis of contemporary authoritarianism

Sociality and Psychoanalysis: Conversational Flows

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